breaking news: women have bodies

because I bled through my pants again last week and I'm tired of feeling bad about it

Three times a week, I take an everything shower. What is an everything shower? (If you’re a woman, I’m sure it’s something already deeply embedded in your routine— you just may not be aware of the gen-z given name)

An everything shower is the hygiene routine of doing it all with no skips: washing, conditioning, masking your hair- cleaning, scrubbing and exfoliating- and of course- shaving every inch of your body to eliminate any and all evidence that you’re capable of growing body hair. I’m sure more can be added to this list, depending on who you are and what makes you feel good.

I envy my boyfriend’s ten minute showers. It takes me ten minutes just to comb out my freshly washed (and very tangled hair) after my already-too long shower. He uses the same soap for everything and doesn’t pick at his face in the mirror. I can’t imagine his products cost more than 30 dollars every two months. What a blissful existence.

I’m not what you would call a clean girl aesthetic and I’ve developed some shame over that the last several years. My hair is never blown out. It’s often air-dried and tangled. I don’t naturally lean toward lathering my skin or hair in delicious potions, and am just learning how to do eyeshadow and eyeliner. I’ve never really had the money to invest in things that felt indulgent or related to beauty. I’ve always felt insecure attempting to invest in these things I knew nothing about, even though as a girl, I knew I should. Since stepping into my 30’s, it’s began to change. Adult money does funny things to insecurities—

Now, as I lather my body in oil after my 40 minute everything shower, I wonder the amount of resources women and girls spend each year trying to make the world forget they have a working human body.

Our culture not only works to control women’s bodies— it also expects women to make their bodies invisible as well. There is shame in bodily function, bodily fragrance, bodily hair, bodily softness or dimples or rawness. Our culture wants us ashamed of our bodies, so much so, that we will pay any amount of money to cover the very existence of those bodies up.

Our bodies must be palatable and doll-like. We are pressured to erase the very signs of our own humanity: sweat, wrinkles, body hair, scars, fragrance, and stretch marks. Rather than honoring these markers of life, labor, and resilience, we are inundated with products that claim to correct and eliminate them.

Where are the correcting serums and clean-smelling washes for men? Their primal sweat and odor and imperfections do not have millions of dollars dedicated to campaigns, working to make them feel insecure. It celebrates the masculinity of imperfection. The ruggedness of aging, weathering and odor.

I visit friends’ homes and see showers filled with lavender scented washes for body areas that should not be touched with soap. I wince for months while having all areas of my body ripped clean from the wax strip. My face flushes when I realize my too-heavy period leaked through my leggings at the gym. I hide my much-needed tampon in my sleeve as I head to the bathroom to change.

I do not have a body. I am a concept of a body, for men and culture to consume in a palatable, inhumane way.

Lavender-scented body washes and rose-infused scrubs are marketed not as gestures of self-care, but as tools for concealment, urging women to mask their wishful natural state, to appear more polished, more fragrant, more clean. Our products and everything showers are merely an implication that a woman’s natural body is in need of constant correction, that her authenticity must be cloaked in a veil of sweetness and softness.

The message from the time we are young girls is clear: to exist in this world as a woman is to constantly negotiate your visibility and buy your protection. The only bodies allowed to be celebrated are those that conform and minimize. The smoothed, the toned, the quiet. Any other format of humanness- flesh that’s soft and spilling, hair that grows and deepens, skin that wrinkles and thins— those must be hidden, erased, or minimized.

Do not talk about how your body bleeds and leaks once per month. Do not discuss your pain surrounding it. Hide all evidence that you secrete anything at all and don’t you dare not light a match or candle after you’ve taken a shit. The world is disgusted by your body and any function it needs to survive. Bodily functions cannot be afforded to us.

Women, if we are not careful, end up trading our humanness for overly expensive oils and washes and serums that degrade and sanitize our concept of self. We begin to normalize the idea that existing in our human bodies is disruptive, shameful, and wrong. We do not need to encourage one another for more body deodorant, more skin care, or worse—labiaplasty’s. We are not pornographic dolls with no souls, sweat or feelings.

Instead of continuing down the path of normalization, we need to encourage the true fullness of our physical selves. The right to be imperfect, messy, beautiful, and raw.

We need to protect our right to be fully human.

Catch me free-bleeding in the street this month. **Okay I’m not there just yet, but would like to be. Baby steps x**