Archive for the 'Body' Category

On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 8, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Mentoring, Sports, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 13 Comments

The New York Times has a preview up today of a long article coming out on Sunday in their magazine: The Uneven Playing Field. It’s by Michael Sokolove, and based on his forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (I’ve pre-ordered the book, and will review it this summer when it comes out.)

In this lengthy adaptation on the Times website, Sokolove writes about what he sees as the extraordinary number of knee (ACL) injuries that are being sustained by female athletes, soccer players in particular. His thesis:

(the epidemic is) part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

The rate (of ACL injury) for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.

At this point, my heart was sinking. Was this going to be anti-feminist ideology dressed up as professed concern for the health of young women? Was Sokolove trying to scare parents into pulling their daughters out of competitive sports? I even wondered if Sokolove was some sort of shill for the anti-Title IX crowd, trying a new tactic in their never-ending crusade to roll back a policy of equal funding for women’s sports. As a passionate sports fan, married to a former club soccer star, I have a deep and abiding commitment to women’s athletics — particularly the “beautiful game” of what the rest of the world calls football.

Happily, reading the article to the end (it is ten pages long) makes it at least fairly apparent that Sokolove is committed to women’s sports. Rather than imploring parents to pull their daughters off soccer teams, he writes sensibly and knowledgeably about the causes of what is undeniably a common problem: catastrophic ACL injuries among young female soccer players. The chief culprits have nothing to do with inherent feminine weakness. Rather, they are two-fold: poor bio-mechanics and the exhausting “club” system in high school and college that leaves many talented girls playing a demanding sport literally year-round. Continue reading ‘On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article’

Nouns, not adjectives: Caroline Heldman and young women’s self-objectification

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 28, 2008
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Eating disorders, Mass media and Sexuality
. 8 Comments

The new issue of Ms. Magazine hits the stands tomorrow. Of particular interest is an article by Caroline Heldman, assistant professor at nearby Occidental College: Out-of-Body Image: Self-objectification—seeing ourselves through others’ eyes—impairs women’s body image,mental health, motor skills and even sex lives. (It’s not available online; you will need to splurge for the magazine, which is well worth doing. A subscription is better. Ms., Bitch, and MakeShift are the three indispensables of feminist publishing.)

Heldman:

A steady diet of exploitative, sexually provocative depictions
of women feeds a poisonous trend in women’s and
girls’ perceptions of their bodies, one that has recently been
recognized by social scientists as self-objectification—
viewing one’s body as a sex object to be consumed by the
male gaze. Like W.e.b. DuBois’ famous description of the
experience of black Americans, self-objectification is a
state of “double consciousness…a sense of always looking
at one’s self through the eyes of others.”

In my work as a youth minister and as a women’s studies professor, I’ve seen this phenomenon grow seemingly worse in recent years. Paris Hilton’s remarks about sexualiy and her own self-objectification resonate; in 2005, she remarked that her titillating image is a product of her sexy sense of style, and in reality her boyfriends have commented on her less than rampant libido. She says, “I’m sexual in pictures and the way I dress and my whole image. But at home I’m really not like that. In other words, her sexuality is largely performative, almost entirely a response to an outsider’s gaze and not an expression of her own inner longing for anything other than validation. I’ve brought up this insight of Hilton’s with some of my students, and seen a variety of reactions, ranging from surpise to vigorous nods of recognition. Continue reading ‘Nouns, not adjectives: Caroline Heldman and young women’s self-objectification’

FUSS, bikinis, and board shorts: Passover teen ministry by the pool

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 21, 2008
in Body, Eating disorders and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

It’s 5:48AM Pacific Time, and I’ve been up for nearly three hours. I’m in Miami International (the appropriately acronymed MIA), which may be the worst major airport in America. I’ll be home, Lord willin’, in time for my night class. It will be a very long day.

We spent this past weekend at a Passover gathering with the Kabbalah Centre International here in Florida. I’m happy to report that the number of practicing Christians participating in Kabbalah Centre events continues to grow each year; I had many conversations over the past few days about the ways in which faith in Christ and the study of this ancient practice intersect. (An old post about the compatibility of Christianity and Kabbalah is here.)

I’ve been working with the teens in the Kabbalah Centre, continuing a role I’ve been honored to play in several different churches. And Saturday afternoon, before the first Seder began, we gathered about a dozen of them by the pool on a warm Florida afternoon for some conversation. The story of the Passover is multi-layered; it is a historic remembrance of the Hebrew people’s escape from slavery in Egypt — and much more. During this afternoon chat, we talked about our own “personal Egypts” and what we each longed to overcome. Passover is a reminder of the possiblity for both collective redemption and individual transformation. Focusing in on the latter, we asked each of the teens to share a little bit about what they wanted to “pass over and out of” this year.

