An Intimate Life (20 page)

I also hoped that seeing me and carefully looking at herself would help her to shake loose her rigid beliefs about physical perfection. Still, I made it clear that there was no pressure to feel a certain way about any areas of her body. Our goal here was to take an honest inventory, and there were no right or wrong observations.

Together we headed to the bedroom.

We got undressed and I guided Mary Ann through some relaxation exercises.

Then it was time for us to take a tour of our bodies.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror mounted on my closet door and asked Mary Ann if she was ready to start. I noticed that my legs were a little hairy and my breasts were swollen because I was in the third week of my cycle.

Mary Ann sat up in bed with her legs crossed.

“I haven’t seen a naked woman since I was in my high school locker room,” she said.

“We don’t see a lot of real-life nudity in this culture. It’s one reason we have such skewed ideas about what we’re supposed to look like,” I said.

Mary Ann smiled at my reflection in the mirror and I smiled back at her. I noticed the comma-shaped lines that formed around my mouth as I did.

“So, I’m going to start the exercise. As we discussed, I’ll begin at the top and work my way down,” I said.

I ran my fingers through my hair, which hung to just below my shoulders.

“I like my hair now. I didn’t when I was younger because my mother always told me it was too fine. It feels soft and I like the way it frames my face.”

I talked about my face. “I felt self-conscious about my forehead for a long time, again because of my mother. She always told me that it was too big and when I was young she cut my hair in bangs. As I got older I grew more comfortable with it and today I like my face, including my forehead. My skin shows a few more freckles as it’s aged, but all in all I like my complexion.”

Mary Ann squinted her eyes as if she were trying to get a better look.

“My neck is starting to sag a little, and I’m concerned about getting a waddle under my chin. I like that it is long and it looks pretty when I wear a V-neck shirt with a necklace.”

I stretched out my arms.

“I like my shoulders and arms more now that I have built up some muscle in them. I used to think my upper arms were too chubby.”

Mary Ann crossed her arms over her chest and squeezed her shoulders.

“My chest is okay. I don’t think about it much. I love my breasts.” For a moment I paused and thought about how Mary Ann’s breasts seemed so out of proportion with her body. The point here, however, was not to try to make the client feel anything—positive or negative. It’s simply an inventory, and so I forged on. “I think they are just the right size. The pink of the nipples reminds me of an inner part of a seashell. They were never perky and that used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore.”

Next I moved on to my torso. “I don’t like that I am high-waisted. Ideally, I would like my stomach to be a little flatter, but it doesn’t really bother me that much.

“I think my vulva is beautiful, but I didn’t always—especially before I really looked at it. I love the plumpness of my labia. My lovers have told me that I have a pretty vulva and I believe them. It feels good to hear that. When I was growing up I thought my genitals were gross, partly because of how they smelled. I didn’t know how to clean under my clitoral hood and I didn’t know that women can get smegma, which is just a mixture of sweat and dead skin cells. It can be easily cleaned away. I had no idea about any of that back then. I just thought my genitals were disgusting.”

Mary Ann looked down between her legs, then at the reflection of my mons in the mirror.

“I like that my shoulders and hips are an equal width. I think it gives me a solid look. For a long time I thought my hips and butt were too wide. I wished I had fewer curves, but now I love the shape they give me.”

I suspected that Mary Ann thought I would be more critical of my body, and I hoped I was providing a contagious model of self-love, even though that wasn’t the main purpose of the exercise. With Mary Ann, as with all clients, my goal here is to model an honest appraisal of a body and to examine the many factors that contribute to our body image. Still, I had come to a point where I was at ease with my body, and I thought it would be nice if some of that rubbed off on the hypercritical Mary Ann. I was trying to integrate permission, that is, to let Mary Ann know that it was permissible to like and respect a body that is flawed.

“My legs are long and muscular and they have a nice shape. I like that my thighs are strong, but I don’t like how chubby my inner thighs are. I wish my calves were larger. They seem out of proportion with my thighs. My ankles are narrow and I think that’s nice. I like the way they look when I’m wearing a skirt and high heels. I like the shape of my feet and how my toes are slightly bowed. Overall, I think I have an attractive, strong body and I am proud of it. If I were to change anything, I would lose a few pounds, but that may not happen because I hate to diet and I love to eat.”

Mary Ann and I smiled at each other. I sat on the bed next to her.

“Ready to try it?” I asked.

She nodded, got up from the bed, and stood in front of the mirror.

“Okay. When you’re ready, start with your hair and move your way down,” I said.

She took her long, black hair in her hands and said, “I am glad that I have naturally black, shiny hair. My husband likes it and so do I.”

She traced around her face with her fingertips.

“I think I have a great face now. I had my nose done, so it is smaller and I like that. I’ve been told in the past that I have nice, high cheekbones.”

Her nose looked like a perfectly inverted seven, a shape so artificial that it made me once again wonder about how the notion of perfect has become so divorced from reality.

“My neck still looks young. I wish it were a little longer. I have pretty arms and I like my skin tone over my chest.”

