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The Girls of Summer

Submitted by Kampire on June 27, 2007 - 5:46pm.
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I love Summer. I love the heat and sweat of it, I love being able to wear less clothes. What I don’t love is the fact that people think that they can comment about my body as though it’s theirs. Just because I am black and curvy and stand out in your typical small-town Ohio crowd does not give anyone permission to comment about my body or choice of clothing.

A few days ago I went to the nearby quarry with a friend to get some sun and swim. I sat on a picnic table in a blue bikini near a popular diving point. I looked around at the people spread across the 2 mile beach; families playing in the shallows, high school graduates tanning, not a single other black person. Awesome. For me that is a big cue that I am going to be treated differently from everyone else.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a couple of girls walked past me on their way to the other side of the beach, making snide comments timed with mean girls accuracy to reach me when they were already too far for me to respond. It took me a second to realize they were talking about me so I only caught the tail-end,
“If I were her I definitely wouldn’t be tanning.”
I told myself to let it go as they laughed.

Later I walked between a couple more bikini clad girls to get to the diving board. One of them said hi and I smiled and said hi back, thinking at least these girls are friendly. I dived into the crisp cold water and swam away quickly to avoid the fish that hang out there and nibble on people’s toes. The two girls jumped in behind me and climbed out of the water only a couple of steps behind me. As I adjusted my bikini I could hear them talking behind me.
“Y’know a bunch of guys we know would look at that and be like, Oh my God what is that?! But it’s actually kinda fabulous,”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fabulous.”
Again, it took me a couple of seconds to realize it but were they really commenting about my ass? It’s been a while since I have had to decipher backhanded compliments and respond to snide, passive aggressive comments from other girls. I guess I am out of practice. Grown men yelling from their car windows I can deal with; ignore them or flip them the bird. Groping college boys I can handle; a quick sarcastic remark about being threatened by their unimpressive genitalia usually shuts them up fast. But high school age girls managed to leave me speechless the other day.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the bruises that women leave on each other. I moved out of the apartment that I shared with two roommates who I thought of as sisters. I’m living on my own and discovering with wide eyes my independence but it still feels as though there is a gaping hole where a beautiful friendship used to be and to make things worse, I keep getting salt rubbed into the fresh wound. (Sorry to be overly-metaphorical but I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the bitchy details). I got a really obnoxious, passive-aggressive text message* the other day and my options ran quickly through my head; leave a bitchy voicemail or break something in revenge or just come out swinging and show up at the person’s door with hair already tried back and fists at the ready.
In the end, I gave the person the option of calling me back and left it at that. It was actually the most difficult choice of them all because I like to imagine that I am a strong person, that I don’t take bulls*** from anyone. But I won’t jump into the stereotypical girlfight drama, not with stupid high school girls who are threatened by my ass and especially not with women who I thought of as my sisters. I’m not really ready to be the bigger person. I am still angry, still hurt, but I will try and let it go because I’ve experienced female fractures. I know that hurting other women is hurting all women, it’s hurting myself.

I would love to hear about situations where you have found yourself fighting other women, and how you dealt with it.

*A text message! Apparently I don’t deserve a face-to-face confrontation or even a phone call.

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Summer

Submitted by Lena on June 27, 2007 - 8:27pm.

How neat that you were able to go swimming at a quarry but how horrible were those girls words... I hope things eventually work out between you and your old roommates, Kampire. And that you can fully enjoy the new apartment of your own! :)

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This is a heavy blog. :(

Submitted by Jeyoani on June 29, 2007 - 1:06am.

This is a heavy blog. :(
I myself am dealing w/some fresh female fractures -btw this term should be the title of a book- and they hurt like hell.
I don't know if you've ever read the amazing "cunt" by Inga Muscio? In it she describes how a friend of hers from an Islamic fundamenalist country was floored by the meanness she saw between American women, and that in her country all women are sisters have one another's backs b/c they have to as they are all in the same boat.
Now I don't really believe this en todo, but
I felt like I had an odd angle on what Muscio and her friend meant by this, due to the strange religious subculture I grew up in. You can't glamorize oppressed peoples (women) just b/c they are forced into a constant self-sacrificice and kindness, a kind of "crying by smiling" if you will.

When you grow up w/so little options, and so oppressed, you have a natural tenderness towards your sisters. Yet at the same time this tenderness and loyalty does not usually stand if a sister steps out of line-- such a sister can be turned on by the others in an instant in such cases, as the others know the price they bear if they don't withdraw support.

Yet sometimes I am sad when I remember how there was a time, in my childhood and teenhood, a time I never once really knew a "mean girl". I really don't think I did! I can't remember one-- at least not a Christian one, not one in my own sheltered world. In fact it wasn't til I got out into "the world" that I really encountered any. It actually took me like five years to even understand these type of women, or their behaviors! I was totally confused-I didn't even process them as mean, per se, I just didn't get them, and I was confused, I was really a doofus about it all. I know it sounds too naive to be true but it's true. I didn't get jealousy about men, appearances, etc.--It was so boring and wierd an idea to me so I didn't get it. I hadn't seen it, so I didn't understand that "language".

I really did think every woman was "beautiful in her own way", etc., as was drilled into me via Christian sensibilities of physicality being of no value, etc., and that you should "die for your brother/sister", --not compete.

"Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised" -- that was like a mantra of my upbringing.

And then too, all of our female sexualities were so suppressed, I am sure that was part of it. If you aren't supposed to be lusting or even thinking EVER of sex, and shamed greatly if you do, what's the point of competing for anybody? I sometimes wonder if that was part of it too, actually. Not to say it will has to be that way when sexual expression is celebrated, though!

Anyways so for these and other reasons, where I came from, there was little competition or meanness-- The women and girls really treated one another sweetly, and helped one another all the time.
If anything the women were competitive in other ways-- competitive in their holiness, their spirituality--who could be the most devoted to God.
It was no shangri-la by far, in fact it was hellish in its own way, but there was this certain tenderness between the women of my youth. Definitely I never knew a catty woman! Period. I never saw that.
My four younger sisters have gone through alot of meanness I never had to deal with having been the only girls of color in their rural high schools.

The story you just told is similar to many of my sisters' stories. --Just plain old meanness and jealousy, and then racial meanness added on top just adds another painful, sickening barb. I'm so sorry :(*

I don't have anything sage to say at the moment except to offer my own sisterly love and warmth and SUPPORT...you have already referred here to the wisdom all we women know, but often fail to live out-- that when we hurt another sister we are hurting our own selves.

I know my reply doesn't touch at all or very deep on many aspects of this many layered issue, but these are some of my thoughts.
Sending love.

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