surferlove007

This is a tough topic for me to discuss with myself, let alone JStrider or anyone for that matter. Growing up I dated this guy at 16 and when we slept together I had heard afterwords that he was making fun of how I looked downtown to alot of his friends from school. Immediately I cut things off only to be made fun of, humiliated, and what feels like permananently scarred from such an experience. Details. He told his friends I had a weird looking vagina because I had larger labia...leading to them calling me and texting me leaving awful messages. Was called beef lips, venus-fly-trap, and several other just very humiliating names. Made me think something was wrong with how I looked and emotionally scarred me till current times. It was such a tramatic experience at that age, makes it hard to open up. I don't feel comfortable being naked even with JS, I always want to have something covering me because I feel ashamed. I do hope a large number of girls have NOT gone through an emotionally scarring experience like this. Women have so much judgement passed on them already, these sort of things are just too much to handle in some cases. To be ridiculed for one of the most private parts of your body is a terrible thing, I don't know how to overcome the mental wall my mind put up about myself. I'm happy with myself except for my vagina, I just feel like its ugly and I don't want to look at it. I want/need to somehow get over tis mental block. It is so unpleasant and painful to think about. This guys friends would taunt me at school calling me beef lips in the hallway and just making fun of me and I don't know how to get over that humiliation. Since that event I haven't been completely comfortable being naked with anyone, not even myself to an extent. *Sigh*
Advice....stories?
I understand this is avery sensative area, but if anyone has had a similar experience and found a way through it, advice would be so helpful.

little_tippler

Well, I haven't had this problem, and I don't think that it's that common to be taunted by boys about something like that. It sounds particularly cruel and I'm sorry you had to go through that. School is hard enough without a problem like that...

Even though that kind of teasing of sometihng so personal is probably not a common occurrence, I'm pretty sure most girls are unsure about how they look down there. I mean it's not like we go around looking at other girls' bits closely to check what is most common or not. I think pretty much most girls are similar, it's like faces, we all have the same features but some have bigger noses, smaller eyes, rounder cheeks and so on.

Try to remember that this guy was most likely being spiteful and decided to do so in a terrible way - at 16, he can't have known very much about women anyway. Women come in all sorts of different forms and there is no better or worse. There is only preference, some men like it one way or another, and others will love you for who you are.

I have seen your threads in tilted exhibition and you have a beautiful body, I'm sure your vagina is as beautiful. At the end of the day, be happy with what you have, and though the humiliation must have been awful, it's up to you to be strong now and have confidence in your body. No-one can take that from you unless you let them.

Just so you know, I have been taunted in school about other things, not the same as you (being so skinny people would ask am I anorexic, being mocked because of having too much hair in places, being mocked because of wearing glasses, braces, having weird hair, small boobs, being told I'm so ugly no-one would ever want me...school was not kind to me either), so I do know to some degree what it's like to have hang-ups about physical appearance that never seem to go away. Some are still with me to this day...but don't let them tie you down. Just live your life fully and with no holding back, that's the best antidote.

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

mixedmedia

Adolescence can be difficult. And adolescents can be cruel and unthinking. I had my own experience with boys and talk and humiliation in junior high school. I was labeled a "Slut." Stuff about me written in the bathrooms, names yelled at me in the hallways, shunned by my girlfriends...the works. Of course, it was an exaggeration...something that snowballed way out of proportion. But that didn't prevent it from stigmatizing me for years. I know that it scarred me emotionally as I went on in the following four years to make choices in my sexual life that, frankly, I'm probably pretty fortunate that I made it through intact.

All I can offer you in the way of condolences is to let you know that it will fade. As you become more self-possessed you will be able to let it go. You will realize that, at that age, people say things like that just to be hurtful...not out of any basis in truth. You are a beautiful young woman and I think any grown man with an ounce of maturity will tell you that there is no such thing as an ugly vagina. It just goes further to prove what idiots kids can be at that age.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Sage

I totally agree with the other posts, that kids that age are idiots. However, you do have residual bad feelings about one of the most intimate and enjoyable parts of your body. I dated someone who made me feel down about how I looked in general, and it took a good year into my marriage to really get over that. Healing takes a long time.

Have you ever thought about going to counseling about this? Obviously it's an issue that still bothers you, years later, and is affecting your life on a daily basis (which is never good). Talking to a professional would help a lot in my opnion. Another thing that helped me really realize how beautiful my whole body is was looking at porn- lots and lots of it, not just the "Blonde with big boobs" kind of porn. Seeing two or three hundred vaginas will show you just what kind of variety there is between women.

