09.27.18 Lets talk vaginas & breasts...

normalize nudity…

normalize nudity…

Lets talk vaginas & breasts. Yet, lets dive deep into vaginas & breasts without shame, embarrassment or insecurity. Shame seems to surround the female body like a nasty cold you cannot seem to get rid of. Women are told from a young age what to wear, what is considered “risqué” & what warrants our bodies being violated. We are forced to cover our nipples yet have our breasts on constant display- open to harassment, gawking & analyzation. We are teased if our breasts are too big, too small, different sizes, non-existent, early developed or late developed. Men seem to think our breasts hang off our chest like handles for them to grasp & fondle as they fall further from grace, without consent or any bit of pleasure. 

Young girls are sexualized because of their bodies while also being humiliated, controlled and/or reprimanded. We hold so much power through our sexuality but if we begin to harness that prowess we are labeled as sluts or loose. Our vaginas literally bring life into this world while also being the brunt of jokes by men who want our vaginas to use and abuse. The constant anecdotes and references about our vaginas smelling like fish, being too dry, looking like meat, being too wet, too puffy, too hairy or too small. While men’s sexual organs are often hidden behind clothing, away from scrutiny & stigma until they take a picture of it and send you a truly unwanted dick pic. 

Women are often so detached from their own vaginas because they have been indoctrinated at such a young age to hide them, not use them, to be a “good girl”, to close their legs & the degradation that comes from all that nonsense lasts a lifetime. We are so scared for our first gyno appointment, we have no idea what that discharge is, whether its typical or not & what the hell does an orgasm feel like anyway. We are ashamed when we get yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis or our periods, whether our smell is normal & ok or doomed to be made fun of in locker rooms & frat houses. We don’t want to go into stores to buy Monistat, tampons or condoms fearing the looks & assumptions from strangers. Condoms; she’s a slut. Monistat; she’s dirty. Tampons; she’s gross. 

Some women are so disconnected with their bodies, that their own flesh feels foreign to them, owned by someone else, unworthy of love, affection or exploration. Mostly, we are not taught about masturbation or self discovery, while many men don’t take the time to transverse a woman’s body either, only worried about their own penis getting into something wet & then quickly out to dry. We are taught that our physical appearance is above all else yet are instructed to “be smart” & not get raped because certainly it is in our control. Our beautiful forms are used as an excuse for rape & assault & we are deemed at fault if we show too much of our bodies. Certainly our bare skin was just asking for that invasion & next time we will for sure wear pants, not make eye contact or close those blinds. 

We are called a tease if we don’t put out, we are forced if we change our mind or branded a whore if we want it just as badly as a man does. We are labeled as liars whether we accuse with freshly made bruises or after decades of emotional trauma & denial. Women are automatically guilty while people simultaneously scream “innocent until proven guilty”- yet only for male perpetrators of course. Dress codes are almost always for women, banned & removed pictures on the internet too; nipples are okay but only if on a males bare chest. 

 Our bodies are constantly demeaned & dissected, starving diets, purging food, cutting skin, sucking out fat, injecting this, inflating that, wanting the perfection that society expects yet isn’t even real to begin with. We are inundated with unrealistic images of body proportions & told to “suck it in”, “cover up” or “get it fixed”. Our brains are just as sexy & potent as our physical forms & just as disrespected & disregarded. 

The female orgasm is like a magical unicorn, something you have read a lot about, so you want it to exist, you think it might exist but you aren’t too sure if its actually real. Women are told to please their man otherwise they will find someone who does or take it from you no matter how hard you fight & say no. Many times consensual sex consists of lying there & taking it without much pleasure for us. Oral sex means putting a penis in your mouth while there are numerous videos on YouTube about how disgusting it is for a man to put a vagina in their mouth. Yet many women cannot climax without that mouth on their vagina, but so many are so insecure about their wonderful fragrant flower, they would rather, just, not. Neglecting their own pleasure while providing for someone else’s. Constantly. 

