This New Body

By. Yuliya Rae

One morning I woke up and was surprised to find myself in a body of a woman. I faced my naked reflection in the bathroom mirror, observing what has become of me with awe and horror. One day I was climbing trees in a skirt with no fear of anyone looking up. Then, seemingly overnight, the rules of my life changed.

With my new body, an array of new experiences became commonplace: alien hands groping me on the bus, whistles and catcalls accompanying me on my way to school, comments about my body from a casual passerby. At home, my grandmother would criticize what I was wearing and eating, infusing me with fear that my soft, pliable belly would only grow to exorbitant proportions if I weren’t too careful. Female relatives dispensed unsolicited advice on how I should look, be it shave my legs or purchase heels that would elongate my legs and lift my bottom. Upon asking why, I was told this was what a woman did, that boys liked it, and that these modifications would make me appealing, alluring, sexy. I didn’t want to be sexy. I wanted to go back to climbing trees.

Arriving at church on Sunday with an extra piercing in my ear, I was pulled aside by a female teacher who commanded me to take the additional earring out. Enraged, ashamed and confused I asked why. “Your body is a temple,” she replied, “and God wouldn’t want to visit that temple if you continue to desecrate it.”

My body was to be a temple akin to the ones I saw on the postcards Mormon missionaries brought from America: white, spotless, sterile. In this new body, in this new temple, there was room only for someone chaste, someone good, someone unlike me. Before getting a glimpse of what living in this new temple felt like, I was unceremoniously locked in its dungeon. Displaced and disconnected, I was disembodied before I could even grace its marble floor, before I could run my palm against its walls.  God was now both the permanent resident and the prison guard, fearsome enough to scare me into near-total submission.

That day, when I went to church in my new body, I learned a lesson which laid the foundation to the disembodiment I felt for many years ahead: my temple was to be sacred and holy, and all that was sacred and holy belonged to God. Which left me, a child struggling to grow into her new body, an unwelcome stain on the temple’s pristine exterior.

Just like with my body, my relationship with God changed in a flash. I found that God began caring about my body only when it started feeling foreign. I was allowed to live in my bones only before they began growing. According to the lessons I learned in church, God’s interest in my temple was only piqued when my shape began to fill with curves where none were before. What kind of God would love and protect the woman but not the child? I felt abandoned, neglected, invisible. The God I knew through prayer, one that was kind, supportive and caring was replaced by a new God: one that was restrictive, authoritarian, punishing.

This new God was the God of shame. And he was after my body, where, part by part, he taught me how to live in my new abode. Shame got stitched into the thin lines that ran the length of my lips, making my mouth feel tainted before I even had a chance to speak, making me doubt my words, making me doubt myself.  

In the name of this new God, the assault on my body continued. My collarbone became too revealing in the suggestion of what lay below it. My shoulders showed too much in a top with thin straps, so a woman from church wrapped a cardigan around them before I had a chance to react. Coming to church in a skirt that fell right to my knees was another mistake. Skirts must cover the knees in the Mormon church, yet mine betrayed an inch of glorious skin when I sat down, igniting dissent and warranting yet another ‘pull-aside’ from a female teacher.

How was I to realize the danger, and the sheer power, that my knees bore with their exposure? The knees that supported me with my every step, helping me walk, run and dance were now seen as nothing beyond an invitation to what lay between them. Rather than being seen as a whole person, I was dismembered into body parts and given instructions on how to properly hide each one. The allure of my skin was so feared and so coveted, that a sheer glimpse of it needlessly tempted men and made me into a provocateur. At sixteen, I barely remembered the God I prayed to at twelve, his warmth a distant memory of the past. The God that I was forced to meet after puberty was nothing but a puritan bully, intent on covering my body under the guise of protection.

I left that God behind along with his church. Breaking out of my prison, I thought I reclaimed ownership of the temple I lived in, forgetting the shame it carried in its very foundation. It was in my earlobes and collarbone, in my stomach and thighs, in my knees and ankles. Intermingling with my blood flow, shame coursed the length of my limbs, leaving a residue of unworthiness and unlovability behind.