At this point Mary Ann crossed her right arm over her chest and took her left breast in her hand.

“My breasts are beautiful now that I’ve had implants. They used to be too small. When I was a kid I was worried that I would be flat-chested like my mother.”

I wondered what Mary Ann’s original bosom looked like and how she determined it was too small. In my view, it was now too big and out of proportion with the rest of her beautiful body.

“My stomach is nice and flat and I love my small waist.”

Then she placed her right hand over her pubic mound and then the left on top of it.

“From this angle, my vulva looks okay. I’m worried about looking at it more closely, though, because I can feel the difference in my lips and I worry that it is going to be too ugly to look at.”

I suggested she take a deep breath and release it slowly. She closed her eyes. When she was finished, I asked if she was ready to continue and she opened her eyes and stared at herself in the mirror again.

“My hips are in a good proportion to my waist because I exercise so much. I wish my butt was a little bigger. My husband once said he wished I had more to grab onto back there. I’ve thought about having surgery on it. When I was a kid my legs were long and skinny. They looked like stilts and I wished they were shorter. Now, I think they look like a dancer’s legs. I’ve toned them a lot and I love the way they look in tight pants. My ankles and feet are narrow and I like that.” She looked at me to indicate that she was finished. The look on her face was neutral, and I felt that she was honest in her appraisal of her body.

“You did a great job, Mary Ann. I learned a lot about how you feel about your body. Was this helpful for you?”

“Well, it made me realize how much of my body I actually like,” she said.

We chatted a little more and then she put on her tights, skirt, and blouse and I got into my jeans and T-shirt.

“Next time we’ll introduce our vulvas to each other,” I said, and then explained the Sexological to her. This exercise would be different for Mary Ann than it was with my male clients. I wouldn’t invite her to explore my genitals, for one, and instead of me touching her genitals, I would guide her in an exploration of her own vulva.

When Mary Ann arrived for her second visit, she had her hair pulled back into a French twist and she wore a tight grey sweater. She looked as gorgeous as she had in our first session. I hoped that today, when she finally looked at her vulva closely for the first time, she would see that it was as beautiful as the rest of her.

We talked for a while about how she had been since our first session and she said she had thought often about the images she had seen in
Femalia
. I asked her to share some of her thoughts and she said she was still shocked about how different each woman was and she wondered how it was that she had reached nearly forty without knowing this.

“It’s not uncommon. The images we’re used to seeing are unrealistic ones. Most people, no matter their age, are stunned by those photos.”

I asked Mary Ann if she was ready to do the Sexological. She stood up and I led the way down the hall to the bedroom.

We ran through a series of relaxation exercises. We got undressed and I got the hand mirror and pillows from the closet. We crossed our legs over each other’s and I led Mary Ann on a tour of my vulva. I pulled back my clitoral hood and ran my finger around my clitoris. “This is where the smegma we discussed in our last session lives. You can clean it easily by gently retracting your clitoral hood when you’re in the shower and putting a little soap and water around it. But keep soap out of your vagina. It’s self-cleaning and you don’t want to throw off the acid and alkaline balance. It was really a big deal for me to learn about it, even though it seems so simple. It helped me to understand that my genitals weren’t inherently bad or disgusting. I could clean them like any other part of my body and remove the odor they gave off.”

I invited Mary Ann to give me feedback. She said that she thought my genitals looked tiny compared to hers.

“We have different shapes and they’re both perfectly natural. I would even call them beautiful,” I said.

When it was her turn, we switched the position of our legs so that Mary Ann’s rested on mine. I held the mirror in front of her vulva so she could get a close look.

“What do you think when you look at your genitals this closely?” I asked.

“The left is a little longer, but it’s not as uneven as the one picture we saw.”

“Can I guide you in some exploration of your vulva?”

“Okay,” Mary Ann said shyly.

I asked her to hold back her outer labia with one hand so that the other hand was free.

“With your index finger, circle lightly around your vulva,” I said. “Does one side feel more sensitive than the other?” I asked.

“The left.”

“Interesting. It’s not at all uncommon for women—or men—to feel more reactive on one side of their genitals than the other. It’s very natural. Maybe there is a connection with the left side being longer, and maybe not.

“You know, I would guess that other women in your family have similar-shaped labia,” I added.

“So, you think it’s a family thing?”

“It could be.”

Slowly, Mary Ann seemed to be normalizing her labia, getting more comfortable with the idea that an uneven length didn’t mean that there was anything wrong.

I asked her to insert her index finger up to her first knuckle into her vagina and explore her G-spot.

“I worry that I might not have one,” Mary Ann said.

“Not every woman is extremely sensitive in that area. It’s talked about so much that it easy to believe that all women are, but if you’re not that’s perfectly natural. It doesn’t mean that anything is broken or wrong. Just as genitals can look different, they can respond differently as well, despite what you’re led to believe.”

Mary Anne inserted her finger into her vagina.

“Okay, now hook your finger up toward your pubic bone. Gently feel around and see if there’s any spot that feels more pleasurable than another. If there isn’t, don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong. Again, not all women have G-spot sensitivity.”