Lilith and I: Female Rebellion Meets a Lifetime of Body Shame
My body has been ungovernable from the start.
I walked the hallways of my high school between classes braced for the onslaught. While other girls were using that time to flirt, check in with their cliques, or just dutifully make their way to the next classroom, I set my jaw, tensed my body, and stared straight ahead, attempting to look impenetrable. Because it didn’t matter what route I took or what strategic timing I used to try to pass through the halls unnoticed. They were always there. Boys. Armed with cruelty.
“Grizzly Adams!” they’d shout at me from their huddle around a locker as I walked by. They pretended to disguise the insult as a cough, yet made sure its enunciation was crystal clear to the hallway throngs. Class to class, day to day, they took turns hurling the name at me while the rest of the group erupted into laughter. A relentless daily verbal gangbang.
They were, of course, referring to the television show from the late 70s, in which the main character lives in the mountains with a grizzly bear named Ben. I used to watch it with my grandparents when I slept over at their place on weekends. Dan Haggerty starred as James “Grizzly” Adams, or Grizzly Adams as the character was known for short, and his most distinctive feature was a prodigiously full, thick beard. Coupled with his sturdy body, built from the physical labour required to live amidst nature, he was what you’d call “a man’s man” — a real specimen of strapping masculinity. That’s what the boys were equating me to.
To protect myself from the recurring verbal assault, I perfected my unflappable “resting bitch face” at the tender age of 14. But in spite of that outer armour, inside of me the shame burned so hot it felt like my organs were liquifying every time I walked those halls. That balancing act, hiding inner shame with an iron-clad exterior, would become my signature. Because men, and others, weren’t done with making sure I knew exactly how unattractive my body was.
I’m of Eastern European heritage on both sides of my family. Though tall, I’ve got the characteristic farm-girl build, with broad shoulders and muscular legs. And while porcelain skin and dark hair sounds good on paper, the hair that grew on my face —that grows on all women’s faces; we’re mammals, after all — was also dark and exacerbated by the health condition of PCOS. Enter high-school boy cruelty.
But it wasn’t just boys. There was my track-and-field coach, who would stand on the sidelines and yell, “There goes Thunder Thighs!” as I came off the curve and blazed the straightaway in the 200-metre dash. When my mom snapped finish-line photos, there was rarely any other runner in the frame with me — I was fast and I often crushed the field. My powerful lower body made me an excellent sprinter. But my coach taught me to hate my legs. I spent hours running the perimeter of the basement in my childhood home, trying to slim them down through sheer caloric burn. I hated how they spread out when I sat down, so every time I found myself in a seated position I’d tense my quads until they quivered with exhaustion.
There was my grandfather, who told me I had “Brooke Shields eyebrows” when I was growing up in the 1980s. If you look it up, sources from British Vogue to InStyle describe her trademark brows as “thick,” “bushy,” fluffy,” “bold.” He meant well, trying to put a positive spin on my atypical look, but there was a catch: I wasn’t a supermodel. I was just a regular girl with thick thighs and a hirsute face, so drawing attention to my “bushy” eyebrows wasn’t something that felt like a compliment. Fast-forward to me getting my nails done for my high-school prom in 1992 (which I went to alone; no one wanted to be caught dead with Grizzly Adams), and the aesthetician asked me if I was also getting my eyebrows waxed for the event. “Why?” I asked. “Should I?” She met my gaze and curled her top lip with disgust while nodding her head slowly.
There was the random guy on on Twitter who felt the need to respond to a race photo I proudly posted, in which I’m mid-stride in the middle of my first 35K run. I finished top 10 in my age group and went on to run a Boston-qualifying first marathon time two months later. I had contributed the pic to the #RunLikeAGirl campaign, the grit showing on my face, my short pixie haircut soaked with sweat, my muscular arms propelling me forward. “You run like a girl but you look like a man,” he replied to my Tweet. I remember wondering if the insult was milder or worse than teenage boys calling me Grizzly Adams.
These are just a few examples in a litany. I turned 53 this month, and I’ve spent my entire life being told in no uncertain terms that I do not meet the beauty standards of the society in which I live. Even when laser treatment removed my dark hair from the unacceptable places it grew in and marathoning gave me the thinnest body I’ve ever lived in, it’s never been enough. Not enough to stop the scrutiny of others. Not enough to stop the self-scrutiny. And now, in menopause, the scope of the shame widens. It’s harder to keep weight off. There are wrinkles and grey hair. A billion-dollar business has emerged to encourage women like me to make ourselves palatable and buy our way out of aging.
Then the Epstein Files hit. Women learned that the clothing, makeup, and style companies, the media conglomerates, and the marketing campaigns that shaped the beauty standards we’ve held ourselves to have been controlled by a small cadre of powerful, wealthy men. We learned that the imperative to be thin, to be hairless, and to look perpetually young is rooted in those men’s attraction to girls. Females who take up as little space as possible, who are inexperienced, who have not yet matured are easier to control. And we’ve been turning ourselves inside-out to meet that standard. At what expense? Actor Christina Ricci is quoted with this sobering insight: “The biggest trick that’s ever been played on the female race is keeping us so preoccupied with our appearance that we can’t focus on what’s really important.”
In the collective rage that has risen and continues to build in this moment of reckoning, a guide has emerged: Lilith. In biblical lore, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, created from the same soil, making her his equal and unwilling to submit to his will. Given the choice of subordination or banishment, she leaves the garden. It is a moment that defines her: She choses autonomy over belonging.
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Exploring Lilith mythology has felt like drinking deeply from a wellspring after a lifetime of punishing thirst. Reading comparative mythologist Maria Souza brought tears to my eyes: “[Lilith] embodies refusal, separation, and exile, not as moral failure, but as psychic necessity.” Suddenly, I had an entirely new lens with which to view my life. Living on the outside of social norms for what women should look like and the choices they should make does not make me lesser-than; it means I honour my path.
Let us not be fooled into thinking Lilith’s track of loyalty to self instead of conventional social scripts is an easy one to walk. The high-school hallway warrior in me can assure you of that. But what if more of us started to explore off the beaten path? I look around at the global community of women redefining menopause. What if we brought Lilith’s perspective to the therapies now available to us? What if the goal of using them isn’t to melt belly fat or plump our sagging skin or help us to reclaim what we’ve supposedly lost? What if the goal becomes creating bodies resilient enough to discover and travel our own unique routes instead of cruising on autopilot down the road patriarchy has paved for us? What if we dared to accept our bodies as they are?
What if the goal is to do the very thing we’ve been conditioned not to do: Age and Rage, as the saying goes. Age and rebel. Age and refuse to do what they tell us.
My body, and therefore I, have been ungovernable from the start. What if that’s been my superpower all along?
Image credit: Wiki Sinaloa on Unsplash
