a fanzine for grrrls who seek revolution
by gigi b.
Dear riot grrrls, I’m writing this to you as a friend and an ally. Here in my first ever zine, I poured my heart out to you guys. I want everyone to read about my experiences growing up as a teenage grrrl along with the other grrrls who submitted their work and know that you’re not alone. I want every grrrl who reads this zine to feel that your experiences matter and that you have a safe place to talk about anything everything——if you want. ;) The riot grrrl movement, to me, is a safe place of inclusivity and revolution. No matter who you are, what you believe in or how you identify, we have to work together to beat down this broken patriarchal system. We will not conform to the standards set by men and we’ll do whatever the fuck we want when we want. Enjoy <3
When I first found Bikini Kill I was at the lowest of lows. Mid quarantine, living in a not so gr8 home environment, I listened to Kathleen Hannah scream through my phone, blocking out the sounds of my hectic home. Instead of my mother yelling at me, Kathleen was yelling with me. I fell instantly in love. I never really felt like I had my “niche” throughout school, I always felt a little out of place. I dressed differently, I had different likes and dislikes but ultimately I had this burning desire to be an activist. As a Jewish woman, I was taught my whole life that I should stand up for people in need unlike what happened when everyone turned their backs on us during the Holocaust. I was groomed to care for others and in turn, it became evident that my passion was for social justice. I wanted to be the person to make change. In high school, I became more active in my communities- led rallies, walk-outs, and social media accounts.. But as I continued growing up I still had this sense of non-belonging. That was until I found the riot grrrl movement. I had never felt so much at home or so much myself when I learned about a grrrl named Kathleen Hannah who practically pioneered the rise of the feminist movement in the 90s. Through song, passion, and charisma she formed an entirely new wave of feminism and enacted social and political change. She helped me realize that my dreams aren’t unattainable and that if you want revolution you have to stand up and do it urself. The riot grrrl movement is more than just a genre of music but a community. A safe space for anyone and everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion to just be themselves and embrace the awful burden of “womanhood” together. The riot grrrl movement gave me that sense of belonging I never had.
I WON’T CONFORM2 UR $TOOPID STANDARDS I shaved my head at 16 years old. I’ll never forget what led up to it- how awful yet amazing it was. I remember sitting in chemistry class halfway through my junior year and thinking “wow I really want to shave my head.” Just like that. I literally called my mom in the middle of class and told her I wanted to do it. She, along with my father, thought I was crazy. They thought I must’ve been going through some type of mental breakdown or something because why would any girl want to shave all her hair off ??? They brushed it off immediately. Once I told my friends my plan and what my parents had said they looked discombobulated- no one thought I was being serious. I was dead serious. My parents finally told me that if I still wanted to shave my head by the end of the semester, I could. I’ll never forget sitting in my english class talking about how excited I was to do it when this boy from the basketball team, who I wasn’t even that close with, looked me in the eyes and said “why would you wanna shave your head, you’re not gonna get many guys like that?” That only made me want to do it SO much more. Why was my hair an indication of my beauty? And that goes for ALL women. Why do we have to have the Hollywood dream of long silky hair to be beautiful? Every woman has different hair types and lengths and I think we’re all HOT AS HELL. Regardless of what all the idiots said, I shaved my head as soon as summer started. It was the most LIBERATING thing I had ever done. It forced me to finally stop hiding behind my hair and the “ideal hot girl” mask I had created for myself and become my most authentic self. I felt like I was finally me and I could stop holding back. My fresh bald experience shaped my identity and allowed me to break out of my shell.
