Even as a teenager, I would find being recorded and watched behind a camera as extremely sexy and satisfying.

But somehow, I also associated it with being shameful.

And today, I think I finally know what dynamics I have been playing with…

A little background

Yesterday, I was at the community poolside, the weather as gorgeous as it gets, not many people around.

I felt so beautiful in my black bikini and I had the idea to record myself dancing

With one of those belly dancing hip scarfs full of gold colored coins.

One that makes noise every time your hips move.

So I went on, I recorded myself and then edited the video, spent hours to match it to a good song, because why not.

I thoroughly enjoyed every part of that creation and then went on to share it on Instagram with more people.

Knowing how much joy I had with this, it was extremely confusing when I woke up with feelings of shame and guilt the very next day – today as I am writing this.

Something I have been feeling almost all my life but never understood why.

Which sent me to think deep… I remember even as a young teenager, I always found being recorded and watched behind a camera as extremely sexy and satisfying.

But somehow I also associated it with being shameful.

And today I think I finally know what dynamics I have been playing with.

What I am about to share does feel highly personal and vulnerable, yet empowering at the same time:

I remember being a very young child and aware of one piece of furniture in the house so clearly: The locked, two door cabinet in the living room, that I was not allowed to touch.

I don’t know if I am alone in this way, but to me that furniture and its contents was at the top of my list of things in the house that attracted my attention, clearly because it had so much secrecy around it.

I don’t know exactly when (certainly still really young, younger than 7), but one day, that cabinet was not locked. When I opened it, I got exposed to something that will impact me the rest of my life: Videotapes (later I also discovered as porn videos) and magazines full of beautiful girls in a bikini or just naked, posing in ways I couldn’t yet understand.

To a little girl who is exposed to sexuality for the first time, it was exhilarating. I don’t know if it is because a naked body is indeed very natural anyway or because I deeply knew how my dad reacted to this content. My dad <whom I dearly loved> used to come home from a long tiring day at work, visibly very stressed and after dinner would lock himself to a room to somehow interact with the contents of this secret cabinet and clearly he seemed to find great enjoyment from it. Via transmission (aka. deep observation of a loved one), I also intimately got to know that sexuality & a woman’s body was associated with good feelings, likely a release of sorts. On the other hand, I made another important connection through one other person, none other than my mom: Her visible frustration every time dad interacted with the cabinet (cue the sexual issues in their marriage) and eventually her expressing strong feelings with me, of “disgust” and “despise” with everything to do with this cabinet.

Only now I do understand that I associated a “woman’s body” (especially boobs and butts), “sexuality” and “feelings of sexual nature” with “shame, secrecy and guilt” through this process my little child brain went through via observing my parents.

Where the joyousness of the previous was “felt” and the shame associated with it was “learned”.

I am pretty sure many people in the world (especially if you grew up in the Middle East) already associate nakedness and sexuality to shame and guilt anyway since it is such a taboo. At some point, I went as far as hating my own body shape because I had something none of my friends had: big boobs and a very curvy body. As a teenager, I could not deal with the attention I was receiving and the feelings of shame and guilt associated with it. I started to think that this was my fault, like I was born doomed! I would go as far as trying every possible clothing fix on earth to make myself look small. This hate towards my body became so significant that I eventually became very depressed. When I got the chance to live on the other side of the world at age 22, I was so ready to move to fuck away and start a new life which felt like a divine intervention really: I had moved to the very country that was so in love with women’s body shape, and that it was not only OK to have boobs but it was “GREAT”. And don’t get me wrong there were and still are over-sexualization of woman’s body in US as well but to my body that I hated for so long, this new found freedom felt like a fresh air.

I don’t know where I go from here but,

I know for a fact the appreciation and adornment of a woman’s body is more like an act of rebellion for me at this point.

And I dream of a day when sex and sexuality are no longer taboo for people, that we understand sex and especially porn can be addictions, but when they are used that way they only indicate a serious & deeper issue lying underneath and there is no reason to shame or guilt trip those but to feel compassion instead.

<note. This post is never intended to shame or call out my parents whom I accepted as doing their best with what they were given>