By Emily B. Sargeant
Content warning: This story contains mentions of sexual assault, self-criticism of body image and harmful eating behaviours.
I was 16 when I first discovered a man could make me feel like my body wasn’t mine.
Before then, like many teenage girls, I had a complicated relationship with my body. I loved my new B-cups, having grown out of my so-called “overweight-teen-boy-boobs” as my older sister once called them while catching a glimpse of me changing into a bikini at a waterpark. I loved my new shape.
Of course, my friends were smaller with bigger boobs—likely recurring stars in every boy’s wet dreams. I longed for the day I was smashed in Smash or Pass or told, “I could get it.”
My body wasn’t something I thought I could use to my advantage. I was 130 pounds at the age of 13, my boyfriend at the time weighed the exact same. I didn’t factor in that he was an incel or that his diet consisted mainly of Cheetos and secondhand weed smoke—only occasionally crawling out of his cave for dinner. All I saw was that I weighed the same as a boy. I continued to cry to my mom in our hot tub about my tummy and the fact that the cellulite on my thighs looked like “cottage cheese”—another lovely quote from my older sister.
I grew up in a house full of women who were also concerned about how their bodies appeared. My mom was your classic “gym nut” who rarely finished a meal and thought having a sweet treat was a crime. My sister, however, never shared any insecurities she had with me. Now that I’m 20, I’m not sure if it’s because she truly didn’t have any or whether she was suffering like all of us in silence.
My body wasn’t what I wanted—it wasn’t what I saw at school or in the countless TV shows I would binge because my social life was non-existent. I thought men didn’t want me because of the way my stomach folded over my jeans when I sat down or how the fat folded around my armpits thanks to my hand-me-down bra being too tight. I was too young to understand the male gaze yet I basked in it every day.
I would wake up, flat-iron the curly hair I got from both my parents, put on a shirt and make sure I stretched out the sleeves to make it look like my arms were smaller than them. On an empty stomach, I took my shot of apple cider vinegar which burned going down—but that meant it was working. Right?
At school, my body would move around the halls making sure I fit the mould that every other girl seemed to. I preferred not to speak in class or draw too much attention to myself. Why would a girl like me try to answer the question correctly? Where did she get the nerve? My body was mine but what I didn’t know was that it belonged to every male I threw up my dinner for to squeeze into the tight jeans my mother once broke a nail helping me into.
I never really felt sexual pleasure. I wasn’t a late bloomer. I first kissed a boy at 13 years old and was first fingered at 15. The only wetness I experienced was blood from my hymen breaking as I faked my way through the 10 minutes he had his grimy fingers in me.
I had no real perception of what sex consisted of. My only exposure to the subject was while watching How I Met Your Mother at a very young age. By that point, my mother had given up on protecting her youngest daughter and couldn’t be bothered to cover my eyes when Barney would partake in countless sexual encounters with women. I laughed alongside my sister and mom like I knew what they were talking about but in my head, I was trying to spell the word “masturbation” to Google later.
By the time I was 16, I had kissed two boys and one girl—the girl being my best friend at a time when we were tipsy in her basement. She would tell me all about the sex she was having with her older boyfriend. I was mesmerized by her and the way she talked about her body.
Once, when we were sucking in our stomachs in the mirror after swimming all day, she said “When I look at my body, I have no insecurities.” I giggled and agreed as tears came to my eyes thinking about how this lighting in my dad’s old house made me look massive.
She would talk to me like I was much younger and naive. I would never admit it then but I did feel that way. I would sit on her bed as she would try on her new C-cup push-up bras and dance around to Chris Brown in a way I would never think to. She was confident and I was jealous of that. She never skipped meals or lied about her weight. She was perfect.
My sweet 16 took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. My family came over, seated 10 feet apart on lawn chairs in my backyard. It wasn’t what I expected for my birthday but it was perfect for me. I was given a gold necklace with an ‘E’ on it—which I wore every day until it changed colours.
Even though I was now 16 and thought my life would suddenly be ‘very adult,’ it wasn’t. I attended the same high school, walked the same hallways with the same three girls and gossiped about the same people we had been talking about since seventh grade. My body wasn’t any different. I was stuck in the same size and twisted mindset—my only goal in high school was to get a boyfriend who would want to have sex with me.
