Living in a female body

I have always found it fascinating that as a species, humans dislike and are resistant to change. I understand it biologically. Our bodies seek stasis for survival. Staying near clean water and available food (places we know) is one of the easiest and best ways to survive. I’m sure that this is encoded in our DNA.

Remember when you could just wear no shirt, hang with your Care Bear and it was cool?

However, as a species, and as individuals, it’s our adaptability that allows us to thrive. Change is inevitable and those who embrace it and make their own change, in my opinion, have a greater chance of being satisfied and fulfilled. Especially if you’re female. You don’t even get to live in a body that isn’t constantly changing. This pisses me off sometimes.

I remember blissful, carefree toddler days. My sister and I were best friends with two boys, each a year younger than each of us. (Obviously, our parents were best friends too.) Often Saturday get-togethers in the sticky Louisiana summers would end up with the hose in the plastic pool and us kids just shucking off our t-shirts and playing in the pool together as happy equals. At some point this changed.

I used to like “helping” my dad outside when I was a toddler. I clearly remember being in the garage with him one hot day, walking between the cars toward the bright outside light, and he said he was hot so he was going to take his shirt off. I said that I would take mine off too. (I was still in that toddler phase of wanting to do whatever my dad did.) He said I couldn’t take my shirt off because I was a girl. I asked why. He stammered for a bit (probably not expecting this conversation to come up so early in my life) and said, “Well… most girls don’t want to take their shirts off … I guess … well, I mean … you can take your shirt off if you want to.” But I said no, I would keep it on. I still had no idea why, but something had changed. I believe I was around seven. I could still walk underneath the side mirror on the car.

When I was in grades 4 through 6, I was in the same building and consequently used the same playground for those three years. There were playground monitors who weren’t necessarily teachers, just there to make sure no one was roughhousing I guess. There was an older Black lady who thought she knew me. She called me Angie once when I was walking with a friend and I had a long awkward (to me as a ten year old) conversation with her explaining that I wasn’t who she thought I was. She seemed confused and disappointed. Several times after that, she would wave at me and ask me how my mom was. I didn’t see any harm in just waving back and telling her my mom was fine. She obviously still thought I was someone she knew, but she was nice and harmless and it didn’t bother me.  Until the day I was walking with my friend Toni and she stopped me and told me I needed a training bra. I again, just took the path of least resistance and said okay, but she didn’t stop and said, “You just go home and tell your momma to get you a little training bra.” I said okay and we kept walking and my friend laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. I had tears in my eyes too, but for a different reason.

I’m amazed my enormous shirt never got caught on a hurdle.

I fought my mom on getting a bra. I hated everything about it. But eventually I needed one if I were going to ride horses and goddammit, I was going to ride horses. When I finally discovered sports bras, I was okay. I could do anything in those. My mom tried once or twice to get me to wear a normal bra, but I wore sports bras until I went to college. Special occasions when I had to wear a dress (high school dances) were the only exceptions. But for me, I would have just as soon not developed. My uniform was sports bras, layers and baggy t-shirts all through high school. (Lucky for me it was the 90s and grunge was there for me in all its androgynous glory.)

Eventually, I made peace with the body that I had. If I kept my weight down, everything stayed manageable. Luckily I loved running.

When I was twenty-two I decided to try Depo-Provera as a birth control. I had a friend who raved about it. She said it stopped her period completely. She didn’t need to deal with fluctuating hormones, cramps, any of that. This sounded amazing to me as my period was incredibly painful. I would have dreams about having cramps because my cramps were so intrusive. All of the women in my immediate family have flipped uteri, so this isn’t uncommon. With Depo-Provera, you get a shot every few months and the hormones convince your body that you’re already pregnant, so no eggs release. My mom didn’t think this was a good idea. She felt that there had to be side effects of some kind. She was right.

After almost a year on it, my boobs had ballooned to an unmanageable size. I was wearing two sports bras to run with a normal bra underneath. My sex drive had dropped and I was losing hair. (I wouldn’t notice those other two until I began recovering and my hair stopped falling out and my drive came back.)  No matter what I ate or how hard I exercised, I couldn’t change the shape of my body. I was at the point where I was wearing a bra and a tank top with a built in shelf bra under every shirt I wore to work. I never went and got sized during that time. I am positive that I was wearing bras several sizes too small and just didn’t want to accept it. I talked to the nurse who was giving me my semi-regular shot and told me “well, you’re probably just getting older.” I just stopped going back to get the shots. My body went nuts for about three months. I had crazy irregular periods, but everything started to shrink back to normal. I never went on any birth control ever again.

