Tag Archives: The female body

Jun 7 2011

Making The Cut: On Circumcision, Social Pressure And The Things You Learn

It began with a link that was shared by a family friend on Facebook. In it, my friend expressed her anger at the fact that someone was considering to make female circumcision obligatory for Muslim girls.

My first responses were, “Who’s making it obligatory?” and “What the fuck?”

Anyone who grew up in the nineties and read Time Magazine and Reader’s Digest would have known who Waris Dirie was, and would have been introduced to what the WHO describes as “Type III FGM”, and might have remembered the Al-Azhar’s University’s condemnation of the practice, stating that the ritual itself had no basis in Islamic law.

And yet, there is a national fatwa condoning what it calls “female genital mutilation”.

Hence the shared link, and the outrage.

Continue reading →

Modest? Sexy? Or just an athlete?
Apr 28 2011

Modest? Sexy? Or just an athlete?

This post is by Nivedita Menon, originally posted at Kafila.

By goddess, it’s that spot again – at once familiar and deeply uncomfortable. Us feminists in the same rage as the patriarchs and religious right, over the same damn thing. For very different reasons, we bellow (cutely), but is anybody listening?

The  Badminton World Federation has announced its new dress code that requires women players to wear skirts  “to ensure attractive presentation of badminton”. Almost every Indian woman player has objected, saying that dress should be one’s personal preference.

Of course most workplaces have dress codes.  So this is about more than simply an infringement of individual tastes. This is about the utter blatant sexism of this particular requirement. Basically, what’s the BWF saying quite shamelessly? That they expect more people to come to the sport if they can see suggestively flying skirts (on women). Even if there are shorts beneath, which they have grudgingly permitted. It’s not enough to show legs, skirts have to fly. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2011

A love letter to my body.

tiara the merch girl, by alyssa hanleyThis was originally for Glitter Politic’s Call for Submissions! Write a love letter to your body. Originally posted here. Some content possibly triggering, or ISA-worthy.

Dear Body of mine,

It is very difficult for us to write a love letter to you right now. See, we are hurting. We are hurting because someone we had not expected had laid a very low but very painful, out of nowhere attack on us, on the core of our being. It was just words but the words hurt.

And what they also hurt were any sense of trust, the feeling that there are people in the world that will not take judgement on you, that there are people you could give your body and your mind and your time to and not make a mockery of your share, that there are people who will still appreciate the offer even if they are not in a position to receive right now.

Dear body, that trust has not come very often, I know. I know that trust is not something that we have a lot of, we have never had a lot of, we probably hardly have any of. And I am so sorry that just when we were building this rare store of confidence and trust again, this attack had to come and hit us both in our heart and below the belt.

[Is it a love letter, my love, if it is mainly an apology?]

I am sorry that they have hit below the belt – literally, into our sex and our passion and our sensual fire core. Thankfully, in a way, it is not the worst attack we have sustained there, literal or otherwise; this is something that, come due time, will be easier to recover and heal. This is easier to say it is their problem, and theirs alone.

But it is still hurtful, because it aims at something that is only still budding and new, a part of us that has only just found fire and energy and warm earth to grow, feeling the breeze, feeling cool nourishing waters. It was a part I tried to kill off from you, dear body, because we could not make sense of it. I could not make sense of it. I could not make sense of your needs in an age and place where I had no ability to fulfill them, and I felt that consciously cutting them off would be best for all of us. You would not hunger, I would not starve.

But when the ground was ripe and the air was free and the time was right you flourished and grew. Oh how you grew! Your hunger, like a babe that has realised it is now born and breathing, crying out and seeking out what tends your flame. Soon just one was not enough; sure, he is wonderful and lovely and cares for our soul, but there were parts of you that needed more, and I am sorry that it has taken so long to give you what you wanted, what you needed, that it took so long for me to realise your need was legitimate, that it took so long for anyone else to realise you were there with something they could fulfill.

I am sorry that our first attempt at fulfilling this physical need, in yearns of desperation and hunger unsatisfied unquenched, turned into danger. Turned into harm and hurt and pain and an assault on your still fresh, still new, still bright-eyed beautiful self.

I am sorry that the opportunity that seemed the most fulfilling and possible, the flame-haired fiery-spirited flash traveler with sincere wit but a broken heart, ended up breaking ours too. That what seemed so close, such beautiful bright powerful potential that we were willing to let go of everything and start anew and see what would happen with her, ended up into such painful disaster, into hurt and harm from both of us to each other.

And I am sorry that just as we finally found someone who quenched that desire of yours for the first time, someone who respected and granted your wish for passion and physical intimacy with womankind, someone who picked up on our penchant for creativity and stroked it along, someone who seemed like just the right guiding mentor for this new world that had laid undiscovered and supposedly barren for so long…that a few months later, this person will suddenly turn around and lash out against the desires she helped stoke in the first place.

Your hunger and passion, your yearn to give and receive sensuality, your need to hold and be held in curves and lines and hands and bellies and mouths and tongues and lips and eyes and cunts and breasts and tangled legs and clasped hands and fingers around your sides, the more the better, lust and love and lusciousness permeating radiating.

His tongue around our ear, her nails scratching our chest, his hair flopping with ours, her lips licked and devoured by our tongue.

And that’s just one part of you, dear Body. You have held through difficult circus lessons that – if family had not insisted that you spend every waking moment with them and therefore lose crucial lesson time – would have been an excellent acrobat. You have faced the fear of deep water one splash at a time. You have been flung to great heights and swooped down close to the ground.

Your hugs are such in demand that friends have now asked for them specifically. Your voice a draw, even if the continual accent question infuriate after a while. Your belly warm and comfortable, so are your breasts, good to rest and lie and snuggle. And those eyes. Yes, everyone seems to point them out as though they are the only part of you that matters, but there are good reasons for their attraction value.

I am sorry that you have laid underappreciated for so long, because people can’t look past the brown pockmarked (oh so soft) skin, the curved (willing strong) back, the flat (well travelled) feet, the wide (flexible shimmy-shaking) hips, the ill and broken (quick-thinking imaginative) brain. And I am sorry that it seems like, more often than not, the people you chose to share yourself to have not treated you as well as you deserve, to the point that paranoia takes over and casts a shadow upon even those that do treat us well, on our confidence, on our belief that there will be more that will be willing to lavish love and affection on us…or at least kiss us all over while drawing a feather just ever so softly on our skin, just like we like it.

I am sorry for the hurt and the pain, dear Body, and I truly hope that we can grow enough love and trust within us to be able to flourish and draw them back in again, even if it seems like an impossibility right now.

I love you.

Yours always,
Me