How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Body

Author's note: this essay discusses sex. In typical NPR parlance, if you are a family member of mine and would prefer not to acknowledge that women in their 20s (i.e., me) may have engaged in sexual activity, this post may not be for you. 

No woman ever wants to get a call from her gynecologist. Those calls never contain good news about your vagina, like, "Congratulations! Your vaginal pH is perfect!" As soon as I saw I had a voicemail from my gynecologist one morning before chemistry class my sophomore year of college, I knew something was wrong. 

I hadn't gotten my period for nearly six months, and since I wasn't having sex at that time, I knew I wasn't pregnant. My doctor called to tell me that my testosterone levels were slightly above normal, and a pelvic ultrasound later revealed that I had a mild case of polycystic ovarian syndrome, a common hormonal disorder in women that can cause infertility. 

I didn't handle this news well. It explained a lot - the missed periods, my constant struggle with acne, my unruly eyebrows. It was a minor problem with the simple fix of hormonal birth control, yet I couldn't help but feel a sense of shame and embarrassment. Somehow this news made me feel less like a woman, less feminine, and less desirable to the opposite sex. 

My first college hookups often left something to be desired. A couple of drunken incidents the first semester of my freshman year left me feeling lower than low; one guy I hooked up with, who failed out of college later that semester, said to me afterward, "It's probably best we don't tell anyone about this. You don't want people thinking you're a slut, right?" 

I vowed after that night that I wouldn't have sex again until I had a boyfriend. Instead of taking a cavalier approach to college dating, I fell in and out of infatuation with different guys, hoping that they'd fall in love with my personality and want to date me. When my perfect college beau never materialized, I began to doubt myself, asking the self-deprecating question that women love to use as a fishing rod for compliments: am I ugly? 

I became my own worst critic. I've struggled with acne since I was twelve, and during the time in my cycle when my skin would naturally be more blemished, I feared going to class. My college seemed to admit a certain quota of straight-haired blonde women every year, and I tried to tame my curls with a flat iron. Like most women, my weight fluctuated with the seasons, and to my friends' chagrin, I was constantly asking them if I looked heavier. My headshot appeared in my column in the student newspaper every other week, and I wouldn't let our photo editor stop taking pictures of me until I found one that minimized chin fat. 

My self-esteem plummeted, and looking back, I'm sure it was my lack of confidence, not my appearance, that affected how I interacted with the opposite sex. When a guy did want to sleep with me, I figured that something had to be wrong with me. I wondered how other women I knew seemed to attract men with the flip of their hair or sway of their hips and actually enjoy themselves in the process of seduction. I felt like some kind of sexual pariah. 

I moved to Sweden after graduation, swimming in yet another sea of straight-haired blonde goddesses. For as scared as I was to move so far away from home, I wanted to leave all of my insecurities an ocean away. Something changed. Once I stopped analyzing every pore and roll of fat, I learned that sensuality has little to do with the shape of my stomach or the thickness of my arms. It's an attitude that can only be cultivated by being present in your body. 

I walked and biked everywhere in Uppsala, and I lost a healthy amount of weight just from the exercise from traveling to and from work. I started practicing yoga my senior year of college, and I came to realize all of the amazing binds and twists I could mold into once my muscles were warm and limber. I stopped caring if I got a little sweaty on the dance floor, sildling up to hot Swedish men anyway. I stopped straightening my hair, and I've come to love that it never falls the same way each day. After I moved back to DC, I started running. The feeling of my feet hitting the pavement reminded me that, no matter what, I can always quite literally move forward. 

My attitude about sex has taken a complete 180-degree turn. Once I started having good sex, I realized that I stopped fearing the vulnerability of being naked with someone. Now I relish it. I found that, once I knew how much I value a healthy sexual relationship, that I had few obstacles attracting sexual partners. I wish I had learned this earlier, that when done right, sex can be empowering. It makes me feel awesome about my body. 

I could recite platitudes about how you should love yourself exactly as you are, but you've heard them all before. If you don't like something about your appearance, then change it, within reason. If you hate your freckles or the shape of your feet, then make an effort to accept them. But my experience has taught me to remember the moments where I feel most beautiful and seek to repeat them. I feel like I should say that I feel the most sexy when I'm running or giving a kick-ass science presentation or strutting down the street, but frankly, it's in the bedroom with someone. 

I have never felt more beautiful than I did the last time I had a man in my bed. I looked into his eyes, studying every speck on his irises. But then I noticed my face reflected in his pupils. I looked beautiful. This is what he sees, I thought. And all I could do was laugh. 

