Op-Ed: Far Too Young
This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of PERIOD.
I first realized that I had boobs during a Spirit Week capture the flag game in the third grade.
I was standing on the end line of my school’s tiny gymnasium, wearing my favorite shirt at the time–a maroon quarter-sleeve shirt. Adrenaline was racing through me. I was going to do it. I was going to race across the half court line like a ferocious cheetah, bob and weave through my opponents like a pinball, and capture the flag. I would return victoriously to my team, waving the flag (a bean bag, actually) triumphantly.
Before my gym teacher could blow her whistle, I briefly glanced down at my shoes, making sure that they were tied. What I saw wasn’t just shoes. I saw two lumps on my chest, and with curious hands, I hesitantly touched them. “I think they’re called boobs. I heard about them on TV,” I thought to myself. That day, I was a winner for three reasons: I was a nine year old child bursting with youth and promise, I successfully captured the flag, and I had boobs. I was victorious, ready to celebrate numerous accomplishments. That was the proudest moment of my life so far–when I realized that I had grown boobs.
A year later, I was not so jubilant when I first encountered Aunt Flow. My lack lack of celebration was somewhat justified; my menarche came on my tenth birthday. And this wasn’t just any birthday. My parents had booked the local roller skating rink for my party. Boobs were great, but this party was the best moment in my decade-old life.
I got an early gift that day–blood in my underwear. I wish I could say that I had some type of humorously dramatic reaction like that one woman who, when she got her first period, booked her own funeral, but my approach was fairly mature. I immediately told the other menstruator in my house, my mom. I imagine that most black mothers, from the start of their motherhood, have three speeches planned for their children: The N-Word Talk, the Sex Talk, and the Period Talk. At ten years old, I received my second talk about the beauty of my menstruation. I was fed the classic platitude, “You’re a woman now!” At ten years old, holding a pad in my one hand and my roller skates in the other, I did not want to be a woman. I wanted to be a child.
According to Family Education, African American menstruators experience their periods on average at 12.2 years, while white menstruators don’t see their periods until on average 12.9 years, a difference of nine months. On average, menstruators begin menstruation as early as 9 years old or as old as 15 years old. While those nine months may not seem significant, they are. A nine-month difference is what made me get catcalled during my tween years. A nine-month difference is what made me feel like an aberration when most of my classmates got their periods at 12 while I had been shoving my pads to the bottom of my book bag since I was 10, afraid one of my classmates would discover my red and bloody secret.
The rug got pulled from underneath me–or, should I say, the flag got stolen from me–when I was forced to come to terms with my curves. At 11 years old, I was at the peak of my tomboy phase: it was graphic tees from JCPenney and Hot Topic, Chuck Taylor sneakers, board shorts, and listening to Paramore albums while watching reruns of Invader Zim. I was in my prime. When I think back to those days, I wonder if I dressed like that because I was ashamed of my puberty, ashamed of my body, ashamed of myself. I’d like to think I was a tomboy because I enjoyed it, but I have my doubts. It was my grandfather, thoughtful and kind-hearted, who pointed out that I had a butt.
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I was visiting my parents’ homeland for another family funeral. They’re from the West Indies, the tropics, so it’s always swelteringly hot. I’m walking around my grandparents’ home in a tank top and shorts. I think nothing of it. Having seen attire, my grandpa remarks to my mother he can’t believe that I’m grown now, but I’m not grown. I’m 11 years old, wearing a tank top and shorts not to display my fabulous figure (as I describe it as now), but because it’s 90 degrees and graphic tees and board shorts are not an option.
My grandpa is not a predator for noticing my developing (ass)ests when I was eleven than my mom was for telling me that I was now a woman when I was ten. We, black women, black menstruators, are used to it. We become women long before we ever have sex or long before we ever choose to become women. We never become women of our own volition. Society chooses when we do for us. We are sexualized before our first kisses and are called grown before we have had our first loves.
Society loves the black bodies we come in, but it rebukes the complex women who inhabit those bodies. Society wants the flag but will not actively try to capture it. Black women and menstruators may get to capture the flag before puberty, but we do not know the bliss of victory afterward because we’re placed in jail thenceforth. Black women are only children when our bodies, not our minds or spirits, still look like a child. You tell me: if a ten-year-old child does not look like a child, then what does a child truly look like? A 31-year-old Olympic swimmer named Ryan Lochte.
I should have sobbed when I developed boobs. I should have screamed when my menstruation began. I should have howled when I realized that I had a figure. My mom’s speech informed me about periods and pads, calendars and underwear, pain and Midol pills, but she told me nothing about the shame that society reaps upon a menstruator for their sacred and beautiful natural cycle. While shopping for training bras and panty liners, she did not warn me that society would use my adolescence as a weapon against me. Just being me resulted in dirty glances and catcalling, boys loving my figure but not me, my “aunt” telling me to close my legs when I was crouching down as I dug in the dirt because she could see my underwear–I was six. All I ever wanted was the flag of innocence. Instead, I got domination and precociousness.
To this day, I am still trying to recapture that flag. I want to recapture that time when I was at my proudest.
In the black community, there is a phrase of “acting womanish.” Acting too grown. Acting too outspoken. It is usually applied to young girls. How can our community expect black women to be anything but grown when childhood has always been out of our grasps? Womanish or not, my breasts, my curves, my menstruation are my strengths. Then by those definitions, every black woman is womanish. We’re always perceived as too much of something negative, and we’re never too much of something positive. We’re never too caring, intelligent, hardworking, but always too loud, too black, too ugly. Too grown. But I say that we’re far too young. We are all far too young.