I’m obviously older now. I’ve gotten several fitness and nutrition certifications and I’ve also been in this body for many more years without tampering with its hormones. The healthier I’ve gotten, the more I notice how small changes in my diet or behavior affect me. It could also just be that I’m getting older and they do affect me more. Probably it’s a combination of body awareness and age. 

A few years ago, I started eating according to my hormones and the difference has been fantastic. I know what to eat and what to avoid to mitigate cramping and tenderness. I also know that I tend to be smaller in the summer. Lots of reasons for this including more movement and more access to Vitamin D. The summer has always been my favorite.

I can’t remember if this was right before or right after I was biopsied.

My first mammogram came back showing a shadow. I had to get a biopsy. Of course this was in the middle of a Chicago winter. Vitamin D was low and movement was inhibited. Obviously the date of my biopsy fell right before the start of my period, so I was already swollen and uncomfortable. The ladies who were there were nothing but lovely and nice, but it was still a terrifying and uncomfortable experience with a part of my body that I’ve never really liked. I cried through the whole thing while one of the ladies just rubbed my arm. Yeah, it was uncomfortable and vulnerable, but also, cancer runs in my family, so scary on that level too. It came out benign. But there was a week or so of not being able to run and not being able to fully extend my arm when teaching cardio kickboxing classes.

I hate shopping for bathing suits and bras and I feel like most women are the same way. At least, most of the ones I have commiserated with. I have been reduced to tears in a fitting room with swimsuits. It’s like they’re almost made to make you hate yourself. And if you find a good one, you hang on to it for waaaaaaay more than is beneficial for either of you. I will say that I recently discovered Athleta swimsuits and will never go back. Finally, a suit that was made for more than just sitting on the beach getting a tan. A suit that you could run around in. And even better, I got to order it online and try it on at home.

I went into this pandemic with all of my bras being well over five years old. And that’s being charitable. I know for a fact that two of them are pushing twenty. It was getting bad. I really had nothing I could comfortably wear. Underwires were sticking out everywhere in spite of my attempts to stitch them into their places. Elastic was not even barely clinging to life. I’m not a size that’s easily found in a Target or Wal-Mart. (Remember when my apartment caught on fire and I had no clothes? Yeah, I TRIED to find a bra at Target. Tried and failed.) I really didn’t want to go to a department store for a variety of reasons. I finally bit the bullet and went online.

What is the point of a bathing suit if you cannot stand on top of your friends in the pool, I ask you?

Things are much better online than they have been since Victoria Secret’s quality took an enormous nose dive in the early naughts. I found a well rated company and looked at what they had. One of my favorite things about it was that you could search by type. See, I like unlined, underwire, which is almost non-existent in a 32C. For some reason people think that I desire padding. No. Please no. Or make it removable at least. Oh, but they had several options. And I got some coupons for giving them my email address. I got to try them on at home. As long as I kept the tags on, I could wear them around a bit and see how we got along. And I am so very very happy to be wearing something where the elastic isn’t completely shot and metal isn’t trying to carve my heart out through my sternum.

Alas, I’m in my forties and change is rearing its ugly head again. Summer is not doing the shrinking thing that it normally does, even though my weight is down to fighting weight. (Literally. I could weigh-in at a savate competition and be admitted.) I’m starting to get tenderness during and after ovulation and not just pre menstruation. I have been drinking more coffee since COVID times, so I’m going to cut back on my caffeine in general and not just before my time of the month. I’m also going to cut back on salt and start making green smoothies like Dean and I were doing in the Before Times. All of those things are supposed to help. When you research these things, one of the first recommendations is exercise, which always frustrates me. I wish I could do a search for reducing breast size and tenderness if you already do all of the exercise and your weight is quite low enough, thank you.

Still, I’m much more educated on these things now and I know what’s coming. I know that there’s another change on the horizon and I know that often it lasts a long time. I feel like I’m just going to start getting settled into this, more sensitive hormonal body and then the hormones will start to ebb away entirely. I’m not looking forward to it. I’m really really not looking forward to it. 

I’m hoping our knowledge continues to increase. And that we’ll all continue to get more comfortable talking about these things. Maybe by the time I get to this next adaptation I’ll have a few more tools. I’m certain I still won’t be ready

I suppose it’s still better than the alternative, right? And I’m sure I’ll adapt.