when your body neutrality is disrupted

I’m twelve and I feel the responsibility of existing in a female body when we are led into the stadium seating in our youth group room, separated from the boys. I eagerly listen, ready for the secret information about relationships and sex that I had always been so curious about, but had always felt withheld.

A petite woman stands at the front, surveying all of us in our rolled up soffe shorts.

"Boys think about sex every 27 seconds" - or something to this effect.

“How can we help them not think about sex so much? How can we make sure we don’t cause them to stumble?”

Of course at twelve, my thought was not, "Why does it matter if they think about sex a lot?" or "Even if we think that's bad, why is that my responsibility as a middle school girl?”

I am petite and small chested so i get to dodge most of the guidelines around cleavage, but i do need to make sure my bra strap isn’t showing (as an ADHD girl, this seems to be a constant struggle). We don’t want to remind the boys that i wear a bra, even if it’s a 32A. The message is clear: how you dress is in direct alignment with your value. Your clothes are an expression of how much you value yourself. Would you dress like that in front of your future husband?

I'm fifteen and at a charismatic, evangelical youth group. i'm wearing a fitted white t-shirt and low rise jeans, held up precariously with a belt on the tightest notch, because it's 2006. A female youth leader, whose name i barely know, takes me aside. She reminds me to be mindful of the boys and their "thought life." There is about an inch of my midriff showing after i raise my hands in worship. I forgot that was the guideline. Is your stomach showing when you lift your hands in praise? Were we worshipping just so we could be sneakily slutty? I check my motives constantly. The thing is, deep down, i do want the boys to notice me. Being jesus-obsessed is not drawing the interest from the boys that i was promised, maybe showing a little bit of midriff will help (it does not).

I am twenty-one, in college, and heavily involved in a ministry to “win high school kids for Christ.” I am very conscious of how i dress, I want to lead by example. Except for one night, i'm meeting up with a guy friend in a different city where he attends college. He's involved in the same ministry. I have a huge crush on him. I wear a dress that pushes my entrenched modesty boundaries, but would be laughable to be perceived as "revealing" if I walked into a frat party. I wouldn't know, i don't go to frat parties.It’s a black dress from urban outfitters, about an inch of mesh around my rib cage. Very 2010s. He kisses me in his car. Did my immodesty lead to my desired outcome? He begins to push my sexual boundaries. I use my words to say no, but my no is ignored. I feel these conflicting desires: wanting to be wanted, wanting to be heard, fear of crossing any lines that i may have to tell my future husband later. Pretty sure this guy is not my future husband, as he ghosts me after this incident. But he does apologize for "giving into lust." I apologize too. For the dress. I sell the dress to Buffalo Exchange for $7 as a symbol of my recommitment to modesty.

I am thirty. I am married and have three children, the youngest is approaching 18 months old. I am learning to be at home in my body for the first time in my life. My faith has been shifting for about a decade, but modesty and purity have stayed deep in my bones. I feel freedom for everyone else, but not yet myself. My husband and i are in asheville with some friends. I wear a crop top for the first time ever. I ask my husband a dozen times if he is okay with me wearing this. I desperately need his permission in this moment, which he freely gives. I wear the crop top and no one seems to notice or care. Perhaps no one is thinking about me as much as i was conditioned to believe. This is a tiny exhale.

I am thirty-one and go for a run in my neighborhood in a sports bra for the first time in my life. My neighborhood is not known for its pedestrian traffic, but i run into a friend and her husband on a rare walk. I'm very conscious of what i'm wearing and hug my rib cage in an attempt to cover up. Her husband looks at me in my eyes and i don't sense any discomfort. I let my guard down a little more. Could it be true that the average person simply did not care?

I am thirty two and for the first time in my life, both confident in my body and rarely thinking about it. This is a hard-earned privilege.

I have been going to the gym consistently for the first time. It's been about nine months. I wear the same "uniform" every time. high waisted leggings and a cropped top. A few inches of abdomen exposed that my neural pathways have been rewired to forget matter. Freedom. I am on the stairmaster, twenty minutes in. Dripping with sweat. A blonde female staffer who can't be older than twenty nervously approaches me. She looks as if she would rather be doing anything else. I take out one of my headphones and give a questioning smile.

