Purity Culture, and Male Entitlement to Women’s Bodies
My fellow youth group member grabbed my wrist and linked his fingers around it. He yanked my arm upward to show my bony arm to his friends. “Guys, did you realize how small these wrists are? I can touch my thumb and pinky!”
One by one, like an animal in a petting zoo, my arm was pulled this way and that as several different people tested their hands against the size of my wrist. “Gosh, you need to eat more!” “Look at that!”
I was 16 years old, 5’8″ and 110 pounds. I’d always been skinny. I was used to people commenting on it, but this act of grabbing my body as though it was an object was a new experience for me. It was as though the wrist they were holding wasn’t attached to a person, but an oddity all on its own.
Later that same day, the boy who’d grabbed my wrist instructed another girl that she needed to sit more like a lady and pull her skirt down over her knees.
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