A bit on puberty
Puberty and what girls should and could be allowed once they hit puberty is being talked about on Twitter today. It has triggered all sort of reactions from people. Some sane and some utterly bizarre.
I’m not here to write about who is right and who is not. I am here to write about what a nightmare hitting puberty was.
Here is what happens to most girls.
Boobies.
One moment you are running around on the playground without a worry in the world, the next day you suddenly have these ginormous fat-filled bags on your chest and you realise they will never go back in. They are there to stay. Only later you will realise that you will spend rest of your life covering them, making sure you don’t ‘reveal’ too much, lest some man who can’t keep it in his pants get excited because you ‘excited’ him.
You know how awkward it is when girls are initiated into the whole ‘bra’ cult? Some girls start wearing them before they get their periods, because, well, human body and particularly woman’s body is full of mysteries.
So when some girls, whose bodies developed faster, start wearing bras, it is a huge scandal amongst other girls? I don’t know about this generation, but ‘humare zamane mein’, a girl who starts wearing a bra was ‘news’. In fact, it was also news when a girl would graduate from wearing a sports bra to a regular bra.
Of course, in hindsight it all seems silly, but imagine the trauma 12–15 year olds had to go through.
And then the periods. Periods are still a nightmare. But there is a whole lot more awareness about them today than it was even a couple of years back. But 11–12 year old girls bleeding every month, coupled with changes in body like growing boobies and being lowkey made to feel ‘embarrassed’ about it by being asked to wear ‘dupatta’ to cover them up — just imagine the whole lot of awkwardness.
This never leaves. This ‘shame’ of puberty continues to haunt some of us even when we grow older and more or less get used to our bodies and ‘accept’ them.
At the end of it, what I want to say is, fuck puberty.
