He couldn’t help himself.
That’s what he told me.
“You have to understand, if you are going to look like that. I am going to want you.”
His words entered my ears, traveled past the growing lump in my throat and hit my stomach like a punch in the gut. The statement felt wrong. It felt unfair. My whole body fought the notion that I had done something wrong simply by existing. Yet, here I was facing the consequences of that very act. I couldn’t help the shape of my lips or the way my body was formed; yet, somehow those things convicted me by default.
He couldn’t help it, he couldn’t resist, he couldn’t control it. “Had I seen myself? What else was he supposed to do?”
It shouldn’t be true, it couldn’t be true, but, at the same time, it just was. I was responsible. I was the reason. It was my fault. “If I was going to look like that, he was going to want me.” It was biology. It was his nature. It was inevitable. And, as much as I wanted to fight it, this was the story that I had been told over and over and over again until it was so deeply ingrained within me that I couldn’t shake it, even when my whole body screamed back that it was innocent of any charge he had imposed upon it.
I wanted to believe that it was all a lie, that I was not at fault for his actions. But, we both knew the unspoken truth: when all was said and done, I would be the one deemed responsible. He knew he could blame me, so he did. It was as simple as that. No one had told him directly that what he did was okay, but the thing is, they didn’t have too. He was given permission every time they chose to make it about me.
I was conditioned my whole life to take the blame. I have been surrounded by the most well intentioned people who’s biggest mistake was assuming that I would know the difference between what they told me and what they thought that it meant. Because in my heart, I think they did mean well, and that they did not intend to hurt me so badly. But good intentions fall flat when one fails to examine the ignorant ways in which they tried to teach me. They didn’t realize the damage their words would cause, they didn’t consider that maybe, just maybe, there would be consequences for putting me in a box.
I still remember my first cake smash. A perfect cake was put in front of us and destroyed by the hands of our teacher. “Do you see the cake now? It will never be the same.” The cake was my body. My untouched body. It was special, untarnished, and beautiful. The smashed cake was my body after him. It wasn’t special anymore, it was no longer beautiful. Got it.
Then there was the gum. We were all given a piece. “Everyone go ahead and chew your gum.” We did. “Now take it out and trade with your neighbor.” “Ew no!” Everyone protested with disgusted looks on their faces. This was the intended reaction. We needed to understand. The gum was our virtue. “No one wants gum that has already been chewed.” Did that mean no one would want me?
I’ll never forget the crumpled roses, whose petals would forever be damaged; the man-handled brownies no one would want to eat; the unpeeled banana you can never re-peel; the milkshake with dirt added to it because who wants a dirty milkshake? And let’s not forget the constant encouragement to be the perfect apple at the top of the tree, the one that’s hard to get, the one everyone wants but only the most worthy can have. “Don’t be the low hanging fruit that anyone can grab,” they would tell us. “Don’t be the easy to grab fruit that everyone can taste.”
It wasn’t just object lessons. It was all the little comments minimizing what he did while simultaneously maximizing my every action and choice. If he looked a little too long, they chuckled that “boys will be boys” while instantaneously condemning me for wearing something that would encourage his eyes to linger. If he said or did something inappropriate, he was just being extra friendly, and I should accept his compliment because he didn’t “mean it like that”. Is it any surprised that the phrase “boys will be boys” dominated my mind the night I lay stripped, half-naked on his couch, frozen because he told me to stop fighting and that I was “making it harder for him… and me”? He was just doing what boys do… right? At least that’s what I told myself. He was just being a boy; the face of that catchy little phrase everyone around me seem to love so much; a product of the environment he had grown up in, where “boys will be boys” and girls force their hands by somehow encouraging it… even when we don’t.
Comments like, “You know he’s only mean to you because he like’s you” were especially damaging. Wait… they like me if they’re mean to me? That made a lot of sense to my seven year old mind. Ten years later, when a boy looked me in the eyes and told me he only did what he did because he loved me and needed to show me how much. Do you know what I remembered? That well intentioned person, trying to dry my tears by telling me that it was okay, this was just the way boys express their love. Message received: love hurts; boys hurt you when they love you. The bruises between my legs should have told me otherwise, but all I could think was, “He must REALLY love me.”
When it came to my appearance, the scrutiny spoke for itself. If you have ever been hemline checked, you may understand why the length of my clothes became synonymous with my worth. If my shoulders showed, I wanted attention, if my skirt was short I was asking for him to reach up it. The slightest bit of cleavage would tarnish my reputation immediately. But, if I kept my body covered, then I was good, I was pure, I had value and I was a girl who understood her worth. The ironic thing is that the most dangerous outfit I ever wore was sweats and an oversized t-shirt and the most unworthy I ever felt was every time I was told to cover my body because of what it would cause him to do.
Every headline taught me that I did not matter as much as him, that I would not be believed the way he was, that even if all the evidence convicted him, no one else would. I watched the people closest to me elect harassers to the office of President and assaulters to judge in the highest courts of law. If they support and defend them, why would they ever believe and protect me? Everything I saw convinced me that if I said anything, I would be scrutinized and defamed by friends and strangers alike, while he would be defended by those same people. They would say he had a future, that he just made a mistake, that it was a moment of weakness, that he did not deserve to be punished so harshly. But what about me? Shouldn’t I matter too?
I wish I could go back and challenge some of the things I was taught. How could they not know how it all would sound? How could they not know that I would internalize these messages? My body was bad. My body after him? Even worse. How did they not know the damage these words would cause? Did they not see the way they were weaponizing me? Did they not understand they were teaching me that I was the enemy? That I was the reason for his reactions? That I would always be at fault? Any situation, any circumstance, it would always be because of me.
I know better now, at least I am making the very conscience effort too. But, the damage is extremely hard to repair and I’ve only begun the process. Still, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that I am not responsible for the things he did to me. I learned my survival response was not something I consciously chose. I tried my best to do all the right things and at the end of the day there were some things I could not control, some moments I could not prevent. I’ve learned that I don’t need to carry the responsibility any longer. It is not mine to claim.
And, you know what I’ve realized? It wasn’t him who saw me as a threat. It was you. Every one of you who put me in that box. He always had the power to hurt me. That was his choice. But, you told him it was okay, deliberately or not, you made it okay. I am not saying he isn’t accountable for his actions. Like I said, it was his choice. But, that doesn’t make you guiltless. Every time you told me to cover up for his sake, you told him that he was not in control; every time I was told to put a t-shirt on at the pool but you didn’t bat an eye when he removed his; every time I saw my friends sent home from dances (by you) for skirts that were an inch to short; every time I saw another man given a minimal sentence for raping an unconscious girl because he had such a bright future; every time another girl was expelled for wearing a tank top to school; every time I saw a judge cry over a perpetrator; every time you implied that my body was to much for him to see, you told him that he couldn’t help himself, and you gave him authority to believe that it was true. You were the one that couldn’t see past my body. You were the one who taught him that he couldn’t either.
It’s time to change that. It’s time to stop teaching toxic lessons that damage our girls. It’s time to hold him accountable for his actions. It’s time to stop sexualizing girls from infancy. It’s time to teach our boys that they can control themselves. It’s time to stop shaming girls for having a body. It’s time to teach that modesty encompasses so much more than clothing.
We have to do better. For our girls AND our boys. Because neither of them should believe that this is normal: that they are to blame or that they can’t help it.
Because they aren’t… and because they can.