Once I did shave it though, everyone started assuming my sexuality. Even tho I had always identified as straight and most people knew that, everyone started asking questions and strangers would just assume I was gay just because I had short hair. This really put a dent in an aspect of finding out who I am I guess. I feel like at 17 and 18 years old you start actually finding yourself and figuring out what you want and what you like but I didn’t get to have that. Everyone did it for me. By people putting this stamp on me and me constantly having to defend myself, I never got to fully explore my sexuality my own way. I felt like I was put in a box and it’s almost as if they were subduing my own sexuality. It wasn’t until this year that I took charge of my own self and began to actually think and explore my own emotions and attractions. I read a copy of the Am I Lesbian Masterdoc and was introduced to the concept of compulsory heterosexuality. Throughout our whole lives,us women are corralled into this heteronormative confine where we are practically forced to like mento have crushes on famous male movie stars and musicians. There isn’t any room to explore any attraction to women. Everything was so male-based, from society as a whole to the way I was parented. It was always “what boy do you have a crush on?” and “what male movie star do you want to marry?” and never “are there any girls you’re interested in?”. I still don’t know exactly what I like or what my sexuality is in its entirety but I do know that women are sooooo superior to men and HOT AS HELL. Am I attracted to men ? sadly, yes. But now it’s up to me and no one else to figure out my actual feelings about grrrls. I will not be put in a box, limited by societal ideals, and I refuse to be perceived as anything other than myself.
“they’re so pretty it hurts. i’m not talking ‘bout boys, im talking ‘bout girls.”
WE ARE THE REVOLUTION What is feminism ? To me, it’s an ideology above all else but it's also mainly shown through action. Feminism is ultimately about making sure that we have the same equal opportunities as men. But it’s also about making sure we’re not putting other grrrls down but uplifting them. It’s about believing in yourself and putting your mind to anything your <3 desires. It’s about making it so evidently clear that we’re not gonna sit and take shit from any man and SPECIFICALLY not the pigs in office. It’s about not acting pretty and smiling because we are told to but because we want to. It’s about dressing however the fuck we want and screaming at the top of our lungs. It’s about not shaving our legs or our armpits and still being HOT AS HELL because body hair is BEAUTIFUL. It’s about not conforming to the awful gender roles that have been assigned to us through years of misogyny and the patriarchal mindset. And it’s about telling our stories with no shame or fear. Fuck this stupid society that has such set roles and categories for us. This fucked up world has made us grow up faster than we should've by oversexualizing every single thing we do since we were literally toddlers. This society has told us what to wear and what not to wear and if you wear certain things then you’re asking for it. Well, I say FUCK U. I say I’m gonna wear my lil mini skirt with whatever fucking shirt I want and I’m gonna look HOT AS HELL, but not for you !!!! not for anyone but MYself. And no, we’re not asking for it. Feminism is standing up to these foul misogynistic ideologies that have been passed down from generation to generation. Feminism is breaking these ideas& roles and claiming what’s ours. Our own femininity, our own gender, and our own way of living. And we do so together.
Sometimes when I look at other riot grrrls, I lust over them and think “I wanna be a riot grrrl” as if it’s some tangible thing- like a certain fashion style or a certain level of knowledge about the movement. But being a riot grrrl doesn’t mean u look or dress a certain way. It’s your mindset and your ideas& beliefs. It’s a way of living. To be a riot grrrl is to be your truest, most authentic self. To be a riot grrrl is to not take shit from ANYONE. To be a riot grrrl is to do the things u wish to achieve and not let anyone get in your way, especially not a m*n. To be a riot grrrl is to accept everyone as is and to stand up for them regardless of their race, sexual or gender identity. When you look at other grrrls you should never think “I wanna be them” or “I’m not good enough” but rather “I wanna be their friend.” Fuck ya they look cool as shit, might look intimidating af and u want that shirt they’re wearing, but don’t wish you weren’t anyone but urself because no one else could ever be you. Look at them and think “wow we’re both cool as fuck, let’s be friends” and then FUCKING DO IT because chances are they were thinking the same thing and would love to kick it with you. As grrrls, we need to empower each other and build each other up rather than beat each other or ourselves down. Riot grrrl is an ideology first and foremost it’s abt empowerment and having a safe community to talk about things we’re not supposed to.
