—
We started, back in Part I, with the resources we carry with us into this battle, the resources that stop the bleeding. Here in Part II, we’ve described the tricky nature of this enemy, who tries to convince us it is our ally even as it shanks us between our ribs. In Part III we’ll describe, in concrete, specific detail, how to win. We’ll describe what that daily battle for just a little more ground, just a little more peace, looks and feels like. And we’ll tell you about the personal, practical, and everyday things you can do to grow mighty.
tl;dr:
? The “Bikini Industrial Complex” is a hundred-billion-dollar industry that tries to convince us that our bodies are the enemy, when, in reality, the Bikini Industrial Complex is itself the enemy.
? Bias against people of size can be more dangerous to our health than the actual size of our bodies. And many of the things we do to try to change our bodies make our health worse.
? It is normal—nearly universal—to feel ambivalent about your body, wanting to accept and love your body as it is and, at the same time, wanting to change it to conform to the culturally constructed aspirational ideal.
? Solutions: Embrace the mess. See yourself as “the new hotness.” Practice seeing everyone as “the new hotness.” And tune in to your body’s needs.
PART III
Wax On, Wax Off
6
CONNECT
Sophie refers to herself as a Grown-Ass Woman. She supports herself financially, lives alone, and is your textbook independent female. She takes pride in knowing she can do things for herself, that she doesn’t need anyone. She has family and friends for company, and she enjoys the romantic thrill of dating, but she doesn’t share her life with anyone long-term. She wasn’t all that interested in a relationship.
Until Bernard.
She met him while she was consulting at a big, famous technical university, helping them design more inclusive STEM programs. At the department dinner, she approached one of the few empty chairs, next to a man with frizzy hair.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked.
He looked up at her, clearly distracted by whatever he had been reading, and their eyes locked and she had no idea what he said. His eyes were sparkly and his expression was warm and welcoming. He had freckles. She felt like the earth had shifted out from under her; without any warning, she was suddenly standing in a new place.
He gestured to the empty seat, so she sat. Her stomach was suddenly full of butterflies.
“I’m Bernard,” the guy said, holding out a hand to shake.
When Sophie took his hand, she felt a zing of electricity. She giggled—giggled! The Grown-Ass Woman giggled. It was too late, the giggle was out, and now he would think she was someone who giggled. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath to focus her mind, and said her name.
“I know.” Bernard nodded, friendly and welcoming. Later, he would confess that he was dismissing her as out of his league, and that if he had actually thought he stood a chance with her, he’d have been a nervous wreck.
After the dinner, and throughout her time at the school, Sophie would pass Bernard in the hall with a friendly wave and smile, and there was always that same zing of electricity, the same butterflies.
“Why?” she asked the butterflies. “Why him?”
She had learned that Bernard was divorced, had kids, was therefore broke and laden with emotional baggage and had no time in his life for someone new. That was not what she was looking for. She was looking for laughter and travel and unencumbered fun.
The butterflies didn’t care. “He has pretty eyes!” they enthused.
“There’s a boy,” she finally admitted to Emily. “And there are butterflies. And I don’t understand because I am a Grown-Ass Woman. I don’t need this man and all his problems in my life.”
Emily said, “Well, the science says—”
Sophie interrupted, “Emily Nagoski, you are not going to tell me the science says women need men. You, the feminist, the sex educator, the science nerd, are not going to tell me that science says women aren’t complete without men.”
“Oh geez, of course not!” Emily said.
“Good,” Sophie said.
“But,” Emily pressed, “the butterflies know something you don’t.”
This chapter is about what the butterflies know.
* * *
—
“When you were little, who held you when you cried?”
That’s the question therapist and researcher Sue Johnson asks her clients.
If she were a nutritionist, Sue might ask, “When you were little, what did you eat when you were hungry?”
People who grew up in a home where food was abundant, nourishing, and free of guilt and shame can answer that question with pleasure. People who grew up in homes where food was either scarce, low in quality, or laden with guilt and shame would answer it very differently, would feel very differently just thinking about it.
Social connection is a form of nourishment, like food. Just as our early experiences shape our present-day relationship with food, so our early experiences of connection shape our present-day relationships with other people. Our specific nutritional needs change over the course of our life-span, but the fundamental need for food does not; similarly, our need for connection changes across our life-spans, but our fundamental need for connection does not. And the culture we live in constrains the food choices available to us. Same goes for connection.
Being alone as an infant isn’t just lonely; it’s a matter of life and death—and it’s not just that babies die if they aren’t fed and kept warm and held out of reach of predatory carnivores. Babies can literally die of loneliness itself, even if their other needs are met.1 Contact with another person is a basic biological need; loneliness is a form of starvation.
Even as adults, connection nourishes us in a literal, physiological way, regulating our heart rates and respiration rates, influencing the emotional activation in our brains, shifting our immune response to injuries and wounds, changing our exposure to stressors, and modulating our stress response.2 We literally sicken and die without connection. A 2015 meta-analysis, encompassing seventy different studies and over three million research participants from around the globe, found that social isolation and loneliness increased a person’s odds of an early death by 25 to 30 percent.3 In describing the results of a 2018 study on the health impact of loneliness, a chief medical officer for an insurance company described loneliness as having “the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.”4 Also in 2018, the United Kingdom’s government created a Commission on Loneliness, framing it as a public health issue with the same health impact as living with a chronic disease like diabetes.5 Residing in the beating heart of every adult human is that infant who will literally die if she isn’t connected with other people.
And yet the “common wisdom” is that individual development should be a linear progression from dependence to autonomy. When psychologists began formulating theories about human development, they concluded that it’s “immature” to depend on others. The best, strongest, sanest, smartest, and most grown-up people, they said, are the ones who don’t need anyone to do anything for them.