It was a normal enough session, save for the fact that we were all in bathing suits. I remembered the last time I led a youth group discussion in a beach setting, several years ago. The discomfort and awkwardness was palpable then, and it was present on Saturday as well. So I gently steered the conversation right to that difficult place. Continue reading ‘FUSS, bikinis, and board shorts: Passover teen ministry by the pool’

No break from the “heavy beast”: on teaching, the body, and the danger of triggering

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 19, 2008
in Body, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy and Teaching
. 3 Comments

In my Humanities class on “Beauty and the Body”, we’ve been comparing some of the various theories about the etiology of modern eating disorders. It’s a lot of ground to cover: medical models, cultural models, psychological models. (Today, we begin talking about Courtney Martin’s wonderful new book: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.) It’s a tough class to teach for many reasons, not the least of which is that so much of the material is automatically triggering for some who are already struggling with “body issues.”

Over the last two lectures, I’ve been talking about everything from Western mind/body dualism to the Mosaic law to Sigmund Freud. The basic case is simple: much of our culture, for a variety of historical reasons, teaches us the Gnostic notion that the soul, our truest self, is imprisoned in a corrupt and foul body. The “heavy beast” that is always with us is our flesh, but these voices tell us that the “real self” is somewhere deep inside, an ethereal spirit locked in a corporeal cage. The notion that the body, with all its effluvia and its frailties, is disgusting and offensive is deeply rooted in several strands of the Western tradition. And these strands all contribute to a contemporary culture in which self-denial becomes virtue. After all, to pick the anorectic example, a woman who starves herself to the point that her periods stop and her bowel movements become very infrequent has, in a very real sense, given herself an illusion of mastery and purity. If the body’s demands and emissions are dirty, then self-starvation becomes not only about self-denial but about ritualized cleansing and transcendence. Continue reading ‘No break from the “heavy beast”: on teaching, the body, and the danger of triggering’

Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2008
in Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Memories, Men and Masculinity, Penis, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

I count fellow Angeleno and men’s rights advocate Glenn Sacks as a friend, even though he and I are likely to disagree on virtually every issue. I winced a bit, however, at his rather snarky linking to my re-post in praise of erectile dysfunction. Glenn writes:

I guess if it’s humiliating to men, it must be good. Feminist professor/blogger Hugo Schwyzer recently wrote a blog post “in praise of ED.” Schwyzer writes:

“In my Humanities class on the ‘body’ yesterday, I noted in passing that there was much to be said for erectile dysfunction. I have always maintained that men would be far more insufferable than they otherwise are trained to be if the penis was, in fact, a muscle entirely under their control….ED literally softens the penis; it can also figuratively soften a man by forcing him to rethink his allegiance to a cruel and unattainable standard.”

In light of this, it kind of reminds me of an odd interaction I had with Hugo when he was on my radio show a couple years ago. We were discussing something related to sex–I can’t remember what–and I said something like “Of course, Hugo, men’s perspectives change as they get older. Like me, I’m sure you’re not quite the stallion you used to be.”

Hugo is a very nice guy, and it’s hard to get him angry over anything, but he was not happy over this remark. I was surprised, and didn’t quite know what to make of it. Any amateur psychologists out there have any ideas?

Uh, amateur psychologists? Leave your remarks over at Glenn’s place, please.

But my praise of periodic bouts of ED is not rooted in the internalized misandry of which I — and all other male feminists — are regularly accused. It’s rooted in many things, not least my own experience, about which more (because there’s a fair amount of TMI) below the cut. Continue reading ‘Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person’

Revive us again: noting an old post in praise of ED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 13, 2008
in Body, Men and Masculinity and Sexuality
. 6 Comments

In my Humanities class on the “body” yesterday, I noted in passing that there was much to be said for erectile dysfunction. I have always maintained that men would be far more insufferable than they otherwise are trained to be if the penis was, in fact, a muscle entirely under their control. For those who want to read my original post on the subject, here it is.

The money quote: ED literally softens the penis; it can also figuratively soften a man by forcing him to rethink his allegiance to a cruel and unattainable standard.

“We love your look, but lose fifteen pounds”: of modeling contracts, feminist principles, and the elitist politics of personal purity: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 13, 2008
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Favorite Posts 2008, Feminism, Money and Teaching
. 40 Comments

One of my students came to me yesterday with a question. “Carine” is twenty, and has already taken four of my classes here. She’s getting ready to transfer on to a four-year school, and she’s doing so — to my considerable delight — as a women’s studies major.

