So I started this wanting to write some rambling post about my complicated relationship with other women and the idea of womanhood itself. I realized immediately after I wrote that piece that what I wanted to talk about was my complicated relationship with and resentment toward my own womanhood, as stepping into those shoes has not been a graceful process for me, but is it for anyone really?
I’ve always gravitated toward more “masculine” characteristics, whatever that actually means. I’ve always been a little bit loud, rough and boyish. Most of my friends growing up were boys, I had three little brothers. I liked to ride bikes, roll around in the dirt and break things. I’ve kept many of those “boyish” qualities coming into adulthood. However, along with those rough-around-the-edges characteristics, I have long felt the haunting weight of the ethereal femininity I secretly desired and idolized, but felt I couldn’t possess. Like somehow being a woman looked great on the rack, but fit a little awkward when I tried it on. If I have to wear anything other than jeans and a t shirt, I’m probably not going. I hate bras and shaving. When my period starts, I implode. I feel debilitated, gross and slightly embarrassed that if I laugh too hard bad things could happen. I’ve never been able to graciously revel in womanhood the way all these women around me do so effortlessly, at least from my perspective.
I felt inherently unattractive and from that developed an automatic gnawing comparison to other women. I’m too loud and profane. People don’t like women that are that way. My hips don’t curve the same, I don’t like dresses, my hair doesn’t fall over my shoulders that way. The list is endless. There came a point when I would cry before I went out to a bar or a party or dinner because I felt that every person looking at me knew how hard I was trying to be (unrealistically) feminine and angelic and they knew I wasn’t good enough. And I knew that too.
So after all this turmoil feeling I couldn’t fill the shoes of womanhood with all the beauty and grace it deserves, here I am posing naked in Joshua Tree with Maya and NevaehLleh. Absolutely terrifying. They are undoubtedly beautiful and have an exponentially greater knowledge of modeling than I do.
I assume immediately this is going to go so poorly. I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m small, I’m awkward, clearly not graceful. These women are the epitome of the celestial goddess, molding their curves effortlessly into this beautiful landscape. And here I am fumbling my naked body up and down rocks reminding everyone frequently that I’m terrified of heights, I don’t know what to do with my hands and my knee is, in fact, fine after I sliced it open on a boulder and bled everywhere. I’m thinking these women eat rose petals for breakfast and leave fairy dust everywhere they go, I mean come on are they even human? What am I doing here?
And I was so wrong. We talked about geocaching and hiking and coming home from shoots bruised, cut open, sore, cactus needles in feet, splinters in hips and thighs. These women are fucking fearless and loud and opinionated. They doubt themselves just as much as the next person and have the strength to do this anyway. They’re awkward and goofy just like me. They’re real.
And they’re beautiful. Which just might mean I’m beautiful too. Woman isn’t a list of strictly beautiful and feminine things. Woman doesn’t have to be soft, smell like strawberries and not have body hair. This shoot was woman in dirt and sweat and unshaven legs and a lot of cuts and bruises by the end of the day. Woman is strong and fearless and whatever she feels like being one day to the next and your ability to flow between the blurred lines of masculine and feminine doesn’t make you any less so.
I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you to Maya and NevaehLleh for reminding me that my roughness is beautiful. That I can be soft and ethereal (don’t forget to point your toes), but that’s not what makes me pretty. Thank you for allowing me to feel out where I fit in and providing a space in which I can exist safely and just be. There’s a duality to women I didn’t quite understand up until this shoot and I’m finding every day that I am exactly as I’m supposed to be.
If change were easy, everyone would simply do it. It is the exact opposite. It is ugly and messy, like a Joshua Tree bathroom in July; it hurts, deeper than you ever thought possible; it tears at your brain, pulls you down into darkness, and gives you all the easy options for old behavior, like that familiar face on the corner offering you one last hit. The reality of change is terrifying and painful. Quite possibly one of the most difficult things anyone would ever have to do, the most difficult aspect of which is wanting to do it… because this is easy… this is comfortable. This is what I’ve been doing my whole life.
If you can get to the point where you can let go of ego and recognize that you’ve been doing it wrong this whole time, then you can start peeling back the painfully rotted layers of the monsters some of us become. If you are truly open and receptive to it, the universe gives you plenty of help, but not like a passive sign to the right path; it’s usually a horrifically twisted reality that punches you in the face like a freight train. It gets easier with every punch in the face, though. You learn to smile through it. Then you learn to laugh at it and say, “ok, I get it. Thank you.”
Then a kind of excitement builds; a wonder and curiosity of the beautiful world that exists on the other side, after you pull all the broken and jagged puzzle pieces out of the old picture, toss them into oblivion, and wait patiently for the new pieces to fall into place, with bandaged and bloody fingers. Everything happens for a reason, but most can’t see past what they think are rewards or punishments.
An open and receptive mind welcomes all of it, especially the negative, because those are the things which teach us the most, and when you can learn to be grateful for the negatives, you can finally see the positive in them, then everything gradually becomes positive; baby steps become giant leaps as our strength builds.
At the end of this steep and exhausting trail, after all the slides and falls, cuts and bruises, after thinking we’ll never catch our breath again, we will find the best possible version of ourselves, and we all deserve that. Some of us are even lucky enough to have strong and powerful souls around to help us up when we fall flat on our face, and to call us on our bullshit when we want to stay down and give up.