Personally, my inner labia are two very different legnths- one's short and cute, the other one sticks out from between my outer labia like a tounge. There's times I don't like the way it looks, but my husband always reminds me that really, it doesn't matter at all what it looks like- he loves me for me (just like JS loves you for you) and not for what I look like.

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cellophanedeity

ghoastgirl1, every vagina is beautiful and lovely, and what those boys did to you was abuse. It wasn't just kids being mean and childish, it was genuine abuse. I'm so sorry to hear that you needed to go through something like that.

maleficent

A gentleman caller would like to respond with this:

A link to Documentary of Free Vagina Pictures? "The truth should be known -- Vaginas come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors. All of them are normal and functional human variations."

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Sharon

Sage's idea about looking at lots of different women is interesting (and of course a great excuse to just watch porn, not that an excuse is really needed), but in my case I find myself comparing my worst assets to other women's best assets. Does that happen to anyone else too?

Sweetpea

teenagers are cruel and often feel insecure with themselves, so they pick on anyone who they view as "different." I'm sorry that happened. I myself was picked on because I was a very chubby teen, so I know what it's liked to have others look down on your just because your apperance is different.

vaginas do come in all different shapes, there is no "normal." One look at the Titty board on here can confirm that all women are shaped differently and the coloring is often different on each woman as well.
I often felt self conscious because my labia is darker in color than the very light pink vagina's that I had seen in a few playboy magazines. Shortly after I got into porn (I am bi after all lol) and realized that every woman is different and it's all beautiful.

just be proud of yourself and know you're a beautiful woman inside and out. respect yourself as a unique individual.

sp

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Pip

It's not just kids. When I was 14, my sewing teacher told me, offhand, that I would be passably pretty if it wasn't for my crooked knees. I had never thought about my knees before, but then all of a sudden I hated them. They really are crooked! It wasn't until a few years ago that I managed to go outside in something that didn't cover my knees.
And I have "meat curtains" as well. When they started growing out I was convinced something was wrong with me, that it was some weird form of cancer or something. I even thought about numbing myself with ice and cutting off the dangliest bits. (Okay, stupidest kid award goes to... 13-year-old Pip.) I second/third/four? the opinion that watching a lot of porn is very reassuring. Now I like my dangly bits.

Supple Cow

God. ghoastgirl1, this utterly infuriates me, and not just because you are a beautiful person and his statement was untrue. I hope all of the comments you receive in this thread (mine included) help you realize the scale of what happened to you - both how colossal it was (as in how wrong that idiot and his friends were) and how small it is.

I was lucky, I suppose, because I grew up with a set of best friends who did do kind of weird things like compare our lady parts. I remember being shocked at how different they all looked, but it never occurred to me that one mound should be prettier or better than another. At the same time, I had many similar experiences and your story reminds me of one event in particular. Maybe I was just lucky to have a cultural lense help me to see the situation for what it was.

I was kind of a tomboy as a kid and when I was 14, I decided I would wear a dress to school for once. That day, a boy who played in the band with me looked at my legs and said, "Hey you have pretty nice legs. You almost look like a white girl... that's probably what you were going for, right? Well, your legs are pale enough, but then you get to your dirty-looking feet and you can tell you're just a filipino girl." He was smiling derisively the whole time because he knew what he was saying would be hurtful and insulting. I wanted to (and excuse my language here) fucking punch him in the face, scratch his goddamn eyes out and shove the mangled eyeballs up his filthy, rotten ass. Instead, I just ignored him. And yet that didn't make it not hurt.

I obsessed over it for a long time, but in the end, there was nothing to be done about my feet and hands. My skin is just dark around my nails because of genetics. When I don't trim my cuticles in over a week, they start to look dirty (though I cringe to use the same word). Does that have anything to do with who I am? Nope. Can I change my genetic make-up? Oh no. The conclusion was clear once I thought about it enough - he was a dumbfuck and I had to let it roll off my back the best I could. Obviously, the situation can require a little more maintenance when it's your vagina instead of your feet.

Sage makes a great suggestion if you have the resources for it. I used to go to counseling because my university offered it for free and I had some issues (like everyone) that I could stand to talk about with a trusted professional. When my old roommate first suggested it to me, I balked at the thought and was insulted. 'Wow, I'm pretty obsessive about the way I think about this stuff, but I mean, I'm not crazy or anything. It's not like I need a shrink like that really crazy girl I know - what a nutcase! Hahahahahaahahah.... but not me. Nope, no thanks. I'm normal. No therapy for me. I know, my roommate must just be so crazy that she's projecting it onto me to make herself feel better!' You might be having a similar reaction now. (In fact, that's very likely.)

