This piece is the first in a series of pieces for the Body Volume of Um... Magazine. This is an anonymous column that discusses body count and its direct effect on self-perception. Many of these stories touch on issues of body image, insecurity, and sex negativity. These are the candid thoughts and reflections of real people. Hear them speak.
#23: Black Sheep
Over the last year and a half, my body count became 23.
But I don’t know how I got to that number, well I do. But I don’t
I've always fixated on aesthetics. Maybe 19 years of sight can do that to you. Growing up in this millennium, movies entangle themselves into the web of our daily references; insofar as to have its own unsubtle alias for a booty call (Netflix and chill). But if I know anything about being a sad lonely teenager, I know that watching movies in your bed alone is one of the primary activities to do when you're not on a date on a Friday night, or any night. Our glossy eyes will never lovingly adorn another person like they do our precious, precious movies.
The highest grossing movie genres in cinema are action and romance, so essentially, people like war and sex, right? It makes sense. The red curtains could only ever open for the two types of degeneracy we could confer a global platform: the same two discourses where body count is the centerpiece of success.
I lost my virginity when I was 17 years old. But before that, I was always jaded. Vexed by the reflection in the mirror. Frustrated with my undesirableness. Indignant with my inability to receive equally returned infatuation. I understood where I was placed socially, beneath the girls who were having sex, the ones who were pretty, the ones who were valuable. I never realized that I had just reduced my other friends to their sexual capital, but I didn't know any better: I was just a virgin. What did I know about beauty? To me, it seemed, beauty was tangible. It was synonymous with the amount of people you had sex with and I had no assets to claim a stake in the wealth of physical attractiveness.
So, I hid. I hid behind an egomaniacal personality to mask the undying self-loathing that stemmed from the voices in my head which never allowed me to feel satisfied with myself. I wished the voices would stop. But sometimes the laughs from a group of brutish boys in the 9th grade can still ring in your ears as loud as a knock at the door declaring your bankruptcy in appeal. Maybe it was funny of me to think that someone could ever like me? I even lied. Lied about being intimate with other people to make up for the scarcity of affection. How more despicable and outcasted could I make myself?
Since coming to college, I've grown into my body, I've become grounded in the person I want to be, and I’ve found solace in the clothes that I wear. I have always been sure of myself, well, secure in the fact that I dislike who I am, mostly. But secure nonetheless, so that no one else could like me any less than I already do. It’s a double edged sword, but alas, power is power. I carry myself with the fact that I know no one else’s words could hurt me more than my own. So much so that there has been a magnetism to this toxicity inside me. My perceived confidence is an aphrodisiac and the folly euphemisms I speak are a pheromone for the people attracted to me? I guess? I will never understand what makes myself alluring to other people.
But over the last year and a half, I had sex with 23 beautiful people and I’m still trying to figure out what that says about me.
Then I get to pondering why it feels like there’s absolution to my internal chaos when I let someone inside me. Why does it validate me to take off my clothes and have another person appreciate what I can't for myself? Why can't I do it on my own? I've realized there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance for me when it comes to my own self image: and this just comes with being a hyper-critical introspect, but how can I maintain constant self-love without being dependent on the admiration of my attractiveness from another person? I have stopped trying to look for my self-worth in other people's lips, words, thoughts.
I've always fixated on aesthetics. Maybe 19 years of socialized astigmatism can do that to you. Growing up in this millennium, movies entangle themselves into the web of our romantic and sexual expectations. Maybe feeling beautiful will always be elusive. No matter how hard you can attempt it. Maybe in this psychosis of technology we will never be able to love ourselves because it has been ingrained in us to do otherwise. It’s a problem of this human condition that we have put ourselves in. If we can learn anything, it’s that the big screens we keep our eyes on will always be plastered with images that do not reflect us, that do not represent us, and that do not respect us. The same screens that tell us love is contained only within a heterosexual monogamous relationship between a man and a woman. The same one that teaches our children that pink is a color designated for females. The same screens that we should step away from every once in a while because aesthetics aren’t everything.
-Anonymous