Carine is an independent student, and has lived on her own for several years. She’s entirely self-supporting, and her parents have contributed nothing towards her college education. (This is a very common story here.) She is taking a full load of classes, and working a great many shifts as a server in a West Los Angeles restaurant. Though the tips are good, she’s barely scraping by. Her twelve year-old Camry is on the verge of complete collapse. Something’s gotta give.

Since she was in high school, Carine has done a little bit of modeling here and there; it’s provided a little extra pocket money from time to time, nothing too significant. But now, with transfer looming and the economy hitting the restaurant business, she’s decided to investigate making her modeling more serious. She has the right look, and earlier this week, she met with one of the better-known agencies in town. They loved her face and her portfolio, and were quite willing to sign Carine to a “conditional” contract. The “conditions”: lose three inches off her hips and drop fifteen pounds off her already lanky frame. The agency would check in her with regularly to assess her “progress”; if she did as she was asked, she could be assured of steady work. There’s no question that taking this contract would make a huge difference to Carine. It will enable her to transfer, to stay on course for her degree (in women’s studies, heaven be praised), to remain independent.

Carine is a self-described “staunch feminist”. She took my women’s studies class and was hooked; she regularly e-mails me for “more books, please!” I send her reading suggestions at a staggering rate, and she ploughs through them just as fast. And Carine, like so many young feminists I’ve known, was worried about whether taking this contract would compromise those infamous “feminist credentials.” She said something like: “I know the fashion industry sends a lot of destructive messages to women. If I lose this weight, do I become part of that destructive message? Am I hurting other women as well as myself?” Continue reading ‘“We love your look, but lose fifteen pounds”: of modeling contracts, feminist principles, and the elitist politics of personal purity: UPDATED’

Shame, mystery, and vulnerability: a very long post about the penis and the longing for acceptance

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 6, 2008
in Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Men and Masculinity, Penis and Sexuality
. 38 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before, this semester I’m teaching my Humanities course on “Beauty and the Body in the European-American Tradition” again. I’ve only taught it once before, four years ago, and frankly, it feels as if I’m teaching it for the first time. I always love the rush of a new course; as much as I enjoy my core Western Civ and Women’s Studies courses, the material is so familiar to me that I long for new challenges from time to time. “Beauty and the Body” certainly brings that.

We’re using a variety of texts in the course, including Susan Bordo’s The Male Body. Her first full chapter, famously, is about the penis. Not the phallus, mind you, that phantom symbol of patriarchy that haunts courses in psychoanalysis and literature. (In the underworld, I will be forced to sit in a Lacan seminar for four hours on Friday afternoons. Ask me how I know that this constitutes hellishness). Bordo is talking about the “real” penis, that flexible appendage which is a source of so much desire, anxiety, pleasure, distaste, and sheer bafflement. And so yesterday afternoon, we had what I rather roguishly enjoy referring to as “penis day # 1″. (My lecture schedule calls for two more over the course of the semester.) More below the cut (hah), and though there are no images, the topic is obviously a, uh, sensitive one. Continue reading ‘Shame, mystery, and vulnerability: a very long post about the penis and the longing for acceptance’

Of sweat and scent: in defense of infrequent bathing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 1, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, Body and Vanity
. 11 Comments

I will be posting on various things in the week to come. I’ve got reviews of a couple of books to put up (including Men Speak Out), and will try and say something intelligent about Planned Parenthood, race, and the complex legacy of Margaret Sanger.

But it’s Saturday, and if I post at all on the weekends, it can’t be about anything too serious. My wife has been in Europe (doing various volunteer things) since last Sunday, and I miss her. She’ll be home in two days time. The stereotype of the generally neat married man who reverts to appalling slobbery when his spouse goes off for a few days is a time-honored one: yes, things are looking a little chaotic around the homestead these days. Newspapers and magazines on the floor; laundry arranged in sensible; adequately folded piles; coffee cups resting on any ledge they can find. And Hugo, unbathed as yet today.