Even though my life was stagnant, spring was my favourite season because, like every teen girl, I was a narcissist and thought my birthday was a national holiday. I loved spring, I loved the way my dad’s house smelled and how the sun would shine through my window every morning, lighting up the posters I had on my wall. As much as spring was a season I most looked forward to, it was also the one I feared most. It marked the time I had to dust off my shorts and don the shirts I couldn’t hide my body in.
I would regularly sleep at my best friend’s house. She had the type of mom who didn’t care what we did and only wanted to be woken up if the house was on fire or someone was bleeding out.
I constantly looked forward to going over to her house because I could do things my mother would never allow. It wasn’t rare that we would fall asleep on her couch after a long night of running around the empty parking lot near her house and getting up to all kinds of typical trouble thanks to the lack of supervision. I still remember the bright screen of the TV replaying Grown-Ups 2 over and over again.
Finishing a movie was rare for us. One night, after being passed out for hours from a sugar crash, I was woken by the feeling of a heavyweight crushing down on my feet. It was 3 a.m., I slowly opened my tired eyes to see my friend’s stepbrother sitting on the end of the couch staring straight ahead as the TV’s soft glow lit up his dead and completely void expression. I didn’t think much of it as he had been very friendly towards me in the past. Thinking back now, it was very unsettling, but as a young girl, I thought any attention from a male was good attention.
Not having any sense of the time, I was awakened again by the feeling of warm hands slowly inching up my leg and reaching the opening of the pyjama shorts I had just bought from PINK. I had picked them out because they had peaches all over them and I thought they would be cute for summertime.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I wondered when the feeling of fingers entering my vagina would stop. I didn’t know if I should be flattered or frightened. I kicked my foot with my freshly painted blue toenails piercing his leg. He stopped. I fell asleep grabbing the ‘E’ necklace I had just been gifted, hoping my mom would be awake early to pick me up in the morning.
Minutes later, a bright light shone into my eyes, a different light than the TV, which was still playing on a loop. This one was bright and white. I felt a warm sensation on my now tender vagina, a flashlight from his phone. He was using it to move my pink peach shorts aside to get a better look at me. Mustering up the courage to ask him what he was doing paired with my kicking made him simply turn off his flashlight and walk away like nothing had happened.
This moment he might so rarely think about—a very small fraction of his life—is a time I think about every day for the rest of my teenage years. It was a moment in time that meant so little to him, but to me, was the moment that filled my body with shame and resentment towards myself.
The next morning, I woke up, sat across from him at breakfast, smiled and laughed with him and acted as if what had happened the night before was normal. He ‘jokingly’ undid the top button of my shorts while I was getting dressed, quickly preparing for my mom to pick me up. He remarked to my friend how my boobs were “finally coming in,” making it seem like a normal older brother thing to do.
My mother picked me up and I said goodbye to my friend as if it was any other sleepover we had in our youth. What she didn’t know was that my once youthful body and mind were tainted by her brother’s fingers.
I no longer wear the ‘E’ necklace I was gifted on my 16th birthday. The gold paint has chipped off and has tarnished from gold to silver from days of swimming in my dad‘s pool and tanning in the backyard. The long bubble baths I’d have after an exhausting day of school or the days my mom would drive my sister and I to the beach—spending hours in the waves wore away what once was.
The necklace once reminded me of my innocence, a time when I wrestled with both love and hatred for my body. But now, it no longer carries those meanings. It reminds me of when I clung to it for safety and security.
I am now 20—16 was once a time I thought I enjoyed. Instead, it’s become a time I cry about during sex with my boyfriend or a reminder to squeeze the fat around my armpits that my now size-appropriate bra hugs.
That one moment on a warm May night has altered the way I view my body and pleasure. That one night has robbed me of the memories of my youthful body as I continue to live in a world where men can take everything away from a woman and carry on with their lives as if it were just another summer night.
If you have been affected by sexual violence and/or other forms of gender-based violence, you can find support from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Consent Comes First or any of these national support services.
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