Damn. She's Got That Old School Self-Hate!
Feminine Hair & "Hygiene"
It’s very telling that in our society, men are more easily embraced being their natural selves. Most men do not care to wear makeup, or groom their body hair. It is a well-known fact that men are not socialized to be clean or perfectly primped and pruned in the way women are.
I went to school in various regions throughout my childhood, and I attended university. Whenever I lived on campus, no matter where I was in the world…the boys dormitory reeked heavily before you even made it to the front door. I rarely visited that side because the stench alone was horrifying.
Girls could be messy, yes—but not like that.
A lot of men don’t shower regularly enough, and with the advent of the internet, women have begun to reveal that a staggering number of men don’t wash their asses properly because it’s ‘gay’.
It’s okay for men to stink every now and then. It’s okay for men to be human, especially after a tough workout. It’s cool if they’re a little bristly, here and there. That’s normal!
But women are held to impossibly high standards, not allowed an inch of room to breathe—and that’s the standard I was being held to, by another woman.
I find it interesting that cosmetic beauty rituals are often imposed onto women as “hygiene” practices, as if we are unclean for choosing not to partake.
When you add race to the mix, this is extended to black women’s hair, as many people still view our natural, kinky texture as unkempt or even dirty; unworthy of being showcased in formal or professional settings.
My ex-lover did not see the hypocrisy in the way she policed my body, whereas just years prior, she had intentionally freed herself of all of these supposed beauty and “hygiene” standards, as she embraced herself as a man.
What I am sharing in this excerpt is only the one aspect of internalized misogyny that I experienced in my former relationship.
Some of those elements came out during sex, while others manifested through other forms of body shaming. Beyond that, I felt judged as a whole person—and each of these comments were equally hurtful in their own way. I have written about these other experiences in my book, which I am exclusively offering to select readers.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of my memoir, Loving Her Reflection. The title of this chapter is, “Body Shame”. You can read a full introduction and find more excerpts here.
For the purpose of this excerpt and most excerpts in this series, I have focused on the issue of female hair—on our heads, faces, and bodies: how it showed up in my relationship dynamic, and what I have grown to understand about this pattern of women being constantly policed to cosmetically alter our bodies in order to be viewed as merely acceptable.