I’ve let go of so many bad habits over the last few years. An earlier incarnation of Hugo on his own would have seen me in a home littered with filled ashtrays. Liquor bottles would have poked their heads out of the trash as well. Bits of clothing and long strands of hair, forgotten and discarded by those whose visit had had but one purpose, would have lingered under chairs for weeks or months. On these scores, all is different now. Continue reading ‘Of sweat and scent: in defense of infrequent bathing’

On seeing the Vagina Monologues again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2008
in Body, Feminism, Sexuality and Theater
. 3 Comments

Saturday night, my wife and I drove out to Cal State Northridge to see a production of the “Vagina Monologues”. Eve Ensler’s play has become a campus standard, traditionally performed near Valentine’s Day (or “V” day, in which the V can stand for Valentine, Vagina, Vision, Victory and an end to Violence against women.) This was the third time I’d seen the play performed. I saw a professional production in Los Angeles in 1999 or 2000, done as a dramatic reading, and saw a very amateur (and technically, unpermitted) performance by some students here at PCC in 2002.

My sister-in-law, Devereau, is a senior theater major at CSUN. To our delight, Dev had what I remember as the most entertaining and powerful of the many monologues: The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy. That particular piece features an explanation of how women from a variety of different backgrounds moan in pleasure, and my wife was very brave as she listened to her baby sister offer a magnificent litany of orgasmic cries, groans, and bellows. Continue reading ‘On seeing the Vagina Monologues again’

Poking, plucking, popping: a note on the compulsive grooming of one’s beloved

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 22, 2008
in Body, Marriage and Relationships
. 23 Comments

Though it is not available online, my post about Andrew Gomez, my student who became the first female-to-male transgendered Homecoming King in the USA, is in the new issue of XY Magazine. XY in America is not to be confused with XY Online, the Australian pro-feminist site run by Michael Flood ( a site, coincidentally, where I have an article or two available). It’s nice to see Andrew’s remarkable story continue to attract attention.

It’s a busy day, and I’m trying to finish a couple of writing projects that have March 1 deadlines, so not much time to blog.

What I did want to touch on is a lighter subject: picking.

I’ve been married four times and lived with a couple of other women for extended periods. (I never did single well, evidently, from the time I was seventeen). And just about every one of the women with whom I have lived in or out of wedlock has developed a fascination with grooming me. Whether it was searching my back for acne or patrolling my beard line looking for ingrown hairs, virtually everyone with whom I’ve been in a long-term relationship has had a strong desire to explore, poke, pluck, and pop various parts of my body. I have never once felt even the remotest desire to reciprocate.

Mind you, I like my wife’s grooming. Though it’s periodically painful to have tiny hairs torn out, zits punctured and so forth, I take it as evidence of affection. It’s obviously a behavior we humans share with a wide variety of our fellow animals; everyone from primates to penguins seems to delight in removing impurities from a loved one’s skin, fur, or feathers. Despite more than twenty years studying or teaching gender and sexuality, I’ve never given much thought to the cultural or psychological implications of this behavior in humans. In my experience, at least, this sort of grooming in heterosexual relationships is rarely reciprocal — it seems to be initiated mostly by the female partner, and is submitted to with varying degrees of willingness by the male. (In the animal kingdom, it does appear to be a gender-neutral behavior, and enthusiastically mutual.) Continue reading ‘Poking, plucking, popping: a note on the compulsive grooming of one’s beloved’

Returning to an old course on the body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 11, 2008
in Body and Teaching
. 0 Comments

I’m back on campus, busy reacquainting myself with my office. Spring semester classes start February 19, and I’ve got syllabi to write (or, at least, update).

In addition to my “bread and butter” Western Civilization courses, I’m teaching my Women in American Society class and a Humanities special course entitled “Beauty, the Body, and the Western Tradition”. Here’s part of my introductory spiel:

This course provides an interdisciplinary look at historical and contemporary attitudes towards male and female bodies. We live in a culture obsessed with beauty and sexuality and power; we also live in a culture in which millions of our fellow citizens are profoundly uncomfortable with their own flesh. This course will ask tough questions about the relationship between the body and the mind, the body and the culture, the body and the state. We will look at how attitudes towards beauty, the body, and weight have changed over the last several centuries in European and American society. Students will be asked to think and write about their own experiences as embodied people, and will be asked to analyze words and (especially) the images they see around them.

Though I’ll be supplementing this reading list, the core four texts for the class are:

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (Courtney Martin)

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Susan Bordo)

The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (Susan Bordo)

Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (Joan Brumberg)

It’s only the second time I’ve taught the course; it debuted in Spring 2004, and for various reasons, I haven’t taught it since. It’s an emotionally challenging course for both me and my students. I have struggled with body issues, disordered eating, and exercise addiction since I was in my teens. My students (who, judging from the class roster, will be largely female) surely will have their own complex and often unhappy stories to tell. And though the academic and the therapeutic are not always mutually exclusive, the class will not be an extended opportunity for each student to process through his or her own issues with the body. Rather, the course offers an introduction to how the body has been represented by medicine, religion, high and popular culture in the Western world since the Middle Ages.

