Hear Her Roar: Jeffrie

“My Story” or How I Learned to Love My Body

I was brought up in a middle class family in Southern California where we didn’t discuss anything body-related. In fact, when I first got my period I was so embarrassed I hid it from my parents for over 6 months.

I didn’t date until I graduated high school, again because I was too embarrassed to broach the subject of sex with my parents, and they didn’t seem to want to push the topic either.

I was a reasonably active girl; I danced and was in gymnastics until I was in my mid 20’s, and people always told me I was pretty, but I couldn’t get a date to save my life. I even went stag to the senior prom… by the time I started college I had completely given up hope of ever getting a boyfriend, since every guy I had asked out had turned me down. I had resigned myself to being the “really cool aunt” or “the crazy cat lady”. I had a reasonable body and reasonable good looks, but I was completely unsure of myself. I hid my breasts as much as I could, wore baggy clothing, wore my hair simply in a braid or ponytail and did what I could to be androgynous. I was even too self conscious to masturbate or do anything of that sort, despite knowing lots of details from more experienced, older friends.

When I was 19, I had a life-changing experience- I got my first boyfriend. He was attracted to me through my ugly clothes and lack of makeup. He saw my body as curvy and beautiful, and after several months he began to teach me to appreciate myself in many, many different ways. He even went with me to Planned Parenthood for years when I went to get my birth control, until I was able to get health insurance.

A couple years later, we started working at the local Renaissance Faire- what better place to learn to take a complement and love your body! Within a year I had joined an acting group where I portrayed an Elizabethan harlot… quite a jump from the naive virgin I was 2 years earlier!

I ended up becoming the director of the group, did a TON of research on women and the dichotomy between the acceptance of prostitution during the Renaissance and the oppression of married women. Meanwhile, I learned even more to appreciate not only my beautiful body, but the variety of wonderful, encouraging, vivacious women I had befriended.

After dating my boyfriend for 7 years he asked me to be his wife. We were married October of ’07, and I have completely and totally learned to love every curve, crevasse and crease of my body. I am not skinny. My breasts are not huge. My stomach is not flat and tight. I love walking around the house naked: I am Rubenesque and damned proud of it!

I still direct and work the Renaissance Faire, and am constantly doing research on women’s history throughout the ages. I have surrounded myself with incredible women and men who believe in beauty in every form. In fact, our war cry (for lack of a better phrase) is “Flapdoodle”, which is a slang term from the late 1400’s/early 1500’s for a women’s vagina- it’s a great word for confusing people, and it’s fun to say!

If I ever have children, I know how to learn from the mistakes that my family made. It’s been centuries that women have been taught to be embarrassed of their bodies, so long that it’s almost an inherited trait. I am so glad to be living in an era where we are just starting to be able to reclaim the power and love that we were afforded in the Ancient Greek and Egyptian times, where women can be different shapes and colors and still be beautiful, sexy and intelligent.

Viva la Vulva! FLAPDOODLE!!!

Hear Her Roar: Adrastea

When I was growing up, my vulva was never referred to as a vulva. It was a “private part” that no one should touch. It was something that I peed out of and eventually would be the escape hatch for a fetus, but it wasn’t something to be shared or enjoyed. So when I had my first serious boyfriend at 16, I came into the relationship with no awareness of how my vulva was supposed to be treated. I had never had an orgasm. Never masturbated. And so when we began engaging in oral sex, I was afraid at first of his ejaculate and didn’t want to let him finish. So he decreed that if he couldn’t cum, then I couldn’t cum. So as the relationship progressed, I became his personal blowjob machine and he trained me to shut down my brain at the first sign of sexual pleasure.

When I got to college, I met a boy in one of my classes who took a liking to me. He and I started dating and when he realized how twisted my view of sexuality was, he made it his personal mission to help me understand my body better. He told me “I won’t let you get me off until I get you off, and I don’t care how long it takes.” Looking back on my relationship with him, it was the healthiest one I’ve ever had. He truly saved me from years and years of men taking advantage of me and my body. I lost my virginity to him and it was with him that I had my first orgasm. Even though it didn’t work out for other reasons, he was the most wonderful, loving, and open partner that I could have ever asked for.