PLAYLISTS: RIOTTT ! F*CK UR PATRIARCHY (not all of the bands identify as riot grrrl but they convey the riot grrrl message& BOP)
THIS LITTLE GRRRL WANTS ANARCHY I’m so sick of adults telling me that the way I view the world is unreasonable. Whenever I talk about how repulsing our government is they always say that “I’m just a little girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” They’re too scared to admit that we’re living in this never-ending black hole of injustice. They don’t want to admit that even after years of fighting for women’s suffrage and the ERA, women are still not equal in this country. They don’t want to admit that even after the 13th-15th amendments were passed and the Civil Rights Movement, the black community is sure as hell not treated equally in this country. They don’t want to admit that even after years of fighting for gay rights, the LGBTQIA+ community is not treated equally in this country. I’m done trying to explain all of the BROKEN systems and systemic ways our government beats down marginalized groups in this country. I’m done not hearing about the senseless murder of a black man or woman until days or weeks after the fact. I’m done seeing how women who have been raped and beaten are treated as if it was their fault and with no empathy. I’m done hearing about the hate crimes against people in the LGBTQIA+ community just because they know and are proud of who they are. I’m done not seeing justice where justice should be served. We live in this world where the oppressor is in power so even if we wanted justice, it’s almost unattainable. Our justice system in itself is powered off of money, greed, and power exchanges, and NO ONE is held accountable. We live in this white patriarchal world where police officers can get away with taking the life of an innocent black man or raping a detained woman with no repercussions. We live in this white patriarchal world where white nationalists can go around committing hate crimes and it goes unnoticed and without consequence. We live in this white patriarchal world where a black woman is praised and deemed a feminist icon solely because she gained a position of power and became the first black female VP regardless of the fact that she has harmed the black community more than she’s helped it. I’m done playing this political game where we just have to continue settling and voting the lesser of two evils into office. I’m done with the corruption and power abuse. We need to abolish the white nationalistic mindset that everything in this country is okay. People- specifically of the older generations need to be exposed to the true America, the new and improved FASCIST America. Only then will we be able to burn this perverted demoralized government to the ground and rebuild. THE SYSTEM IS FUCKED. We need ANARCHY.
FUCK U AND UR PATRIARCHY Fucking men. They think they’re so fucking entitled. We live in this $hitty patriarchal world where no one cares or wants to listen to the things they’ve done to us. They think they can get away with whatever they want. Be an asshole, who cares. Catcall me in the streets- it’s a compliment. Fuck off. Men think we’re so gentle, like beautiful flowers they want to crush. Even an ounce of self-respect and they think you’re a bitch. God forbid you don’t want2 dance with them or have a drink w them or go home with them, suddenly the nice guy you just met becomes an entitled c*nt. We’re not gonna sit here and take anyone’s shit, especially not from a man. You’ve got something to say, you’ve got an issue with the way I dress or the way I live MY life, then that’s your fucking issue. There is NOTHING that I do to instigate your attention. Go ahead and look at me in my perfect lil outfit with my hair and make up all done. I did not do this for you, I did it for myself. Do it, I dare you- you can look but you can’t touch. And if you do and I don’t want it, I’m not gonna pretend that I like it. No means no and sometimes you can’t always have what you want, fuck face. And it’s our job to not let these men knock us down or tell us we’re not good or pretty enough. In reality, we’re all a bunch of bad bitches who have to empower and protect each other whether that be believing ANYONE when they come forward with their stories of rape, sexual assault, or harassment or even looking out and sticking up for any grrrl you might see in an off situation with a man she might not know. We’re in control of our own stories and narratives and no man is going to take that away because no man has the power to knock us down !!! This cycle of toxic masculinity needs to ENDDD. We shouldn’t have to be afraid to walk alone at night or be alone at a concert or even on a train. We shouldn’t have2 protect ourselves from horny childish egocentric men. I DONT WANT U AND I DONT NEED U.
FUCK
U
AND
UR
PATRIARCHY.
#MeToo
By Skylar Rathvon Trigger warning! Sexual assault
When I was sixteen years old, I was sexually assaulted by a classmate I went to high school with at a Halloween party. Back in 2014, the #MeToo movement hadn’t yet manifested, and as a result, I was outcasted by my friends and classmates who believed I made it up for attention. After the incident, I experienced firsthand what a monster rape culture really is. I was asked all the stereotypical questions, “What were you wearing?” and “Were you drinking?” I received comments like “You must have wanted it,” “You asked for it,” and “If you fought back harder, it wouldn’t have happened.” As a young female, I believed these rape myths, and because I believed these myths so deeply, I became one of the many females that did not report my assault to the police. I believed that it was my fault for not trying to fight back, not screaming loud enough, or for not trying to escape. I began to believe that maybe it did have something to do with what I was wearing or because I was drinking, but the comment that stuck to me to this day was from a former friend who told me “This happens to girls in college all the time.” The ironic part of this statement was that the girl wasn’t acknowledging these staggering statistics of sexual assault perpetrated by men against women as bad or wrong, but she actually used this fact to justify rape. According to her, and many other members of society, rape was just part of being a woman.