When will we be able to own our bodies, know their worth, their power & the necessity of its pleasure while holding onto righteousness. When are we allowed to show our skin without fear of being violated, raped, leered at, harassed, scolded or banned? We are disadvantaged because we are women, spoken down to, hushed, pushed aside while also expected to run households, put out, take that, suck this, clean that but above all, shut the hell up. 

Our vaginas are so powerful, so beautiful & so unique. Take that power, own it & use it to your advantage rather than your disadvantage. Reclaim your body, your mind, your worth, your sexuality & desires- demand better, demand something, demand respect, attention & justice. Cast aside the shame that is forced upon us & buy that anti-fungal cream with your head held high. Fight back like hell, against the normalcy of misogyny preserved & so deep rooted in our systems that even our fellow sisters scream LIAR in our faces. 

Women who are so wrapped up in male dominance that they turn their backs & cast shame onto women who are already overflowing with it. Mothers of sons so unable to grasp the inherent sexism in our society & unwilling to even begin to fathom that they in fact, are raising someone who will probably assault a woman in their lifetime. If there was ever a time to support women, it is now, right here, this moment, our time. Believe women. Support women. Elevate women. Because ladies, we deserve nothing less & we demand so much more.

Ladies, its okay you're insecure, just stop calling it feminism...

my very own "yoga porn"...

my very own "yoga porn"...

If you read articles about women issues you have probably seen this growing phenomenon: women who shame other women because they are uncomfortable with their own bodies under the guise of feminism. 

In an article written by Melinda Lane for the Elephant Journal, she proclaims her disgust over something she calls "yoga porn". So people are probably imagining some insane acro-yoga where insertion must be happening, right? No- her definition of "yoga porn" is any woman who posts pictures or videos where they are not covered from head to toe in clothing. So all you yogis out there, (men, seemingly excluded as usual) don't you dare do yoga in shorts, sports bras, bikinis or *gasp* nude! Otherwise you are simply a pornography pusher who only seeks to gratify your own ego and that is "so not yoga!" She first claims that what bothers her is that "yoga porn" is not what yoga should be about- the typical “anti ego” rant. Yet she soon admits that these images make her feel badly about her own body. Which I believe is the true reason behind her disgust of women feeling uninhibited. It seems to me that her own insecurity fuels her public shaming of women who are actually secure. So is that not her ego coming into play, rather than others? I don't know the exact reason why women post certain images of themselves, their reasons are their own but to automatically label a woman's nude body as pornography is so completely offensive. If you want to look at what men in India wore while doing yoga you'll see a whole lot of skin. Yet somehow, nudity in yoga is now an issue because women are doing it?

So I'll just admit now, I am a "yoga porn” star, lover & promoter! I post pictures & videos of my naked to half naked body while doing yoga for the world to see. And the reasons I do so are my own but mainly I seek to normalize the naked body while Ms. Lane seems hell bent on continuing to make it taboo and shameful. Yet also, I just don’t give a damn what people think about me, whether my nude body is shameful or not, I am secure in my decisions and in my skin. I refuse to change my clothing or put clothing on before I take videos or pictures because some person wants to use these images to justify their public shaming of women. Women are so indoctrinated to not only hate their own body but to hate other women's bodies. I used to look at women who were confident enough to show skin in envy while also trying to find every little thing wrong with them; “look at that dimple, look at that roll, I’m thinner, oh she’s slutty,” to somehow make myself feel better. And it wasn't from a place of a "moral high ground" or a fear of women being objectified. It was because I was insecure about my own body and their ability to be comfortable in their own skin made me angry and sad because I myself was not comfortable in my own skin. That’s ego. Grade A ego. Yet I don’t believe her article is really about yoga at all since its not yoga that is the issue for her, its women’s bodies that seem to be her main gripe.