Her words spill out like scripture you recite but refuse to marinate in.

"We have a policy that everyone must wear a shirt while working out. Can you put your shirt back on?" She motions towards my sweatshirt that i wore on the chilly walk from the parking lot. I'm sweating but my insides have turned to ice.

I feel certain i have misunderstood her. Am i having that dream where i'm naked in the grocery store? Did i forget to put on a shirt today? Is my adhd that bad? I cautiously look down and am relieved to see my uniform. A ribbed teal top, little bit longer than a sports bra, and black high-waisted leggings. I look back at her and say, "I am wearing a shirt? I bought this in the workout wear section at target?" She replies anxiously, "yeah it needs to be a full shirt." I pause. I ask if it's a health code thing. She shakes her head. "We just want to make sure everyone is comfortable."

I instinctively reply, "well i'm feeling pretty uncomfortable."

I can feel my breathing increasing and it's not just because i have climbed 112 floors on the stairmaster. I remember that this twenty year old did not create this rule, she has just been utilized to enforce it on behalf of a man who did. I have seen this movie before. I know how this works. You send out the female staffer to break the news about your sluttiness so that you don't know which man noticed your immodesty. It's less awkward that way. Surely this is not happening.

I don't put my sweatshirt back on. I tell her that i am almost done with my workout. I tell her that I know this is not her rule, and i ask whose rule it is. She gives me the name of a manager. I thank her and jump off the stairmaster and march my slutty self to the front desk. I, for the first time in my life, ask for the manager. I suppose this is 32. They find me a manager, but i can tell pretty quickly that this isn't who i’m looking for. Wrong name and wrong vibe. Deeply uncomfortable to be discussing this with me.  I can tell he has no vested interest in my apparel. I ask him who came up with this rule and he gives me a name, the same name the female staffer gave. I ask to speak with him. I take a deep breath.

The manager, who we will call Rob, walks into the office. Tall, blue eyed, mid fifties. I'm sitting and he's standing. He smiles and asks what he can do for me, but his tone has an arrogance and condescension that is familiar. I ask him for context on the dress code, and why what i am wearing is not acceptable. He uses the same language, but he says it to me like a stern high school principal. "yes, you need to wear a full shirt."

"Why? Is it a health code reason?"

"No, it has nothing to do with that. We have the rule because that's who we are."

I feel myself bristle at this. "That's who we are." Who the fuck is that, exactly? I realize that this guy is about to be a perhaps unfair recipient of built up resentment towards a culture that gave me a complicated relationship with my body from such a young age.

I ask him to clarify. What is a full shirt, exactly? Can i have one inch of abdomen showing? Two inches? I tell him that i am confused. I am wearing a shirt. I am not indecently exposed. I ask him with a biting tone if he would prefer if i came into his office daily for modesty checks. He replies that i can if that would make me more
comfortable. I hold in the "fuck off" that my brain immediately jumps to.

I look at him in his steely eyes and say, "I want you to say what you mean. You aren't actually saying anything, you keep using vague terms. I want you to stop beating around the bush and say that the rule exists because you want women at the gym to dress how you would deem 'modestly.'" He stutters a retort, but agrees with my statement.

I look over at the first manager, the one who did not appear to have a vested interest in the length of my shirt. I ask him to cancel my membership. I thank him for his time. I stand up and walk out, right past Great Value Mike Pence, without a word.

I know that to many people this will feel dramatic and overreacting. Private businesses make their own rules. I'm sure it looks like i am taking this deeply personally....because i am. And maybe someone else wouldn't, they would just move along. Buy some longer shirts. But for someone who spent a lot of her life trying to find a cute one-piece swimsuit or shorts that were the length of my fingertips, it felt important to not agree that two inches of my midriff showing is a moral issue.

Now, to find a new gym where they allow scantily clad moms (and provide childcare).