Blood Moon
I had this pair of jogging pants, ugly as hell – white, ribbed and with buttons on the crotch – but incredibly comfortable. They were just another one of those items I ended up accidentally adopting after borrowing them from a friend at a sleepover. I'm sure she was happy to be rid of them but, man, was it her loss. We're talking thirty years ago and I can still remember how good it felt lounging out or sleeping in them, even though my worst nightmare was to ever be seen in them. They lovingly caught the first droplets of blood from my uterus, aged eleven; a monumentally uneventful moment. Unlike the gush of Carrie-red blood I had expected, I crouched down one day to get something from my bottom shelf, when there it was, a little Rorschach blot announcing the onset of a new psychology. That was it. Just a few of those throughout the course of five, six days, back to clean and unburdened underwear, and repeat twenty-eightish days later. That real bucket-drop-type bleeding didn't start until about a year later. Still, I knew getting my period for the first time was a big moment and, on one side, I felt proud to be part of the tribe; to be able to join in on the conversation with my older friends. On the other, I felt very apprehensive about it. Not necessarily about how my body was changing and all the things it was suddenly doing. It was about what it, and the joggers that had become equivalent to period underwear, signified. About what it meant to wear this shameful comfort piece every month, until the stains no longer washed out and the butt and thighs had taken on a pinkish hue, like tea stains on a piece of newspaper. Becoming a woman.
A few weeks later, I was in the car with my dad and he, very carefully, ever so gently, broached the subject. He seemed hurt that I hadn't told him; that was unlike me. We had always spoken openly about everything. He was the one who gifted me Janosch's "Mutter, sag wer macht die Kinder?"[1] when I was five, and patiently talked me through it all, so I understand why he was surprised I hadn't shared this. He was calm and encouraging about it, he honestly couldn't have reacted any better and yet, inwardly, I felt myself squirming. Because he repeated this idea I could not yet conceptualize: that I was now a woman. To me, being a woman and having boobs and periods and all these things I didn't ask for, meant boys – and men, for that matter – were going to start acting weird around me. This is something my grandma had told me just before it all went down and, what do you know, her premonitions manifested soon thereafter. I had always been one of the boys. Now, suddenly, they were starting to pay attention to me in a different kind of way. As though they could smell it on me. This was exciting at times and totally unwanted at others. The type of unwanted that would see me hiding behind big hoodies and even bigger pants. I understood something drastic had changed and that, for a long while, I would not be seen as the nuanced, human being I was, but just the one thing: a girl morphing into a woman. No longer a kid, my body no longer free of any sexual connotations. Suddenly, it seemed like it was expected of me to behave a certain way - and no one ever asked me whether I was ready.
Years later, after losing my virginity to my first serious boyfriend – who was three years older than me – we were hanging out at his friend's house, getting ready to go out for a "fancy" Valentine's Day dinner as a group. There were six of us and I was the youngest by far. I never felt pressured into anything – not by my boyfriend, nor the rest of the group. On the contrary, most of them were actually quite protective of me and kept an eye on me when I insisted on keeping up with them in whatever they were doing. That night, as I was in the bathroom with the girlfriend of the guy whose house we were all staying at, she said something that stayed with me. Because the older I got, the more I realized just how kind those words were. While she helped me fix my hair and applied her own make-up, she said, "You know, just because you're having sex now, it doesn't mean that you have to sleep with the next guy you date." At the time, I felt it odd that she was looking ahead of the relationship I was in – like, hello, we were so, totally, going to be together forever. When it ended – a little less than a year later – and the heartbreak subsided, I often thought of what she had said. The way I still do now. She had let me know, bluntly and discerningly, that, just because I had passed another major milestone of womanhood, it did not mean I needed to follow any kind of sociosexual etiquette. It did not mean I needed to be anyone I wasn't ready to be just yet.
*
The other day I fled the burn of the afternoon sun in our living room to find refuge in the mall for a few hours of free aircon. Typically, this type of outing consists of letting the daughter ride the carousels with whatever change she's saved in her monkey-bank, and finding creative ways to stretch the weekly grocery shop out as long and as leisurely as possible by turning it into a game for her. On this day, however, we were on a different mission: to find her a bathing suit. Or so I thought. When we finally found a store that hadn't sold out their entire swim collection during peak rebajas[2], the daughter let it be known that she didn't want a bathing suit. She insisted on just the bottoms, so she could "touch it the boobies", which was her way of saying, she wanted to free the nipples. Fair enough. I was down with this reasoning, and glad she could express it in these simple terms. Once the giggles over this moment subsided, though, I realized that, once she hits early puberty, the dialogue will become far more complex. If she, like many girls I know, would not want to wear a bikini top or a training bra – purely because they do not (or don’t want to) associate their breasts with their sexuality yet – try as I might, it wouldn’t be an empowering conversation. Because ultimately, despite all the freedom I want her to have and want to give, it’s not going to be about how she feels, but about how it’s going to make the boys around her feel. It is another one of these musts that become imprinted on girls with little to no regard as to whether the physiology aligns with the psychology of any given moment. Simply because, for generations, girls – not boys – have been held accountable for everything they do (or don't). And so, years from now, instead of letting her make her own decisions as to whether she wants to go topless or not, wear a bra or not, I will most likely have to regurgitate a version of what my grandma once said to me.