Girls Don't Cry

In the sixth grade, a kid who lived in my neighborhood said I looked fat in my down winter coat, and I cried the whole walk home from the bus stop. My parents once took me duckpin bowling, and I cried when I lost the game. I was 18.

In my defense, my dad was trash-talking me, and I lost by two frames. He thrives in high-pressure scenarios, which is perhaps why he finds Gordon Ramsay so intriguing. In the eleventh grade, my dad once "accidentally" smacked me in the head with his Wii controller during a particularly contentious game of virtual tennis. Both competitive play scenarios resulted in my feelings getting a little hurt, a sign that I should refrain from further Wii sports with family members. 

I've cried everywhere: on the metro, in multiple airports, walking down the street, sitting on a bench in Austria, on a boat in the Baltic Sea, in the shower. I cry when I laugh too hard at a friend's joke or when I'm so overwhelmed that the only way I can express myself is through the inadvertent pouring of water out my eyeballs. I can't help it. When my grandfather died, my nana handed out individual, plastic-wrapped packages of tissues to my entire family. Irish people cry a lot. A lot of that has to do with the drinking, but we're a melancholy bunch. 

I read about a personality type psychologists call "highly-sensitive." When I think back to my childhood musings about the adult person I would become, I expected that, like teachers and adults I knew told me, I'd grow a thicker skin. I thought that I'd be be able to go about the world with a less penetrable demeanor. 

Sometimes I think my propensity to take comments way too personally has a physical manifestation. I bruise easily, from the lightest bumps into walls or tables. A television blasting too loudly gives me a headache. On the less deleterious side of the spectrum, the soothing voices of kind people and soft touches, like someone running his fingers through my hair, make my head tingle. My skin peels in the cold and burns in the sun. Some days, the world just physically feels like too much. 

I'm frequently told that I'm intense. I warn all potential boyfriends of this, even though I don't really know what that means. I also hear that I'm enthusiastic, and my boss recently told me that my passion for science is not easily cultivated. I take way too many things personally, and to my detriment, I see anything I do as a reflection on me as a person. I once didn't see a woman flagging me down to hold the elevator at the metro, and she proceeded to find me on the platform and tell me how incomprehensibly rude I was. I then had to get on the train with people who heard this reproach, trying to hold back tears and avert my gaze from their judgement. I couldn't forget this incident all day. 

These two seemingly different concepts, enthusiasm and passion compared to sensitivity and anxiety, are symbiotically linked. One can't exist without the other. The most passionate and driven people I know are the most sensitive. One of my college roommates works for her law school clinic, and her last case resulted in her client, a man incarcerated for nearly 30 years, getting parole. This same friend is also so sensitive that whenever I was sad, she was sad, too. She would cry any time I was crying, feeling so defeated that despite her genuine efforts to be a good friend and pull me out of my depression, there wasn't anything anyone could do to make me not feel like crying all day and napping all afternoon and watching copious amounts of Grey's Anatomy.

What are people like me to do? I can't expect the world to change just for me. But I also wish that, in the professional world specifically, being an emotional thinker was a more valued quality. Emotional thinking is innate. The power of human empathy is a favorable adaptation, especially for women. And we need to stop trying to suppress it. 

I recently read a New York Times piece by psychiatrist Julie Holland arguing this very point. Women are, by nature, more emotional than men, and for good reason. Holland says, "Some research suggests that women are often better at articulating their feelings than men because as the female brain develops, more capacity is reserved for language, memory, hearing and observing emotions in others." 

She reveals some other alarming facts: at least one in four women in America take a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. Women are more likely than men to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (S.S.R.I.s), the most commonly prescribed class of psychiatric medications, can make women less interested in sex, less empathetic, and generally numb.

Holland nails it with this:

"Crying isn't just about sadness. When we are scared, or frustrated, when we see injustice, when we are deeply touched by the poignancy of humanity, we cry. And some women cry more easily than others. It doesn't mean we're weak or out of control. At higher doses, S.S.R.I.s make it difficult to cry. They can also promote apathy and indifference. Change comes from the discomfort and awareness that something is wrong; we know what's right only when we feel it. If medicated means complacent, it helps no one." 

I left work this past Friday and cried to a good friend on the phone - not because I was sad, but just because I was overwhelmed. And miraculously, I felt better. Just a few minutes later, I was laughing at his jokes. My crying is not a sign a weakness; it's a physical manifestation of existence in the world. And that's okay. 

So, here's what I think we should do: adopt the Kimmy Schmidt life motto. Take everything ten seconds at a time. When that ten seconds is up, just start another ten seconds. You can do anything for ten seconds. She is, after all, unbreakable. And despite my tears, so am I.