Once I got to college, I noticed that sexual assault was indeed rampant on my own campus and college campuses all over the country. I learned that the belief that sexual assault is just a part of being a woman perpetuates rape culture. The more we brush assault under the rug, the more we justify aggressive and damaging sexual behavior. Once I got to college, I also learned that there are multiple responses that victims may go through. Most people have heard of fight or flight, but another common yet seemingly unknown response to traumatic experiences is for the individual to freeze. For so many years I beat myself up believing that there was something else I could have done to stop my assault from happening, but the truth is that rapists cause rape. To victim blame is to feed the monster that is rape culture. In order to achieve true equality, we need to acknowledge the monster under the bed. To pretend the monster isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t real only makes it grow stronger. We need to stop telling women assault is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;normalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or simply a part of the female experience. Rape is an epidemic within our society because of patriarchal system that condones male sexual, economic, and social domination over females. To those who have experienced assault in their own life: you are not alone, you are not to blame, you are worthy, and you are strong.
The Deranged Don’t Need Cupid When I was in highschool I had no money currency exchange were hands on my body drifting lower into the sea of overly sensitive. I don’t want your dirty hands between my legs while sharkboy and lava girl plays in the background your house smells like filthy dishes and laundry that stayed in the the washer too long our time was extinct before you told me you never liked me I tried to like you so much just so I could say someone liked me. No escaping the dance of your twisting eyes and choreographed shrugs no get away cars for the moments I felt like exploding into water parks beat me up and I will try to pay you for the massage walk on me, I’ll apologize for curling between your toes and flatten myself back out for you to try again bank robber of any source of love for myself I had. Move onto another girl like you moved on from your issues without a thought in your mind it didn’t hurt when you told me, you liked her always me, for a distraction. Monopoly for every curve of my body When you land on my eyes, get out of jail free card. My lips, free parking.
Sleepovers didn’t involve starry eyes when your name was brought up sleepovers consisted of invading your space talking about the problems you didn’t even see in yourself your mirrors must have all been shattered. You saw the reflection you could make out boy, tall, attractive, cool by association. You didn’t see the shards on the ground insecurity shining through your bitten fingernails from a lack of love in your life. Sexual desire that was as large as an oil spill and equally as terrifying. Hoping you could scape by with the compliments given to you as your layer of skin I should have joined the circus for all the times I acrobat-ed for a boy. I should have fed my doubt to the lions, should have given all the hands who held me tickets to the show I should have seen their faces illuminated by a spotlight while I basked in my own. I should have flown through the air lifted by the comments that polluted the sky mentions behind my back were just clouds to float away on. A swing set hanging onto the last branch of old promises and could be’s. You didn’t ruin me, you just profited off my ruin. Miranda Robinson
Lilia Dustin
BY SADIE BURGES
Girls Need Love / Girls Like Sex By Sadie Burgess
There is a secret that all women are expected to keep. But this secret plays a role in everyone’s life; this secret is the reason any of us are here. This secret is often assumed to be true, but should never be explicitly revealed. This secret exists as a beautiful fantasy in the minds of many but transforms into a condemnable reality once it comes to fruition. This secret is one that men do not have to keep; for them, it is often quite the opposite of a secret. This secret is meant to keep women contained and digestible. But we are ready to stop keeping secrets - to be honest, we have been for a long time. As we all know, secrets don’t make friends. And thanks to women in the R&B industry today, the curtain has finally been drawn to reveal...
