Asserting
“I’m going to change the subject, you’re not going to like it” - Mom
She was right. I didn’t. The subject change turned out to be her telling me that her brother had called to discuss me. Another person had come to him, pulled up my pole videos, and showed him. He expressed his displeasure to my mother, he believed such things should be limited to the eyes of my husband.
I am angry, for more reasons than one. The most glaring reason, however, is that, after a LIFETIME of grasping at my bodily autonomy, yet another person feels the need to assert an unwelcome, unrequested opinion.
I grew up Christian. As a child, purity culture and its accompaniments were foisted onto me until I felt as though my body didn’t belong to me. I promised my virginity to Jesus until my husband came along, and had the ring to go with it. It took until my twenties to unlearn the things I with which had been indoctrinated. It was an arduous process. I read books on feminism, womanism, and pleasure as activism. I peeled off the layers of protection I had placed for the sake of my “purity”.
I am thirty-three now, and more comfortable with my body than I ever have been. I love how it looks, I love the things it can do. I love that I can choose what I want to do, like pull myself up a pole, and I love that I can avoid the things I don’t want to do, like make babies. It angers me that two different people saw my videos and decided to tattle-tale to my mother, as though, because she birthed me, she owns me.
The thing is, my body has ALWAYS been my body. At three months, three years, and thirty-three years, it has always been mine. Even now, as a married woman, it. is. MINE. I will not allow anyone, uncle, follower, parent, or otherwise to make me feel differently.
Also, not that it matters, but my husband knows I do pole. He bought the pole in the videos. He installed the pole in the videos. His respect for my bodily autonomy is one of the many reasons I married him. He will defend it on my behalf if he deems it necessary, which is another reason I married him.
In short, to quote my queen: “I’m a grown woman. I can do whatever I want.” If I want to post pictures as naked as the day I was born, I can. Get with it. Or get lost.
