The Womb as Navigator, Executive Advisor, and Source of Feminine Power
Posted: August 19, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminine Power, Feminism, Womb | Tags: Feminism, Memory, Power, Tantric Dance of Feminine Power, Womb, Women's Bodies, Wonder Woman 49 CommentsI love to drop into my womb. I first learned about this practice when I started studying The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power™ over ten years ago. “Drop into your womb” is one of the instructions the teacher gives you before you can dance.
As someone who was used to connecting to my body from the outside-in—usually secondhand through the male gaze—I’d never thought to connect to my body from inside of myself, let alone to my womb of all places.
The Other “F” Word
Posted: June 24, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminism, Woman | Tags: Aging, Bodies, F-word, Feminism, Forties, Sexism, Women's Bodies 70 CommentsThree years ago I turned forty. I flipped out when it happened, even though I knew that the negative ideas about women hitting middle age are misogynistic and wrong.
Here are excerpts from my journal that I wrote in 2011 about this milestone age (Apparently I was watching a lot of Oprah back then):
- Oprah says that hiding your age is like denying your existence. Yet I can’t help myself. At parties any time the topic of age comes up I find myself leaving the room and running to get a drink. If I come back and people are still talking about age, I get up again, this time to go look for ice. I don’t want to admit that I’m 40—especially living in Hollywood where it seems like everyone I know is 25.
- I’d lower my age on Match.com if I wasn’t so opposed to lying. My ex-boyfriend says that a lot of guys who see my profile are writing me off right away just because the number “40” appears in my age box. It’s almost as if my age is my expiration date and I’ve turned into a carton of spoiled milk.
- People who know my real age say that I look pretty good “for 40.” Still, there’s that caveat, “for 40,” as if “looking good” and “40” don’t usually go together.
- I finally decided to stop checking my face in the mirror to see if any new wrinkles appeared overnight. I mean, what if by staring at myself under the blaring bathroom light, my forehead furrowed with worry, I’m making more wrinkles happen?
- I watched Oprah’s Lifeclass on OWN. The episode was about celebrities on aging. Actresses Ally McGraw, 72, and Bo Derek, 53, talked about how their necks are now showing their age. I thought, Fuck! Really? The neck? The fucking neck? One more body part to worry about.
The Story of a Woman in Sexual Pleasure
Posted: May 30, 2014 Filed under: Body, Feminism, Pleasure, Sexism, Sexual Pleasure, Woman | Tags: Bodies, Feminism, Masturbation, Memory, Sexism, Sexual Pleasure, Sexuality, Women's Bodies 84 CommentsA few years ago I was asked to participate in a storytelling show. The piece I read was called “My Vibrator Story.” I had written it in a workshop and test read the story at the end of class. The audience, made up of the other participants, was primarily women that day. My story, a personal tale about masturbation, ended up getting lots of laughs—so much so that I was invited to share it in front of a much larger, public audience.
But when the time came to read “My Vibrator Story” at this bigger event—no one had told me there would be over 100 people there—I bombed in my delivery of the piece. I indicated to the audience when I wanted them to laugh. I kept looking at them and smiling as I read as if to say, “This is one big joke, let’s not take me or my story too seriously.” The audience’s response, as I read my work and when I finished, was lukewarm.
On Mother’s Day Greetings and the Sacred Feminine
Posted: May 19, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminism, Objectification/Sexualization, Sexism, Woman | Tags: Bodies, Embodied, Feminine Awakening, Feminism, Memoir, Memory, Mother, Mother's Day, Power, Sacred Feminine, The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power, Woman, Women's Bodies 31 CommentsOn Mother’s Day, I deleted a Facebook post before I had a chance to publish it. The update was going to acknowledge all the moms that I know. The reason I never posted the message was that there was more to it. The post in its entirety would have said: “Happy Mother’s Day… so grateful to you moms for embodying the Sacred Feminine.”
