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I imagined all of the things that would go right if I were just to have a smaller nose. I would have a boyfriend and the girls in school would stop making fun of me. That year, several girls would bring me to a playground to have a“ talk” about why we could not be friends any more. Because I am too loud, because I agree with everything they say – desperate for approval in a way that is unseemly. We’ re not trying to be mean, they say, it would just be better if you ate lunch somewhere else. I know if I looked more like them, with a small nose and long, light hair in braids and bows, I would not have to go to the building where the younger children are to eat lunch with my sister. I find out from my male friends that there are cute girls, pretty girls, hot girls, sexy girls, and sometimes variations or combinations of all of the above. The worst to be is a fat girl or an ugly girl. I was an ugly girl who became a sexy girl once my breasts grew in and I started telling dirty jokes with abandon. As soon as I“ got a chest”, as my mom would say, the taunts about my face stopped as boys became more interested in feeling me up than making me cry. I started to forget about my face and mean girls, and focused on the things my body could do and inspire. During summer break, a male friend whom I had known since childhood put his hand on my breast as we watched a movie in the room over from our parents, saying nothing. I remained frozen, unsure what to do. Wasn’ t he supposed to kiss me first? I was 11. *** We know that direct violence causes trauma; we have shelters, counsellors, services. We know that children who live in violent neighbourhoods are more likely to develop PTSD. Yet we still have no name for what happens to women living in a culture that hates them. When you catch a cold or a virus, your body has ways of letting you know that you are sick. But what diagnosis do you give to the shaking hands you get after a stranger whispers“ pussy” in your ear on your way to work? What medicine can you take to stop being afraid that the cab driver is not actually taking you home? And what about those of us who walk through all this without feeling any of it – what does it say about the hoops our brain had to jump through to get to ambivalence? I don’ t believe any of us walk away unscathed. I do know, though, that a lot of us point and laugh. The strategy of my aunts and mother is now my default reaction when a 15-year-old on Instagram calls me a cunt or when a grownup reporter writes something about my tits. Just keep pointing and laughing, rolling your eyes in the hope that someone will finally notice that this is not very funny. Pretending that these offences roll off our backs is strategic – don’ t give them the satisfaction – but it isn’ t the truth. You lose something along the way. Mocking the men who hurt us, as mockable as they are, starts to feel like acquiescing to the most condescending of catcalls:“ You look better when you smile.” Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant. This sort of posturing is a performance that requires strength I do not have any more. My daughter is happy and brave. When she falls down or gets hurt, the first words out of her mouth are always:“ I’ m all right, Mom. I’ m OK.” And she is. I want her to be OK always. So while my refusal to keep laughing or making people comfortable may seem like a real fucking downer, the truth is that this is what optimism looks like. Naming what is happening to us, telling the truth about it – as ugly and uncomfortable as it can be – means that we want it to change. That we know it is not inevitable. I want the line of my mother and grandmother, that world’ s worst birth right of violations, to stop here.
This is an extract from Jessica Valenti’ s memoir Sex Object, published by Harper Collins at £ 16.99.