What I Said and What I Wish I'd Said

At 13 my daughter’s body had blossomed into something truly beautiful. She was perfectly proportioned, with lovely breasts and emerging curves that gave her body a classically balanced profile aligned to our western culture’s standard definition of an attractive female. In my deepest and most meaningful truth, I know that all bodies are beautiful, and all shapes and sizes are fine and right. But my daughter was given the blessing or curse of being born to a body that corresponded to current western/male/patriarchal standards of beauty.

Seeing this emerging beauty in my daughter brought fear to my heart. I did not want her to feel self-conscious about her body and her beauty. I did not want her to feel defined by it. I wanted her to know that character, actions, thoughts, words, and deeds were much, much more important. So, I rarely focused on how beautiful she was, not wanting to draw attention to it, seeing her exploration of prom dresses, her love of cowboy hats, and her need for more t-shirts than would fit in her bureau, as just parts of her journey through adolescence.

For reasons that are still not clear to me, at 19 she suddenly began the nightmare of disowning her own body. It started with binding, and then testosterone, and now at 23, her determination to get a double mastectomy.  

Looking back at those years before the nightmare began, I now realize I should have taken a path completely opposite than the one I did.

I should have turned her into a fighter.

I should have given her the mission of protecting her sacred body. I would have told her that men, women, and even well-meaning people, even some so-called professionals and medical providers, might want to tamper with her body — some would want to touch it, and some would try to touch it without her permission.  Some would ogle it, stare at it, some might try to penetrate it without her permission. Some would obsess about it, and others would try to convince her to alter its essential integrity with drugs, chemicals, hormones and removal of healthy body parts.

I would have told her not to let anyone touch or tamper with her beautiful body without her permission. I would have told her that she, like the other women in our family, was a fighter, and that she was up to the task of protecting her own body. I would have supported her covering her body as much as she wished and would have supported her only revealing it when and with whom she wished to reveal it. I would tell her that she was a warrior and that her body was under her protection.

I would have told her that these are hard times and sometimes the people we want to trust are not to be trusted.

To mothers of pre-teen girls: it is not too late to turn your daughters into warriors.