I lived the next few years as a wild thing released from imprisonment, allowing myself the substances previously forbidden, I started drinking coffee. The only stain on my temple that I now feared was the residue of caffeine on my teeth, nothing a trip to the dentist couldn’t fix. I pushed myself outside of every limit that was set for me and my body. I started figure skating again, I danced, I acted, I ran. I traveled abroad to Italy where, about to try my very first glass of wine at eighteen years of age, I briefly looked up the sky for fear of lightning striking me as punishment from the God of shame. As the red liquid touched my lips, no apocalyptic weather changes occurred, save for the deep emptiness I felt at that moment that had nothing to do with my appetite. My hunger was not to be satisfied by drinking coffee or dancing in an Italian nightclub. I deeply missed the church and its community. Yet to go back would be to betray myself.

I left the church, but the church did not leave me. I oscillated between bouts of profound body shame and the desire to walk naked in the streets to claim my body as my own. Most of the time, I lived somewhere in between. Out loud I would say that I didn’t care about weight, but inside I feared how many pounds a scale would show if I were to step on it. I looked at tops with open shoulders in window displays, but I quickly passed them by, telling myself I didn’t have the right build for them. Wearing a two-piece bathing suit was out of the question, my fleshy middle was to be concealed at all costs. I gravitated toward the fashion of the 50s for the fit of their skirts, never wondering if there was more than one reason for choosing that calf-length style. I thought I eradicated the God of shame from my temple. But even though I may have vacated God, the shame was too resilient to be swept out.

What to do with the shame? I raged, ravenous for retribution. I pounded my fists against the walls of my temple in despair. I screamed, hoping to scare the shame away. But in the end, I was forced to acknowledge its residence within me. Tenuous roommates at first, we ignored each other’s presence. But as time went on and its tenancy became familiar, I began to notice the spaces in me it inhabited. Finally seeing them for what they really were – poorly healed wounds that still throbbed frequently.

Uncovering the wounds of shame presented me with a clear choice: abandon the temple I lived in for good or lay on its floor and weep. Grieve over the death of innocence of my childhood. Rage against the injustice of becoming a woman too soon. Lament how the God I loved was turned into an abusive guardian by the church I used to belong to.

I chose to grieve, in ways both predictable and surprising. I ate what I wanted, I stopped weighing myself for a while. I didn’t force myself to go to the gym, instead finding ways to extend and move my body for joy. I purchased a top with no straps at all and promptly returned it. I went to India in search of God, finding something in the harmony of hundreds of voices singing during a bhajan. I cut my long hair and the proper femininity associated with it. I looked at myself in the mirror and cried as I told myself I was beautiful.

Then, while on a trip to Japan, something changed. I asked my hotel concierge to book me a trip to the nearest onsen, a traditional hot spring bathhouse. I knew the rules: no clothing was allowed. It was to be me and dozens of other women walking around in nothing but our skin.

In the balmy twilight of late March, as the cherry blossoms bloomed all around me, I disrobed in the locker room, a bracelet with my keys the only thing on my body. I walked, naked, amidst women of all shapes and sizes, toward the outdoor baths. Steam gliding along the surface of the hot water, the baths were sparsely filled with women submerged into the healing liquid. In front of us Mount Fuji towered, the sun painting it sunset pink and lilac purple. I stepped into the water, my instinct telling me to hide my nakedness under the shadowy waters. But instead, I paused, recognizing that instinct as a voice from long ago that told me to hide. I didn’t want to hide anymore.

Finding a nearby rock, I folded my knees to the side and sat down. I closed my eyes, feeling the warm spring air on every inch of my bare skin. Feeling my full weight beneath me, I realized I was completely at peace in my body. For the first time in my life I felt beautiful in every cell of my being. My temple, with doors wide open, was letting in the scent of the cherry blossoms, inviting me to bloom alongside them.

Yuliya Rae is a Seattle-based photographer, writer and now a graduate student studying to become a counselor. Through her photography, she hopes to empower women to love themselves and through her writing, she aims to create a thread of connection between herself and the world. In her spare time, Yuliya can be found exploring the Pacific Northwest, reading fantasy novels, tending to her garden or planning a trip to explore another part of the world. You can learn more about Yuliya and her work on her website: yuliyarae.com.