There is this notion that in order for women to be taken seriously we must extinguish our sexuality. That it is somehow our responsibility to make the world or in reality, men, see us as thinking, feeling, intelligent beings instead of just sexual objects. The objectification of women is not a problem that women should have to solve- we live it and fight it every single day. It reeks of the constant barrage of self-defense videos and “how to stay safe as a woman” articles, pinning the responsibility for us to know “how to not get raped”. Where are the articles and videos teaching men to not rape and objectify women? Where are the people raising these young boys, when these ideas first become normalized to the point where men act out in violence against women? So is it my responsibly to teach every single man to not objectify me or see my nude body as simply a thing to fuck rather than look into my soul and to see who I really am? Is my nudity somehow blocking the depths of my character or is it the person who has been taught from a young age to objectify me and refuse to see my complex nature? Its not my responsibility to answer these questions and further, to solve these moral and social issues.

Women have been pitted against each other for decades. Perhaps its biological or evolutionary that women see each other women as competition for mates or maybe society plays a role. We may not be able to control how young boys are raised or how men perceive our bodies but we certainly have the power to unify with other women and not create divides. After all, Yoga literally means to unite. Perhaps instead of shaming other women for their bodies and sexual freedoms, choose to be secure in your own body with however many pieces of clothing you desire and applaud any woman’s effort to love herself in a society that is constantly telling her she is just an object and not good enough. 

I would love to support any woman who feels insecure or ashamed of their body. I want to be an ally to all women and open up these dialogues. To make our position in this world stronger and more unified. So ladies, its okay you're insecure, just stop calling it feminism- and when you’re ready to transcend your ego, or ready to at least try- actual feminism and the unification of women will always be here, whether you do yoga or not. 

 

03.26.17 I was sexually assaulted…I think…

teenage me...

teenage me...

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I even recognized that what I had experienced when I was a teenager was a sexual assault. The fact that I did not even consider it an assault against my body is more offensive to me than the actual assault itself. That what happened to me was so normalized and that for so many years I took on the responsibility of what those two men did to me. That I believed all men just behaved in that way. I blamed myself so heavily that I was convinced that I was in fact the guilty one, not them, and even further, that I caused it because of my reckless behavior.

Because I was suffering so immensely, physically and emotionally after my sister’s murder, my main goal for many years was to just not feel like I wanted to die every single second of every single day. I was emo long before it was cool except I didn’t have black hair and wishing for death wasn’t something I just wrote in my sad journal, it was something I genuinely thought I wanted. The only way I escaped my misery was to not be sober, therefore to escape my own reality. It started with drinking here and there, smoking weed, the occasional joint laced with who knows what and some persistent self harm.

I remember being so excited for this New Years Eve party because it was going to be at Noah’s house and his parties were the best! Or so I had heard, since this was really, probably, most likely, one of my first parties ever. So as most 15 year old newbies do, I drank way too much too soon and was hell bent on doing more and taking risks. Even through my many drunken stupors I still had that death wish buried deep inside, drowning in that alcohol, wanting to put myself in dangerous situations to test the universe and its ironies. I somehow ended up in the company of two older boys who wanted to go buy more drugs. Mixing drunk driving and “magic” mushrooms, for some particular reason, felt like a good idea at the time. Death wish, remember?

I tried to climb into the back- they either had a truck with a camper shell or one of those hideous car/truck vehicles, where it was a car with a truck bed attached to it. Perhaps a ford ranchero, which I just had to google image search using “ugly car truck combo” in order to refresh my memory. …It was a station wagon- bad memory refreshed like a rotten.com web page. My friend Liz and another guy were in the back and I at least had a little sense to want to be with her. The two guys in front shoved me in, making me “sit bitch” which was an appropriate title in regards to their intentions.

