Being 34 means different things, because of course it has to mean something. Whether it’s good or bad—usually bad, obviously—it can’t mean nothing. It can’t just be a regular number. Fuck no. We have to keep track of numbers and, more often than not, feel bad about them. Time is loaded with its own range of meaning, and this time, for me, it meant how long I had been absolutely unaware of what the body of a woman really is. Thirty-four years believing I knew. It took half an hour in a European sauna to witness my terrible ignorance.
I have never seen so many naked women for longer than twenty seconds without them trying to cover themselves. My idea of the female body as an adult came from my own and from the ones portrayed in any form of entertainment. Realizing that I didn’t actually know the body of a very old woman, with no bathing suit, no towel, no underwear, nothing between me and their bare bodies, was shocking. For the first time, I was surrounded by raw, real aging.
I had an idea of my body changing, naturally. I’m not an alien. Like any other woman, I started bleeding some random day and haven’t stopped since. Surely that bleeding changed after trying all kinds of IUDs. But I’ve never been pregnant, so change for me has been subtle or intentional. Like when I paid a surgeon to refine my nose. Or a hairdresser to give me a “new look” after a bad breakup. The thing is, I have never been satisfied with my body. Having more or less weight didn’t matter. I always felt the same. Not good.
Seeing old female bodies closely is another level of realization for me. Long, hanging breasts covering half of the lower belly. Small, wrinkled breasts, as if their life were completely extinct, if they still existed at all. I had never seen an amputation caused by breast cancer. I had never seen the result of a mastectomy or a double mastectomy, or how painfully common that is. I never thought aging would change your gaze in a way that makes you look defeated even when you aren’t. It never crossed my mind that the most visible part of the lower body might one day be your knees, not your legs or your butt—because the butt becomes just a line. Walking in the changing room, sitting in the sauna, drying your hair, getting dressed can all be terribly exhausting.
I’m thinking about how ridiculous it is to obsess this much, every day, with every corner of my body, when our humanity won that race before we were born. Is it worth suffering so much over something that has its own will? We all know life is much more than that.
That crowded sauna became a temple of reflection about aging, making me think in compounding terms: whether hypervigilance over my body is something I want to keep investing in until the end of my days. But quickly and almost unnoticeably, I switch into full judgment mode. I start comparing myself to the other younger and slightly older women. I mentally grade them as prettier or not prettier without even realizing I’m doing it. I recognize my latinesse—the one that values and cultivates beauty as the ultimate, superior female quality. Here I am, a Latin woman who has devoted a big part of her energy to her appearance, in a room full of naked women. It is time to perform.
As long as I can remember, how you move, how you sit, how you dress, how you look matters. Especially in the presence of other women. Especially when the context requires wearing less clothing. You must be beautiful. You must look confident. You must be better. And for a moment, I thought I was. Compared to some of them, I “won.” All these years of healthy food, exercise, restriction, procedures, and daily moisturizer had paid off.
But watch out for the others. The taller ones. The skinnier ones. The ones with perfect bone structure and symmetrical bodies. Obsess over them. Over how their vaginas are simply better than yours, without fully knowing why. Look at their unfrizzy yet voluminous hair, even in this outrageously hot sauna. Those washed-out, perfect faces, not wearing a single drop of makeup—something you could never aspire to. And their boobs. Their boobs were drawn by Michelangelo.
Isn’t it insane to think all of this at the same time, carrying the weight of contradictions impossible to resolve?
I am incredibly uncomfortable with the nakedness of all these women because I wasn’t raised in a way where nudity isn’t private, given to, or impure, depending on the context and according to Catholicism. My latinesse comes from a land where many women were taken out of poverty thanks to their beauty, where bodies were groomed enough—sometimes through gifted boob jobs for their fifteenth birthday—to become the perfect illusion that sells desire and prohibition. Something you desperately want to possess, but only if you’re a man with power and money. That latinesse, where beauty is currency, is where I am from. A place where you feel intimidated even by dear friends, cousins, or aunts. But not grandmas. Those are always overlooked.
I don’t know the body of a woman. Being close to those almost twenty comfortable, unbothered women wearing nothing but themselves broke the fantasy I had of how a woman looked in my mind. Perfect. Young. Completely opposite to me. A fantasy built out of distance—out of images on my phone and massive displays—suddenly collapsed under the proximity of nudity.
I’m glad it happened.
Beautiful!