After him, my vulva and I have been at odds with each other. She believes that yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, and bladder infections are the cat’s meow. We’ve had HPV, VIN, and abnormal PAP smears for four years. I have been crippled with shame and guilt over the idea that I would pass the potential for cervical cancer on to another woman. But in the past few months I am getting over that. I am dating my best friend from childhood and he is reminding me that I deserve of love, that my body is beautiful and that my vulva is not my enemy. I recently got involved with the Vagina Monologues and have started advocating for women’s health on campus.

-Adrastea

Hear Her Roar: Bri

When I was 14 years old I was sexually abused by a 25 year old man I didn't know; he did things to me that made me think that I was dirty or damaged and I was afraid of and hated my own body for a very long time. I viewed myself as disgusting and unclean, I felt that whatever innocence I had was ruined, and I couldn't look at myself anymore. I first happened upon the idea of forgiveness when I started finding that the internet had stories of many girls and women that had the same thing happen, and worse things happen to them. I decided to submit a photo of myself for use as a model buy the lovely Jessica to partly take back some power and control, and to prove to myself that I was beautiful and what happened to me was not my fault, and that it didn't ruin me. I am 19 now, and I have started to heal from the things that have hurt me, and from the fear I have, and the beautiful decoration that was modeled after me has done so much to help me down that path.

Hear Her Roar: Jamie

VULVA LOVE

Demons.

Can you see them?

Haunting my most precious part of my being.

Stealing my essence.

Hiding in my creative Soul’s center, choking the snake curled at the base of my spine.

The demons are heavy in my energy center from which I am supposed to vibrate at my highest level of well-being.

Stagnating.

Instead of being able to honor that vibration and move through the veil to see all truths, I see only darkness.

There is no light.

And in that darkness I am cut off, not only from honoring the beauty of myself, but the flow of trust towards my husband.

Pain overshadows. Fear dominates. Shame reigns.

I have surrendered.

But I am awakening.

Because I am loved.

I have nothing to lose.

Everything to gain.

I desire to move back and forth through the veil.

To experience my power in its highest form.

To trust.

To be one with all that is.

One with the person that loves me infinitely.

I see the light.

Hear Her Roar: Emmerson

Growing up as a young girl, no one ever told me that my vulva was supposed to be beautiful. My mother had a terrible word for it- bunny ( I still cringe when I share that with people today) and instead of telling me I should be proud or happy, she would chase me around the house asking if I had “washed my bunny” . She was a believer in far too many old wives tales about growing up and menstruation, so shaving, periods, tampons, smells, and the like, were all things I had to learn on my own.

I remember at 14 I talked with my best friend about oral sex. We discussed how gross it seemed to give blow jobs, but oral sex for us, was totally out of the question. Somehow we had both swallowed the lie that we were gross, and having a man down there would be subjecting ourselves to humiliation and taunting instead of pleasure.

Adolescence brought me more insecurity, as I compared my body to the images I saw in magazines, porn on the internet, and art. I knew I wasn’t doing something right, whether it was not maintaining my bikini line, not shaving everything off, or having darker skin colors because of my mixed race. My first, and last sexual interaction with a man was virginal and innocent, there was no investigation of each other, just plain vanilla intercourse.

It was a few years later, after I had read the vagina monologues, after I had gone to a leadership camp and became a banner waving feminist, after I had taken my first gender studies class at college, that everything changed. I fell in love with a woman. The first time I had sex with her it was as if my mind had moved to an entirely different place. I realized that I loved her body, and I knew exactly how to take care of it. The next day, I sat outside, realizing that if I could love her body, I would really be loving myself, validating myself. All my relationships since then have not only confirmed this revelation, but have also been opportunities for me to ‘spread the good word.’

That changed everything.

Since that relationship my confidence, my outright superiority complex, has ballooned. I worship all things vulva, whether they be constructed, or altered. I envy the trans men, who during their transitions sometimes grow clitorises large enough to penetrate. I gaze at my menstrual blood, thinking of the power it symbolizes. I never question the beauty of my body, having learned that my vulva is completely unique to me. My scent, my ‘textbook uterus’ (thanks obgyn!), my fascinating, wonderful, awesome clitoris, my Marilyn Monroe beauty spot ;). These are all things I have learned to not only treasure, but also hold as a badge of strength, sexiness, and power.