Before we left they told me to eat these mushrooms they had and though I had never done mushrooms before, they didn’t have to ask me twice. Honestly, I cannot remember if they pressured me to eat them or not, all I know is that I did. I had no idea where we were going or who I was even with, except I sort of knew Shane, who ended up dating one of my close friends years later but that’s a whole other story. As we drove down those winding and deathly dark Grass Valley roads, I was so out of it and swirling with every turn. My body was numb until I felt both of their hands on my legs. It seemed as if they both were in perfect pervert unison as they worked their way higher and higher up my leg. It did not take long for them to begin rubbing my vagina- one would do it while the other patiently waited for his chance. If one took too long, the other would slap his hand to assert that it was his turn to assault me. They were fighting over violating me. I remember sitting there, not wanting it to happen, yet also not being able to get my body to function well enough to say no or to physically stop them. Their hands were all over me and I just sat there and let them do it. I was scared, drunk, dizzy, mortified and stunned. The only reason they stopped was because we arrived at our destination.

As soon as they turned the engine off and began getting out I felt whatever was brewing in my stomach wanting to desperately be free. I vomited all over their dashboard and floor. I couldn’t quite discern if I had thrown up because of the alcohol, the mushrooms or what I had just experienced or perhaps a combination of all three. On the way back to the party they allowed me to get into the back with my friend and as usual, I began sobbing. Most Bear River high school parties didn’t really start to kick off until Shani got drunk and started sobbing, in case you were wondering. They drove down those dangerous dark scary roads so incredibly fast that I thought for sure my death wish was going to come true. All of a sudden I wanted nothing more than to live- funny how that works. While they drove insanely recklessly and as I sobbed, I could hear them laughing and asking me over and over again, “why don’t you come back up here.” No thanks guys.

I legitimately didn’t realize until this very moment that these two men were the first to ever touch my vagina. I had gotten to first base, or maybe second base without my consent. I’m not really sure since I’m not a baseball fan and honestly, I have always fucking hated baseball, never want to “play” again and would much rather opt for women’s volleyball or something.

Its sort of disturbing that what I was dealing with at the time, my sisters murder, was so overwhelming that two men violating me wasn’t that big of a deal in the long run. I feel this guilt inside me, though I no longer blame myself for what happened, I now blame myself for not being more traumatized because of it. I certainly was bombarded with extreme emotions at the time, as I reread what I wrote about that night in my journal:

“… I deserved everything they gave me. Their faces wont get out of my head…I just want to crawl in a corner and die. Am I stupid? YES! YES! YES! Ill never forget this, never.”

The normalization of sexual abuse and assault against women is rampant and I would hope that it’s gotten better for young women. I not only wrote about my experience with these two boys in my journal but I was shocked to read and remember all the other onslaughts I experienced in just one night, as a teenage girl, at a high school party. There were three different boys trying to force me to kiss them, one trying on two separate occasions to get me alone with him, and one grabbing my vagina after I pushed him away when he tried to force me to kiss him. Yet the sad reality is that what I experienced is nowhere near what other women have survived. That the sexual abuse of women has gotten so egregious that many diminish their own trauma, as I am doing now and while outsiders do the same. We have come to a point where “grabbing women by the pussy” is simply “locker room talk” yet what I experienced was not in a locker room and was not just talk. It actually happened and it actually was pretty traumatizing.

I never realized how much that experience shaped my sexuality, my sometimes shitty sexual and platonic relationships with men and even more disturbing, my sexual fantasies. This experience and the many others I have lived throughout my life have altered how I view my body and its worth in this universe. It took many years and many obstacles, but I reclaimed my body and my sexuality in many different ways, throughout many varied and complex years of personal struggle and growth. I reclaimed my existence through self-abuse, self-love, realizations, actualizations, modifications and alterations. Just to begin to love my own skin, beyond the intricate soul inside of me. No, not just my soulful spirit but to genuinely adore the meat and bones of me. And honestly, I am still learning to love and accept both through this universe that constantly forces you to question your own worth as a woman and sexual being. My body is not a temple…

”… temples can be destroyed and desecrated. My body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. I will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly I am devastated.” Quote by Beau Taplin