Unaccompanied Women by Jane Juska

Author:Jane Juska [Jane Juska]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

Walt Whitman knew what he was talking about; maybe only a homosexual male can truly appreciate the male body. If that is so, I run a close second as a fan of male nudity. I have never ever seen a naked man who was not comfortable in his skin, who did not walk naked from here to there with no thought of clutching at a robe or a bath towel or a curtain, who did not turn this way and that without self-consciousness. I have seen more than one man strut his stuff while I, swaddled in sheets, lay on my side and offered up my heartfelt praise and admiration and (silent) envy. My memory conjures up Graham in all his beautiful nakedness, and I see him striding about, smoothing his hands over his very flat belly, prideful and happy that I share his delight in the splendor that is his body.

Age entirely aside, how is it that men are like this while women, like me, prefer the dark to the light? Why do most men prefer to make love with the lights on? Maybe it’s that boys see each other naked at younger ages than girls do. Maybe it’s that girls’ bodies change more dramatically than boys’; maybe it’s that girls learn shame while boys learn pride. Girls’ bodies every month become a bloody mess; we are unclean in some cultures, men will have nothing to do with us. No matter how antiseptic the pads and tampons, no matter how floral the scent of vaginal douches, there is no escaping the sight and smell of blood that comes from us every month for thirty or forty years of our lives. I am hopeful that all this is changing. Surely girls—excuse me, young women—today take pride in their bodies; surely they prefer to make love with the lights on; surely, like my landlady, who glories in her pregnancy, they, too, stride about naked, comfortable in their own skin. I am not convinced. If what I wish were in fact true, advertising would have found a new tune to sing; instead, the relentlessness of the ads that drive us to oils and creams and rinses and gels and powder and paint and foundation and blush convinces old and young alike, if we are not careful, of our bodies’ imperfections. Shame on advertising.

Maybe nothing at all has changed, for here comes Eve Ensler once again, who, having shown us where our vaginas are, has raised her sights to the belly. In her one-woman show, The Good Body, she exhorts us to love ourselves, even the ugliest part of our bodies, our bellies. “I think that when we truly end the internalized self-violence, when women actually live in their bodies, actually love their bodies as they are, feel safe and empowered in them, then the world will change.” Well, who could argue with that? So there she is up there on stage, pulling up her spaghetti-strapped top to reveal to the audience this

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