GIRLS LIKE SEX. When I think of the secret’s roots, I picture relaxing on a Saturday, fifteen years old and on the couch, watching one of my favorite shows at the time, MTV’s “Girl Code”. The episode’s topic was sex, and a male comedian, Chris Distefano, shared his opinion on women and sex -irony that I couldn’t pinpoint yet. I cannot remember his exact words, but I cannot forget their sentiment. He equated the female body to a restaurant before presenting his full analogy. Say you go to a restaurant, he begins, and you get all the food you want for free. You’d be so happy, he goes on, but when you leave, you’re going to think ‘What’s wrong with that restaurant?’ To Distefano, sexually-interested women are comparable to this shady restaurant, warranting judgment upon engaging in sex. As if women are the restaurant; as if women are the meal to be had. I’m ent As
done standing light than men when Summer
Walker
said,
in sex “GIRLS
a is
differdiscussed.
NEED
LOVE.”
I’m looking at your face, trying to find a little bit of that light in you, trying to find something, Anything But there’s nothing there
Naomi Lopez
I think a lot of my relationships with men are based around me treating them as if they were gods and bathing them in my love only for them to let it fill their egos and then in turn they use the ego trip to destroy and tear me apart. Yeah yeah yeah it serves as character development but I’m so tired of treating every relationship with a man, either platonic or romantic as a “lesson learned” for myself. Why do I have to learn, why do I have to take something away from being stepped on and used, why do they just shrug it off??? I know I love everyone as if they’re my everything, they are, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to abuse that freely. Not to generalize of course or say “men are trash,” but men only know to take and take and take and take from you until there’s nothing left and they just move on. And women are taught to give and give and give and give, but who will give to us? Who will give back to me the light I lost from pouring myself into someone I loved with my whole heart.
When I was younger, I used to rummage through my mother's makeup bag; I would put on her lip gloss and loved the lustrous sheen it gave my lips. This is when my deep love for makeup artistry was born. My desk is covered with eyeshadow palettes, face paint, brushes and my other tools I use to create my looks. Putting on makeup is how I express myself and when I feel I am in my truest form.
So you can see, me being a little girl, the idea of wearing makeup for another person, especially for a man, never fazed me. There was no ulterior motive to putting on lipgloss; I was just a kid doing what brought her joy. I loved playing dress-up and the power of transformation. When I reached a certain age and was able to wear a full face of makeup, people began to question why I was always
wearing so much makeup all the time. To me I was just expressing myself, but to the world around me they thought I was using makeup to cover insecurities and make myself “prettier.” Society has brought us to believe that if a girl wears a lot of makeup, she is self-conscious about her looks. It's not just makeup, girls who enjoy dressing or expressing themselves in a nonconforming way continue to be labeled as girls who are trying impress others, especially men. One day I wore hoop earrings to school and a boy asked me, “Who are you trying to impress?” He genuinely believed that if a girl put extra effort into her appearance, she was doing it to get a boy’s attention. Whereas, in reality, like many girls, I was dressing up for myself and for my own enjoyment. I think we need to normalize people, especially young girls, who choose to express themselves through fashion. All in all, the idea that women dress for anyone other than themselves is dated. I have my own makeup account on Instagram @makeupbytaliaeshti if anyone is interested in having a look!
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
An Introduction to Mirrors Reflections, looking glasses, one-way screens, tricks-of-theeye and fun-houses have always had a distinctly feminine feel. There is something dark, and possibly dank, about them. Mysterious, silent, our reflections haunt us, separating into the illusion we see and the real that we are. What Woolf alluded to here was historical, not ground-breaking. As girls we are trained to exist in the space between the mirror and the mirrored, the fantasy and the real. It is no accident, then, that Alice fell through the looking-glass. So many of us lose ourselves in mirrors, after all.
Part 1: Childhood I have never been normal about my body. The scant memories I do have of childhood exist from the outside-in. The body has always seemed a strange and foreign entity, always lurking, leaving me horribly conscious of its presence, its physical imposition in space. Sometimes I feel as if a small camera has been planted on my shoulder, capturing my every move. A Truman Show-esque video of my childhood begins to play. A child digging up worms with a stick in the backyard, a child chasing after her older brother in the park, a child leaning on her mother’s chair as she does magic things with silky fabrics. Dresses, like angels, seemingly appear out of thin air, cloaking her mother in cotton and lace as the child watches, enraptured. It is these camera-captured moments that define much of my early childhood, veering back and forth wildly from the sensate to the disembodied. The specific taste of grandmother’s soup to the inexplicably horrible feeling of looking at my body in the bathtub, acutely aware that it was a separate object, inevitably attached to a brain that did not identify with it. It makes me sad to think about that, how I hated that little girl-body so much. Not because of what it was, really, but for all it stood for. I could never really leave it, and I had no use for such attachments, and so I hated it vehemently, feeling always encumbered by its typical little-girlness— round, strong, given to play and yearning. I felt ashamed of its needs, and more so, its corporeality. It stung, even then, to be reminded of a physical existence that I had no control over.
