Sometimes I feel less than a woman. My relative smallness in size means I am less of a person and less of a female person, therefore, less of a woman. The smallness of my breasts makes me less of a woman. My inability to sate my baby’s appetite made me less of a woman. I envied women their larger breasts that overflowed with milky abundance. The narrowness of my hips makes me more of a man. I envied women their wide, child-bearing hips. My elusive fertility makes makes me less of a woman.
My pubescent upper lip hair. That made me less of a woman, more of a wolf or so the boys said as they howled in the playground. And now, that sneaky black hair that sprouts from the underside of my chin. It makes me less of a woman, more of a crone.
Yet the fineness of my fingers makes me more of a woman. And some find smallness to be a greatly feminine thing. And perhaps, I am a misogynist to define my own womanhood and worth as a woman, in purely physical and reproductive terms. I feel less of a woman, according to what I think society wants a woman to be because my inner world is, in large part, constructed by my outer world. I am the beast and the beast is me. Perhaps, then, a wolverine, man-hipped crone is just as valuable to this life as any other being could ever possibly be.
Yasmin Ward 