During my first gynecological visit, at the pathetic age of 21, something inside of me pinched my feminist nerve. Sometime, while lying there under a tissue paper gown, trembling under fluorescent lighting with my legs propped in stirrups as a stranger became acquainted with the most intimate of my details, I realized that I, as a woman, was pissed.
Before the visit, I sat with my mother in the waiting room as she pretended not to look over my shoulder while I filled out the forms. She stifled a sigh of relief when I sheepishly scribbled “not applicable” to the question inquiring which contraceptive I currently use. My mother kept talking, seeming more nervous than I, explaining that, “The first time is a little painful.” She had my sweaty hand in hers telling me how this was a part of every woman’s life.
Moments later a plump nurse with a disproportionately small nose called my name. She quickly said hello and then immediately asked me to specify the last time I had sex. Then, like a scared cow, I was herded down the hall as they prodded and poked me onto a scale, under the tape measure and into a little room where a freckled lady with a bad perm casually breezed through a series of inappropriate questions, not even looking at me as she wrote my responses. A simple question about my interests and hobbies would have fit nicely in between asking if I ever experience vaginal burning and inquiring about the color of my nipples.
After twenty minutes of explaining to a stranger about my sex life, my weight, my eating habits, my breast size and my menstrual cycle, she gave me a split second of eye contact, and led me down a narrow hallway to a room where there was a tiny paper gown into which I was to change, and then promptly left me alone with only my thoughts and a life-size plastic replica of a human cervix.
I lay there under the glaring yellow lights, beside some very questionable medical instruments and tried desperately to maintain an ounce of dignity. But it was challenging, as I was completely naked with my nipples ripping through the most revealing gown I’d ever worn. I kept my socks on, though. A girl has her limits.
Instantly the door flung open, the doctor laid me back on the hard table, and like a bad prom date, went straight for my boobs. While the doctor felt me up, I couldn’t help but think of my actual bad prom date, who left me halfway through the night, having never once commented on my dress, my make-up, or my hair—all of which I had spent hours perfecting.
The doctor continued to poke around on my body asking random questions about school and the weather, which made me feel a little cheap, small talking through such an intimate moment. When the doctor picked up one of the instruments on the table beside me, one that resembled a caulking gun, I suddenly broke out into jittery conversation in an attempt to stall whatever pain that instrument was about to induce. The doctor rinsed the caulking gun under warm water and explained how the water would serve as a lubricant. And in one quick motion, the doctor placed my feet in the stirrups, lifted the gown up to my chest and proceeded with the most degrading moment of my life. “But Doc,” I nervously laughed, “I hardly know you.”
I screamed out in pain, a little embarrassed, cursing myself for not being a slut; being loose in that moment would have really helped. My cries of pain didn’t faze the doctor. While I was shifting uncomfortably in pain, desperately trying to cover the rest of my body with the thin paper gown and contemplating what that instrument would do, the doctor graciously looked up from my crotch long enough to explain that the wand would be inserted into my cervix and twisted several times so as to get a good sample for testing. Sure, suck my blood, bottle my urine and scrape my cervical wall. But you won’t call me tomorrow.
I just had to lie there and take it. While being scraped from deep inside and staring at a poster on the wall displaying unappetizing images of genital herpes, I started to get mad, really, really mad. I thought about how unnatural this visit was. How scared I felt when a boy in high school pinned me up to the side of his truck and asked if I was afraid of being raped. I thought about how Wes Hartley was always called on in the third grade while my hand just wouldn’t reach high enough. The time I was walking back from a study group and a drunken fraternity guy stumbled up to me, squeezed my breasts and staggered off. How nonsensical it is that women have to randomly bleed out each month. Get yearly pap smears. Treat yeast infections. Examine our breasts in the shower. Buy tampons. Ovulate. Grow babies. Give birth. Fashionably groom our pubic hair. Bleach our assholes. And always, always, always wipe from front to back.
When the doctor was done, I put my pants back on, reached for my bra, and with my head down in what felt like shame (and with KY jelly oozing out), waddled slowly back to the waiting room, where my mother was reading an article titled, “Knowing Your Child’s Sexual Maturity.”
I should have realized then that owning a vagina was going to be a real pain in the ass.