Looking back now, I think I knew something innate, something I did not yet have the ability to articulate. The body, my body, was dangerous. It wanted in ways I did not understand, and did so silently, without my knowledge. It was quite possibly dirty, and I had no way to speak of it. It was treacherous. I felt it could betray me, and so I watched it with a wary eye. This disembodiment—natural or not, commonplace or not—manifested in an obsession with mirrors that I do not think is altogether irregular, particularly not for young girls seeking the validation of their physical existence. Why else would we check the mirror, and so frequently? It is a reminder that I, too, exist. The body has not grown a ‘mind’ of its own, given up, walked away. We are joined, its needs and mine, and therefore must be kept controlled, contained. I remember most of my life as a progression of mirrors. My world, as a child, was defined by mirrors, reflections catching me off guard each time. I couldn’t ignore a mirror if I tried. Social media, the endless mirrors in our pockets, would have only exacerbated this, and I struggle to think what I would have done had I been a child today. Even now, I check my reflection constantly. My face has always peered back to me, anxious, checking for a hair out of place, for irregularities, shorts too high, shirt wrinkled, butt too round or thighs too soft, belly sucked in hard. My mother once told me it was vain to look in mirrors as often as I do, dismissing me with a wave of a hand. That, I think, is inaccurate. It isn’t vanity that leads me to the mirror, its vigilance. A reassurance that my body has remained contained. That I am still there. Back to childhood. Falling into the mirror, playing with garish paints from my mother’s dresser. Bright blue eyeshadow, pinkish cheeks, red lips. Suddenly I am standing in front of the mirror, maybe seven years old?, thinking “not me not me not me”, waiting for the moment that the body and mind split, that I will no longer recognize the girl in the reflection. It sounds horribly dramatic, but really, the division was natural. The divide into two leaves an odd, but not entirely unpleasant feeling of disorientation. This moment of pure “mirror phase” was personal, reflective not only of my development but of an understanding I felt that I alone had. Eventually, this aloneness began to scare me, and I retreated into a world far safer than that of the looking-glass. Fantasy took on new meaning as I sought to escape a body I could not identify with, a reflection that seemed to chase me wherever I went. I found solace in my books. Back to childhood. Falling into the mirror, playing with garish paints from my mother’s dresser. Bright blue eyeshadow, pinkish cheeks, red lips. Suddenly I am standing in front of the mirror, maybe seven years old?, thinking “not me not me not me”, waiting for the moment that the body and mind split, that I will no longer recognize the girl in the reflection. It sounds horribly dramatic, but really, the division was natural.
The divide into two leaves an odd, but not entirely unpleasant feeling of disorientation. This moment of pure “mirror phase” was personal, reflective not only of my development but of an understanding I felt that I alone had. Eventually, this aloneness began to scare me, and I retreated world far safer than that of the looking-glass. Fantasy took meaning as I sought to escape a body I could not identify with, a tion that seemed to chase me wherever I went. I found solace in my
into a on new reflecbooks.
