Category Archives: A Womanly Body

November 21, 2011 · 12:19 pm

The first time I used a menstrual cup

I first heard about the m-cup (menstrual/moon cups) last year over dinner conversation. I was enthralled by the idea of environmentally friendly and safer methods of menstrual health and I seriously started wondering about all the waste products such as tampons and pads…where do they all go? It also made me wonder about women’s menstrual health and how warped it is considering the adverts on TV (especially for women who cannot afford the expense of tampons and pads).

So I went and bought a moon cup soon after the conversation. I Googled more information and read anything and everything. Like most women growing up in conservative families with a mother who taught me “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and all things about sexuality were makings of the devil, my vagina was mostly invisible. The biology lessons at school (with male teachers) showed me cross-sections of tubes and balls that made little sense to me except when I had to label the image during a test. Apart from the monthly bleed and gevoevelling with curious boys in my teens, I knew little about my vagina. And I decided to abstain from sex when I was 15 which meant the vagina was officially silenced.

Watching the Vagina Monologues is where it all began. I hate to be so typical but until that point, I couldn’t really say the word vagina aloud. And to say it in isiXhosa was close to blasphemy. Friends and I tried to find Xhosa words for vagina: usisi, igusha, isinene/inenene, ikuku (sister, sheep, no translation, cookie respectively). But I still couldn’t say much about the vagina. Watching the monologues I realised I related with “My vagina is angry…pissed off!” and much to my dismay, I also related with the old woman who spoke about “down there”.

So when I finally heard about the moon cup and decided to buy it, my mind and heart had to make peace with the fact that my vagina is a real part of my body. When talking about menstrual health and vaginas the conversation mostly becomes about sexuality. I have no regrets about abstaining from sex, but this has meant that I have experienced my vagina as purely a biological process and a no go zone at any other time thus far in my life (which is a conversation for another day). And yes, conversations with girlfriends who are comfortable with their sex lives are becoming a tad awkward because as a growing woman of 24 I’m an anomaly.

And so the day of reckoning arrived when I was going to trial the m-cup. My body balked. Nothing seemed to work and I didn’t seem to know what I was trying to do. Instead I ended up in pain and exasperated. The websites I read seemed to assume that every woman wanting to use the cup has a sense of what the vagina was REALLY like. And I realised I didn’t and I wasn’t keen to have a conversation with my vagina at the time. So I put the cup away and much to my chagrin, returned to the hard, bleached cotton wool: tampons.

Fast foward: a year later and I decided to revisit the idea of using my m-cup. Part of the motivation has been watching the price of tampons and pads escalate every time I buy them. Not only has this been denting my budget, but again, the thought about the environment surfaced (I have similar questions about disposable nappies, where do they go?). Conversations with more friends who have been evangelising the gospel of the m-cup also helped so the process didn’t seem so daunting anymore. And this time I had a conversation with my vagina every time I had a bath before my cycle began.

It wasn’t dirty or disgusting, but a simple feeling for what it really means to have a vagina. I’m not surprised people who KNOW vaginas love them. They’re soft, warm, welcoming and great muscles. So when I used the cup, it was a simple process and my instant reaction was “WOW!”. When I told a friend, her response included the word “intense”. It doesn’t have to be. Vaginas and women’s sexuality are a beautiful thing and I wish we allowed ourselves more time to appreciate our bodies for what they are not purely as a means to an end for sex, but for the pleasure of what they are…beautiful and blossoming.

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September 20, 2011 · 11:31 am

The First Time I Let A Man Touch Me

For most women, this sort of thing tends to occur earlier. For me, it happened when I was a month shy of my 25th birthday. The man was one of my lecturers. He had spoon fed me a story about ‘recognising’ me as the woman he’d been waiting for his whole life. Something about the way I looked in “that skirt” had caused a resonance, he said. It is only now that I realise, with belated clarity, the part of him that vibrated in tune with my skirt. I yielded to the gooey flippy feeling this produced in my nether regions at the time. That was, after all, the same voice that had sexily draped itself over silky words about lots of clever things. When he asked if he could touch me, I shakily said yes.

It was not long before we were lying in my bed. “You’re wearing too much clothing,” he said, with little irony. I took it off. His mouth felt strange and hollow. The whole experience was strangely perfunctory, except perhaps for the fact that, in my terror, I was as dry as paper. He didn’t come, and neither did I. I had never come, except for that one time when I was running up hill in those tight shorts. His anti-depressants prevented him from coming, he said. Then, quite out of context I suppose, he said “I’m going to marry you”.

This, of course, wasn’t true. I believed it for long enough, though. Long enough for him to get what he wanted. I do regret wearing that skirt.


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April 4, 2011 · 1:00 pm

The First Time I Got My Vagina Waxed

The first time I went to get my vagina waxed I’d been thinking about it for about 6 months. I’d read articles in favour of and totally against the practice. I’d heard a friend talking about how she got it done and why (softer hair, good sensation) and read a polemical attack on the practice which ended with words something like “every strip of wax is another blow against the fight for women’s rights”. And still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve had one or two of those occasions in life where I shaved, I’m sure everyone has at some point? No? Maybe it was just me. But the itching regrowth! Ingrown hairs! And I’ve also pouted polemic myself, thinking how weird is it that guys want pussy’s that look like little girls, that’s just nasty, smacks of paedophilia.

But still, this sneaky idea of a Hollywood (the all off back to front as opposed to all the other shapes, patterns and extent of hair removal on offer) kept cropping up for me. Am I at the mercy of an idealised standard of women’s beauty? The dupe of a woman at the mercy of some man who prefers it this way? Too easily influenced? Unable to stand up for my own opinion? The questioning and arguments in my head were endless.

And in the end, I succumbed. I damaged the fight for the rights of women’s bodies, gave in to social pressure (which has never been directly exerted) and went off to the beauty salon and exposed my beautiful vagina to the eyes and hands of a stranger who was certainly no stranger by the time I left. I started joking about levels of embarrassment as soon as I walked in the door (a very effective coping mechanism). I started with my legs so I could work my way up to it (or get scared of the pain and opt out).

And then she started. The first rrrrrrriiiiippp. F*CK it was painful. She quickly pressed her hand down, exerting pressure to help with the pain. Deforestation commenced. Because it was my first time, it took WAY long, and the same spot needed to be waxed over and over. My poor skin being exposed rip by agonising rip. In between the waxer would be casually patting my vag like an old pet while we were skinnering to check if the wax was set. Then she’d rrrrriiiiipp and ask ‘are you okay?’. A long breath in and a conscious relax to deal with the pain and I would say ‘okay’. I flinched more than once. Cried out at least twice. And yet, I never stopped it.

And that night my hopefully imagined smooth skin encounter with my lover was out of the question, I was so sore; it felt like one big bruise.

The smooth satin finish I thought would be there, the next day was a morass of red angry bumps, two days later morphed into red ugly bumps with yellow heads in a morass of pimples, and ongoing discomfort.

But I still haven’t given up on the idea, maybe next time it will be better….

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