Then she’d look back at the cage, the only home she’s every known. She’d look at the smiling zookeepers, the bored spectators, and her panting, bouncing, begging best friend, the Lab. She’d sigh and say, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.”
I’d say:
Tabitha. You are not crazy.
You are a goddamn cheetah.- Excerpt from Glennon Doyle's book Untamed
The first memory I have of being “tamed” begins the summer of my 2nd grade year. I grew up in a small town where the only thing to do on a hot summer day was to head to the pool to swim and then get a snow cone at Tropical Sno afterward. My best friend and I at the time would wake up super early and spend our days waiting until the clock hit 12:50 PM because that meant we could hop on our bikes and ride them to the Denison Aquatic Center just in time for the doors to open at 1:00 PM.
Prior to the pool season, I remember extensively debating with myself, as well as my best friend, as to whether or not I should get a two piece or a one piece swimsuit that summer. The little girl in me knew I would be more comfortable in a one piece, as I still had baby fat, and wasn’t sure if I was ready to expose that part of myself to the world yet, and yet, the unstill part of me wanted a two piece because even at age SEVEN that was the appropriate and cool thing to do as a girl. You can probably guess what part of myself I listened to, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blogpost right now.
I ended up going with a two piece. The top landed a little above my belly button while the bottoms fell a couple inches shy of it. I was everything (insecure, uncomfortable, hungry, scared, annoyed) but confident in that swimsuit. I would spend an hour or so in front of the mirror in the swimsuit, prior to heading to the pool with my best friend, and just stare. I would pinch the fat on my stomach just to see how much I could grab and think thoughts like “Why can’t you have a smaller build? Why aren’t you skinnier? You shouldn’t be wearing this.”
I remember limiting my food intake specifically on pool days. If I was going to the pool, I wasn’t going to eat beforehand with the hopes that I may look a little skinnier at the pool. I also may want to be like a normal kid, and get a snack at the concession stand after swimming, so I wouldn’t want to “overdo” it beforehand. In case you’ve gotten engulfed in the story and need a reminder, I want to restate to everyone that I was SEVEN years old. At age SEVEN, I was already being told how I should look, what I should eat, what I should wear and how I should be. I was SEVEN experiencing firsthand society’s powerful encouragement of what was deemed sweet, normal, appropriate, cute, soft and tranquil for a little girl. I was listening to those voices. When I had barely just learned how to read, how to tie my shoes, how to ride a bike and other activities, I was being told that the body and brain that allowed me to excel at those activities were not quite enough.
Being “tamed” can be defined as making one less powerful or easier to control. As women, we spend our entire lives either forcing ourselves to live inside the cage which traps and suspends our possibilities and power, or we spend our entire life living outside of that cage to receive criticism and judgement for being “too bold, too direct, too wild, too daring, too much.” When we live outside of the cage, we often question whether or not what we’re doing is “normal,” and we often times might want to gravitate back towards that cage where it was extremely miserable and boring, but a little safer and a little more certain.
I’ve always been a pretty strong and bold woman from an outsider’s perspective, although I do have my insecurities (trust me). Needless to say, being “untamed” does not come without fear and questioning, and I am far from reaching a true state of wild. I am authentic and genuine, and yet the little voices in the back of my head always question whether or not I’m “womanly” enough or rather whether or not I’m “tame” enough. Similar to my seven year old swimsuit story, there have been several other instances in which society has “tamed” me and I have let them. I will name a few:
1) Being told that I couldn’t try out for flag football in 6th grade because it was a “boy’s sport”
2) Being told that I couldn’t cut my hair short because it wasn’t a “girl’s hairstyle”
3) Having sex with men after telling them “no” because it was just easier to succumb than to persist and hold firm a boundary
4) Making myself consistently puke after every.single.meal for a solid year in college because I wanted to silence the physical and emotional hunger, yet didn’t want to experience the repercussions of eating “bad” food
5) Being told I’m not girly enough because I prefer kicking a soccer ball to painting my nails
6) Being asked if I’m a lesbian because I can cuss just as loud and shoot the shit just as well as the guys in the military
7) Being told I was too sexual, yet not sexual enough, and shutting out the voice that encouraged the exploration of my sexuality
Those are just to name a few times society has “tamed” me. I am not sure that being “untamed” is a constant state, but rather a fluid one we are all working on and fighting to reach one day. A journey in which we listen to our inner voice and follow it so we can be true to ourselves and become the very best version of that true self. Some of us will never flirt with the idea of leaving our cage because we are too comfortable with what we know or too scared of the unknown. Others of us will leave the cage to return after a short period of time because we let the critics and skeptics take away our voice and power; the wild was fun for a while but the predators within the wild were just a little too much to handle. And a rare few of us, yet I wish it was all, will leave the cage, release our claws, run with our hair in the wind, our backs to the cage to never return, and to face the scary, overwhelming jungle where we were born to be. All of us were born to be cheetahs; let's be goddamn cheetahs.
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