I started reading early, before I began school. I spent a year at home with my mother, my brother attending kindergarten while I was miraculously exempted from preschool. I watched a lot of talk shows, and then had the day to myself. Both then and now, there is nothing I hate more than free time, and I sought to fill it anyway I could. Mostly I read books about children, especially ones that did things I found marvelous. The Harry Potter books, Little Women. I read volumes on Greek mythology, all of Jane Austen, the Da Vinci Code. My favorite was Anna Karenina. Not that I really understood it, but I loved how long it was, how weighty. An endless distraction, the kind of book that might stave off the needs of the body (and by extension, the world) a bit longer than others. I was perpetually grief-stricken when I finished a book, and would slide down from my sitting position on the bed, put my cheek on the pillow and sigh for a long time. I had had a love affair with the book, the characters and the worlds. They kept me company, and when they left, I ended up in a dramatic, Ophelian heap on the bed, bemoaning existence and unwilling to go on. It seemed there would never be another book. It was all over, the book was dead. It lay in its bent cover by my hand. What was the use? Why bother dragging the weight of my small body down to dinner? Why move? Why breathe? The book had left me, and there was no reason to go on. But if I didn’t have the books, I knew I’d fall back into the mirrors. (If it isn’t clear by now, I have what some psychiatrists might call ‘a tendency towards fantasy’, created on the page or within the confines of my mind. The former scared me less than the latter.) Besides, this was right around the time I began school, as well, and I already knew (as I continue to believe) that books were better than school by far. I had found a perfect solution to ignoring the dark mystery of the mirror, of an untenable and self-hating relationship with my body. If I read very fast, and without pause to so much as patter down the hall to pee, if I kept a stack of books right by the bed, and rested my right hand on the top of the stack while reading another, it was even better. I finished one book, closed it, picked up the next, read the inside front cover, took a sip of water, opened to the first page. No break in the fantasy, no fissure into which reality might seep. This This
went
on until brings
escape me
was
no to
longer
an part
option. two.
Part 2: Sex If you’re wondering where the Woolf comes in, this is it. Mirrors stopped scaring me the way they used to late into elementary school, perhaps around the third grade. I still took an interest in the reflection, as I do now, but the person I saw staring back at me—and by extension the body that asserted itself in such a reflection—was little more than a nuisance. In eighth grade I began fooling around, my extra-curriculars no longer so innocent, fueling my furious, nightly self-flagellation for infinite sins. I won’t go into too much detail, about the sex or the aforementioned flagellation. More important here is the notion that my relationship to my body changed, a cosmic shift occurring. For me, the body had irrevocably moved from a space of childish needs and wants to an alien place, somewhere with a heady sort of scent, profane and all the more dangerous. Sex was a taboo topic in my house. No one had even explained where babies came from, though of course, curiosity made me all the more interested in finding out. The interest conflicted seriously with the profound self-hate, the frantic anxiety that had come from (by current standards) rather innocent kissing and giggling and the like. My body’s growth took on a twinge of bad-wrong-dirty-evil, as it were, leaving me lying silently on my bed in the heat of summer, my hands pressed to my temples to beat back the crazed thoughts. The beginnings of sex, of puberty, led me back to the mirror, attempting in earnest to control an untamable body. I wished to infantilize myself for a time, but as the endomorph that I am, that soon proved impossible. My body had once again split from the brain, exacerbated by the reflection that showed me a girl growing faster than the fantastical self-image my mind had created, a girl untouched by time and untainted by erotic desire. As time went on, the mirror began to show me something different. A body in Woolf’s conception—mysterious, tongue-in-cheek, enlarging and softening at the whim of whoever I happened to be flirting with that day. My bones twisted into something almost pretty, breasts and curves coming in overnight. The very idea that I could control a man’s body was intoxicating; that I could make his head turn, follow my passing steps. I was not the only one entranced with reflection in my early teens. Young women that we were, we felt a wicked sort of empowerment. We knew we were just behaving as empty reflections for boys who didn’t deserve our time and our carefully executed magic, but fuck did it feel good. We were, by all accounts, absolutely drunk with power. We could lean just so, or speak just so, or simply glance and toss our hair, and He would be caught. The wonder of the female body, in all its secrecy, is understood in some innate sense but is not easily articulated. We could not explain with the limitations of our language and inexperience why our bodies could cause such a sudden, fumbling response in someone else. Nor could I put into words what I felt about my body. The earth-shattering thrum of proximity to another, the tangle of contradictions I always feel: power, shame, pleasure, exultation, absolution.