As I stood in line to pay for her banana-print bikini bottoms, I noticed the display of perfume and body-sprays targeted at kids – again, particularly girls – as young as a year old, conveniently positioned right next to the counter. I felt myself getting really upset about these perfumes marketed at the purest (smelling) people on the planet because, like so many products, these serve no purpose other than to "better" something that really should be accepted as perfect: our body. With all its odours, hair, bumps and whatnot. Because this kind of merchandise enters toddlers into a world of fighting and beautifying all that is good and natural – i.e., womanhood – when really, all they should be doing is run wild with their boundless imagination. Girls are being pushed out of this era of innocence at such a young age, and it's almost by default. The more I think about it, the more evident it becomes that I never really experienced body autonomy until my twenties; all the "big" decisions had been dictated by those around me. My own Impulse[3] phase never would have come about had I not been taught to use or want this flowery, suffocating mist – by the women in my family, and my peers stinking up the dressing rooms after gym class and the toilets during break time. Not even real, skin-friendly deodorant, but another scented masquerade in one of those explosive aerosols that would accidentally sizzle our friend's eyebrows years later. I never would have thought of shaving the soft, blonde baby-hairs off of my legs, if I hadn’t been told to. For no other reason other than that I should. It never would have dawned on me to pluck my eyebrows, until I was told to – for no real, valid reason other than that I should. To wear a bra when my incoming breasts barely resembled bee-stings. To no benefit of my own, of course. No. But to appeal to the indoctrinated masses living by this pre-set patriarchal instruction manual.
An avalanche of thoughts swept over my aircon’d hothead. I thought of Charlotte Roche's Schossgebete, and the protagonist Elizabeth Kiel, who gets a kick out of the smell of bedsheets and pyjamas that haven't been changed in months. I love nothing more than climbing into a freshly made bed with that instantly soothing smell of laundry detergent snuggling me into dreams of lavender fields and fluffy clouds. But I also love waking up in a bed that smells of sleep – the rested and unrestful, the dreamless, the wet and the nightmarish. Of hard work and turned book pages. Of sex and silence and silly giggles. To meet the counterpart of my lushly lotioned self after a night out and get up close and personal with my body when all that falls away – the products, the pressure, the peers. Something many of us only experimented with once the pandemic hit, and all the washing machines fell as silent as the world around them. When we swerved between obsessive hand-washing and pushing new boundaries of bodily hygiene. When some of us discovered the pleasure in lightly pressing the palm of our hands against the spiky stubble poking through the skin of our shins; when some of us allowed ourselves to stand naked before the mirror long enough to befriend who we are outside of any societal blueprint. It's when some of us gave ourselves permission to appreciate all that we are and aren't as if for the very first time, upon realizing that foundations crumble, gendered colour and dress codes fade and our (a)sexuality should be defined by no one other than ourselves. It's when many of us finally wrapped our tweezers and razorblades in these outdated etiquettes, before discarding them in the bin. Poured lighter fluid onto perfumed pads and torched them, watching their ad visuals, of wiggly butts and roller-skates (because we all feel like rollerblading when we're bloated and hurting) pollute the air, the way they have done our minds and bodies.
*
Last night, watching live footage of a recent boygenius concert, naked, with my feet soaking in ice-cold chamomile water and my uterus lining slowly shedding onto the midnight blue towel under me, I felt light and liberated at last, after a whole day of plugging and padding in 40-degree heat. When Phoebe Bridgers wished everyone a happy full moon between songs, and asked the crowd whether anyone else was currently free bleeding, I felt genuinely moved. What a validating, honest and unifying moment. Unabashed and normal. Recognizing the added discomfort of always having to cover up, mask, hide away all that is human for the comfort of others; finding power in just letting nature run its course. It made me think of a time when I was about fourteen and this asshole, at least three years my senior, cornered me in the mall, with two of his minions in tow. He wanted a cigarette and proceeded to aggressively rummage through my handbag before I could stop him. He pulled out a pad, held it up high in front of his buddies, and urged me, loudly and mockingly to, "just let it flow". It was cruel and I was mortified. But here I am. Letting it flow, letting it go, bleeding out onto another memory of a man shaming me for being a woman. Onto all the things that scared me about becoming and being a woman. Celebrating the sensation of an entirely new and loving awareness trickling into my consciousness as slowly and deliberately as the blood down the inside of my thigh. One that is increasingly my own and further and further disconnected from the world around me. I am not every woman; it's not all in me.
Instead of wasting any more time trying to contort my body into something it's not, instead of gripping onto societal structures I don't want to be hanging from when the ground below me collapses, instead of joining the heavily scented and estranged masquerade forever running up that hill, I rather dance in the light of the moon, and rest in her shadow. To understand my own energy and shine when I’m filled with it, relax when it inevitably wanes again. I look to her as a silent companion, a bright source of inspiration in my own cycle – in this world, my womanhood, my existence. At times when I find myself in a slow sway, my cheek rested against the neck of a guitar strumming sweet chords and throats full of medicinal harmonies, I know I am on the ebb, and might choose to inaugurate hoodie season. On days when I jitterbug through the house and my creative endeavours, and lindy hop down the street towards all things new and terrifying, you might recognize a lick of sparkle on my lips, a little twirl in whatever it is I'm wearing. And on nights like tonight, the moon and I stand united in our power and our nudity. Her, in the low hum of the galaxy and the milky way. Me, earthside, in the vacuum of my headphones spilling my chosen tunes into the night and just one part of my essence into the dirt below me. I am my own woman, and I am free.