It was a tough course to teach the first time around, and I don’t suspect it will be easier this year. But I am excited about doing this work with my students, collaborating with them to fashion a better understanding of how we got here, to this place where so many of us are filled with anxiety or distaste or shame about our own flesh.

I’ll report, particularly about how my students respond to Courtney Martin’s book, the one new text I’ll be employing.

Men, mortality, stewardship, love

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 2, 2008
in Age, Body, Family, Father, Favorite Posts 2008, Men and Masculinity and Veganism
. 8 Comments

It’s not a conducive time for posting ’round these parts. We leave for the Philippines on Saturday night; we’ll be back on Friday, January 11. I have lectures to prep and packing to do.

My father-in-law died early Sunday morning, and we have been busy with taking care of family and with funeral arrangements. Sunday afternoon, my wife and I spent several hours dealing with the cemetary, the mortuary, and all the minutiae that come with death. I’ve gotten too familiar lately with all the details that survivors cope with in the aftermath of a loved one’s passing.

My Dad died eighteen months ago, at 71. My father-in-law died three days ago at 63. Over and over again, the words “much too young” echo in my head. My father’s father died at only 44 (in a car accident); my mother’s father died at 62. Both of my wife’s grandfathers died relatively young as well. Though the causes were all different, we both come from families where there are plenty of older women — and too few older men. The statisticians tell me that men in America and Europe should live to see at least 72, but for my wife and for me, neither our fathers nor any one of our four grandfathers made it to that age. Meanwhile, all four of our grandmothers made it to at least 80, and most well beyond.

So in addition to the grief over losing a loved one, I’m feeling this week an acute sense of fragility. Some of that is just the reminder — of the sort we always get when we’re confronted with death — of our own mortality. But in my personal experience (and the experience of my family), dying “too young” is a largely male phenomenon. Though some of these deaths were due to poor lifestyle choices, the emotional impression I am left with is that men are somehow more vulnerable than women. Continue reading ‘Men, mortality, stewardship, love’

Off for eight days, and an anecdote about wrinkles: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 18, 2007
in Body and Vanity
. 21 Comments

For my last post before Christmas (I’ll return to blogging December 26 or 27), a little anecdote:

Students say the darndest things.

A woman came into my office last week to talk about her final. After we’d finished talking about her strategy for the exam, she said: “I hope you won’t mind my saying so, but I notice you have a lot of wrinkles for your age. My Dad’s a cosmetic surgeon, and he does great work, and we can get you a really good package. Your wife will love the change, though I’m sure she already loves how you look!”

Now, mind you, this was the second time this year someone had randomly suggested plastic surgery to me. But from a student in my office hours, it was a bit stunning. I thanked her politely, and told her that I loved each and every one of the well-earned, well-deserved lines that cross my face. She smiled and said, “Well, talk to your wife about it!” I assured her I would do so.

I suppose the little dear meant well. And I’ll admit, it stung a bit. I’ve had a couple of moments recently where I’ve looked in the mirror and been taken aback — just for a moment — by how old I look. But that’s more a reaction of surprise than of dejection; it’s akin to being surprised that Christmas is upon us once again, and that it seems to come faster each year.

But barring — God forbid — some sort of horrific disfiguring accident, I’m not going to have any sort of work done to improve my appearance. I have no desire to appear one day younger than my forty years. But of course, I’m a man. Even here, in deliciously vapid Los Angeles, I know that my success as a teacher, mentor, blogger or public speaker has little to do with my perceived youth or looks. I understand that the pressures are much greater upon women, and so I am careful not to condemn those who do choose cosmetic surgery. What I don’t do is give any credibility to the suggestion that the decision to go under the knife is inherently feminist, but that’s a different discussion.

I notice that just this autumn, I’ve picked up some more wrinkles on my forehead and around the eyes. They make me look just a bit more like my father, and that makes me very happy indeed.

A happy holiday to all.

UPDATE: the wonderful Jenell Paris — fellow academic, and with me, one of the founders of the North American Evangelical Gender Studies Association, offers this suggested grading scale. Suggesting plastic surgery is definitely a minus on the Paris Plan.

Ten years ago today…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 13, 2007
in Body and Memories
. 5 Comments

… I got my tongue pierced. (I had had the nipples pierced the year earlier.) The barbell was enlarged a few times over the next six months, but after I cracked two teeth with it in the fall of 1998, I took the darn thing out for good, less than eleven months after I first put it in. It was fun while it lasted.

How long ago it seems.