I couldn’t say how these things knit together, and how the body so expertly connected these things to my brain, particular when I had spent so long trying to escape such an embodied scenario. Sex was a joining of the mind and the body in a way I had yet to experience, disallowing me the chance to escape into fantasy as I was wont to do. And the notion that I myself knew just how to do it, how to control and manipulate situations with a body that was actually sought after, thrilled me with a sense of gleaning some dark knowledge. Us girls, we knew what we could do and feel, but we could not say why. I do not think we understood then that the female body is more than its reflection to men, more than the sum of its mute parts. We misunderstood our power, the shape of ourselves. What we were discovering was physical, sexual, sensual power—not mutually exclusive with the power of the mind. We were unaware, subconsciously perhaps, that we could have both. Mirrors had tricked me, made me believe there was a schism where none had existed. A body whose functions were not for me was unsustainable in conjunction with a mind that was unmistakably my own, and thus, I needed to learn to make my body mine, to lay claim to it. A nascent sense of double standard plagued me then, forcing me to retreat to a public persona that eventually rejected a legacy of “object of desire” in favor of an image that largely resembles a shy, obedient, mousy creature. I wish I had done things differently, to some extent. At the time I was light years away from reading feminist literature, let alone developing my own understanding of feminism, sexuality, and intellect. I had just begun to see the value of mirrors, how powerful they were, and had shrunk from it, knowing that if I fell too closely into the reflection, I’d be trapped forever.
Part 3: The Body (cont.) The thing I think of most often isn’t the mirror itself. I’ve moved past Woolf’s understanding of the mirror as a metaphor for women’s perceived presence in the male gaze. That gaze doesn’t bother me much anymore. I’ve grown enough now to detach sex from detachment itself, from all that a mirror can entail about the relationship between my brain and my body. Even as someone with a marginally greater understanding of feminist scholarship, access to education, to friends and resources who empower me and help remind me of the necessity of caring for this body of mine, I still find myself dividing in front of the mirror. I still find myself seeking validation, or feeling inexplicable heartbreak at what I see. It is crucial, I think, to notice the language we use when we talk about bodies. Women often speak as if there was one collective perfect body, a singular entity that we're all after. Society (and the Koch brothers, Big Milk, the “Man”, rightwing media, the fakers of the moon landing, whatever), somehow convinced all of us that underneath all this normal flesh, buried deep in our flesh, there was a Perfect Body just waiting to break out. It would look exactly like everyone else's perfect body. A clone of the shapeless, androgynous models, the hairless, silicone-implanted porn stars. Somehow we, in defiance of nature, would all look the same. Somehow this has become the fantasy, one I sometimes play into, with the childhood whimsy gone and the sex somewhat diminished in power. This fantasy is realized for some, but not quite the way I had intended as a child. I simply wanted to exit the body, or learn its secrets. Something in between I felt I could not continue. But being a woman means so much more—that I was first subject to reject the body as a part of me, then reject its insistence on sex as a viable route to union with the mind. I would like to see myself, just once, not as a reflection of two warring entities, but as a unified being. Yet our bodies cannot simply be, they must be remade, according to the lexicon. In choosing to remake myself, I would also, by definition, have to erase what self there was to begin with. Sometimes I wonder if total erasure is the intent, if a societal obsession with bodies yields nothing but minimal corporeality for women, a reduction of need into nothingness, pure cerebral energy with a hint of libido. A cocktail version, that is, of the perfect woman. In all honesty, I don’t know. But I refuse to be erased. If that means smashing every mirror in my house to do it, well, so be it.
THANK U GUYS SO MUCH FOR SUPPORTING ME AND ACTUALLY READING MY ZINE. I LOVE Y’ALL AND I HOPE EVERYONE HAS A MAGNIFICENT LAST MONTH OF THIS SHITTY YEAR. JUST A REMINDER TO KEEP YOUR HEAD UP AND NOT ALLOW THIS NASTY VIRUS TO DICTATE YOUR WHOLE LIFE. THAT BEING SAID, DONT FORGET TO NOT ONLY TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN MENTAL WELL-BEING BUT ALSO YOUR PHYSCIAL BY WEARING A F*CKING MASK AND SOCIAL DISTANCING IT UP. REMEMBER THAT IT’S NOT ONLY YOURSELF THAT YOU’RE PUTTING AT RISK BUT ALSO YOUR COMMUNITY AND ULTIMATELY YOUR WHOLE STATE! BE SAFE AND SEE YOU SOON :) GIGI <3