Sunday, January 6, 2008
Today, without blushing, I pole danced in front of my father. In the pole-dancing studio where I take classes, some women don’t even tell their husbands what happens in class… or even that they are taking class in the first place. I told my gynecologist, my former colleagues from the grammar school where I taught fourth grade, and my neighbors. I couldn’t keep my big, fat, pole-dancing mouth shut.
When my mom wanted to learn a few moves, I confidently pointed her in the right direction, and helped her take her first spins around the pole. I bought my sister a class. Today, as I was spinning around the pole demonstrating my cool moves for my mother and sister, my father walked in. While I hadn’t intended to dance in front of him, I decided to be okay with it. Perhaps a few years ago, or even a few months ago, this wouldn’t have been my reaction. I haven’t always felt this comfortable with my sexuality, and I still have growing to do.
I remember being in the seventh grade and having my first “boyfriend” and thinking that I could never get married, because then I would have to admit to my parents that I liked boys and, worse yet, that I liked touching them and being touched by them; the horrors! Why would anyone ever admit such a thing to her parents? I certainly knew I never would. What has changed?
When I was a teenager and had sex for the first time, I was torn between wanting desperately to tell my mother and wanting to take that secret with me to the grave. My mother, a woman of the sixties, guessed my news, and timidly asked me if we ought to install mirrors on my ceiling. My reaction is best summed-up by my dueling thoughts: “Ma-aaa-aaah-aam! How could you say such a thing?” and “Oh, by the way, yes, what a great idea!”
I am married now. Every night I sleep in the same bed with my husband. When my parents came to visit us this past weekend, they knew full well that I went to bed each night with my husband. I didn’t feel the need to hide my affection for him. I have, I suppose, grown into my sexuality as I have aged. While I couldn’t even imagine admitting that Jason Katchum was my boyfriend when I was twelve, I, now freely, disclose my status as a married woman, and, before that, as a single woman who liked men. I think, and hope, that most women have achieved this level of comfort with their sexuality. Some, however, have not. I have a friend who, perhaps stuck in seventh grade, felt embarrassed while she was pregnant because she knew it meant that everyone knew what she had done to get into that “shameful” state. She was forty and married at the time.
Why do so many of us continue to be embarrassed about our sexuality?
Sex is part of life. More specifically, sex is the reason (most likely) that we are all alive. It would never cross my mind to be ashamed of breathing. And yet, I have struggled with feeling shame because I like sex. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Well, isn’t that applicable to shame as well?
When I was about seven, I was invited to dinner a neighbor kid’s house. After dinner, Mrs. Potter served ice cream which, as I did on the rare occasions I was served ice cream at home, I happily mashed into a delicious ice cream stew (I didn’t have the patience for full-blown soup). After my ice cream was transformed into liquid-y chocolate goo, I picked-up my bowl and drank it.
Although I was oblivious to it at the time, the Potters were horrified. All four of the Potter children and the Potter mom and dad looked right at me, rubbed their right index fingers over their left and chided, in sing-songy unison, “Shame, shame, shame!” Well, I, quite literally, knew no shame. While I had learned manners at home, drinking out of bowls was not something I’d been taught to avoid. I mean, please! My mom served miso soup with tofu which, our Japanese exchange students taught us, is customarily sipped straight from the bowl. I still remember looking around at all the Potter children and the Potter mom and dad and thinking, “This is great! I have all of their attention. I must be doing something pretty special for all of them to be looking at me. Shucks! Lemme do that again.” Like many who attempt to use shame to illicit “proper behavior,” none of the Potters wanted to come right out and say what I was doing wrong, and their “subtlety” was lost on me. Man, was that a good night: sugar and an attentive audience. A girl could scarcely ask for more.
Looking back on this incident, I realize that people who try to shame other people are often trapped by their own embarrassment or shame. If we choose not to feel shame for our actions, specifically those not shame-worthy, such as breathing and enjoying orgasms and the like, those trying to administer the shame will be hard-pressed to do so, and likely will lack the courage to come right out and say what they are really thinking. Why give them the power? Why let them control our actions and our desires? Instead, why not look them right in the eye and dance on a pole, or smooch our lovers, or drink our ice cream?
Shame is a choice, and it would be a shame to feel it when it is undeserved.
Labels: rant