We live in a world where greeting card companies have come up with all kinds of ways to say Happy Mother’s Day—from funny greetings, to the poetic kind, to religious-themed greetings, to cards that are purposely inappropriate. Still, I hesitated to put up my greeting because I worried that someone out there might think I was just being “woo-woo” spiritual or, even worse, take offense that I’d linked “mothers” to the “sacred feminine”—as if to put the two together would be blasphemous.
As a teenager and through my twenties I didn’t see much use for my femininity except for whatever purpose it could serve for attracting the opposite sex. After I grew breasts and hips I learned how to wiggle and sashay in such a way that if I walked into a room you’d have to look at me. I would constantly bat my eyelashes, flip my hair from side to side to give off a “Charlie’s Angels” effect, and speak from my throat (rather than my diaphragm) so my voice would sound huskier.
The Virgin Mary, Body Image, and Her Story
Posted: March 31, 2014 Filed under: Body, Body Image, Feminism, Woman | Tags: Body Image, Feminism, Lesley Hazelton, Religion, Sacred Feminine, Virgin Mary, Women's Bodies, Women's History Month, WPLongform 54 CommentsI grew up feeling reverent toward the Virgin Mary. When my pregnant mom still hadn’t gone into labor a few days after my due date, she prayed to the Holy Mother for help so that the doctor wouldn’t have to induce her. My mom started having contractions just hours later.
My parents gave me Mary’s name twice—Marie is my middle name and Lourdes, which is a French form of the name Mary, is my baptismal name. Every night as a child with my mom sitting bedside, I would pray aloud: “Hail Mary, full of Grace…. Blessed is the fruit of diamond Jesus…”
I would say the word “diamond” with special emphasis because I thought it was so beautiful that there was such a thing as a diamond Jesus even though I didn’t know what that was. It wasn’t until I was 10 that I figured out that the words were actually “thy womb Jesus” and understood what that even meant.
Birthing Sofia: On Whether to Mother
Posted: March 18, 2014 Filed under: Body, Feminism, Sexuality, Woman, Womb | Tags: Babies, Birth, Bodies, Body, Feminism, Memoir, Mother, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Woman, Women's Bodies 59 Comments“Honey, I’m not pregnant!” I told my boyfriend the other day.
“That’s good.” He replied.
But the news to both of us feels bittersweet.
The Female Body in Pleasure
Posted: February 28, 2014 Filed under: Body, Creativity, Female Power, Feminism, Movement, Pleasure, Sexuality, Uncategorized, Woman | Tags: Body, Creativity, Feminism, Food, Human rights, Memoir, Pleasure, Power, Woman, Women's Bodies 37 CommentsV-Day: Stopping the Violence
Posted: February 13, 2014 Filed under: Feminism, Violence Against Females, Woman | Tags: Abuse, Domestic violence, Eve Ensler, Feminism, Human rights, Memoir, Memory, V-Day, Vagina Monologues, Violence, Woman, Women's Bodies, WPLongform 58 CommentsIn my twenties one day, I found myself seated in a room of other women seeking support from each other. Looking around, I felt like a pretender.
As I listened to them share their stories… a husband smashing a dinner plate over the head of a wife, a brother high on heroine stabbing his sister with a knife, a mother with ribs broken apart by her son… I sank further down in my chair wondering if these women might be offended that I’d even bothered to show up.
The Vagina Talks
Posted: January 31, 2014 Filed under: Body, Body Image, Feminism, Sexuality, Uncategorized, Vagina, Woman | Tags: Bodies, Body, Body Image, Eve Ensler, Feminism, Memoir, Memory, Sexism, V-Day, Vagina, Vagina Monologues, Woman, Women's Bodies 58 CommentsWhy is it that I feel squeamish about saying “vagina” in public? I didn’t realize how much of an issue this still was for me until about a month ago when on a crowded plane, my boyfriend cracked some joke with a punch line ending with the word “hoo-hoo.” Immediately turning into a word monitor, I looked at him and said “SHH!!”
As I turned to make sure that the little girl seated in the row behind me didn’t hear what he said—I caught myself. Why am I freaking out?
Stories From the Belly 