Again, after I thought about it for a while, I realized that counseling was just another tool, despite any stigmas attached to it. Nobody was going to do anything against my will and nothing terrible would come from just giving it a try. It just took me a little while to get over the idea that my "crazy" roommate might be trying to make herself feel better by dragging me into the mud and see that she had a genuinely good suggestion.

It may seem like I'm rambling, but I tell you all of this for the same reason. Lots of bad stuff can happen to us in life, and unfortunately there isn't a damn thing we can do to change most of it. The only thing we can change is what we do with the stuff we can change: namely, our outlook. You can choose to be a victim your whole life, or you can choose to take control. You are already taking control by posting here and asking for information and commiseration. You can take more control by seeing a counselor if you so choose. You can take more control than you think you can, and you can have more control over your life every day. You just have to get all the information you can, decide what's best for you (and this is the part that doesn't come easily to most because a lot of people interpret "you" to mean "all the people in your life and what they say about you"), and do it. Research, set a goal, and go get it - it's as simple as that. It's not always easy, but it sure is simple.

__________________
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
(Michael Jordan)

lurkette

Wow, I love the vagina gallery - it's refreshing to see so many different shapes and colors. Who the fuck started this expectation that all vaginas should look like that of a prepubescent girl? One, that's kind of sick, and two, shame on them! And shame on us for buying into it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find some Georgia O'Keefe paintings to look at

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

maleficent

a gentleman caller volunteers:
another fine gentleman weighs in with:

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Sweetpea

supplecow, wow, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.

sp

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"I am the Type of Person Who Can Get Away With A lot, Simply Because I Don't Ask Permission for the Privilege of Being Myself"

JustJess

Two thoughts:
One, Sage, you have my pussy! (Hahahaa, sorry....)

Two: JS is clearly a smarter man. Sometimes, when we can't break our negative thought patterns, it helps to have someone else help us break them. I.e. you can't stop yourself from thinking it, but JS doesn't think it... and you love him, and you know he's got great taste and standards and things.... so maybe he's right. Maybe he can help you see you the way we would see you. You're beautiful just as you are.

As one of my best teachers once told me.... You are enough. We should all try to remember that. We are enough.

:*

__________________
My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talkin'.

Lindy

I came from a large, boisterous, competitive family, so by the time I was in high school, I had a pretty thick skin emotionally. In my small-town high school I was mostly a kind of a goody two-shoes band and choir geek honor roll student, but when I was sixteen, I would fuck (or suck, or jack-off) just about any guy with a dick.
I went out on a couple of dates (not my usual mode) with one senior boy, mostly because had a nice car. He started talking trash to his friends about what a "great piece" I was, and when it got back to me, (no real secrets in a small town) I told a couple of his friends that he woudn’t really even know, because as soon as he got his hands on my tits, he just made a big mess in his shorts, which was true. He never said much after that.
I do remember in school getting teased about my boobs, with their seemingly permanently stiff nipples, but it was never anything malicious, or at least I never took it that way.
At sixteen, I definitely thought that I was pretty hot stuff, and I was absolutely devastated by this older guy I met at work (he was maybe thirty—now I’m thirty, ha-ha) who said I needed to put some meat on my bones. That I was like a twelve year old boy with big tits. I was devastated. I was sure that he’d be hot for me just like a high school guy, but no, he wasn’t even interested. I felt like the fish that gets tossed back in the lake because it’s too small.
Ghoastgirl1, don’t let this guy have free rent on a space in your brain or heart. His opinion just doesn’t matter.

Lindy

Great line about Georgia O'Keefe, lurkette. My Mom saved me a Georgia O'Keefe 100 Flowers Calendar from 1976, the year I was born, and later gave me the poem.

georgia o'keefe

great lady painter
what she do now
she goes out with a stick
and kills snakes

georgia o'keefe
all life still
cow skull
bull skull
no bull shit
pyrite pyrite
shes no fool
started out pretty
pretty pretty girl

georgia o'keefe
until she had her fill
painted desert
flower cactus
hawk and head mule
choral water color
red coral reef
been around forever
georgia o'keefe

great lady painter
what she do now
go out and beat the desert
stir dust bowl
go out and beat the desert
snake skin skull
go out and beat the desert
all life still


from Babel, Patti Smith, 1976

Beyond_Borders

Absolutly agree. WE were born women, all of us beautiful in every way, we were blessed, and nobody is perfect, Normal, is a word that doesnt exist. He was a stupid jerk, trying to show off to his friends. Its really terrible that you got hurt in the process,and i hope you can cope
*hugs*

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