Eating in the Light of the Moon

When I was a young girl, growing up on the island of Guam, I was told a Chamorro legend that captured my imagination and kept me endlessly fascinated. This legend was first told to me by Doja, an old Chamorro woman who lived with my family since before I was born.

A long, long time ago there once was a young girl named Sirena who lived in a small island village at the edge of the ocean. Sirena was a happy, carefree child and spent much of her time singing and splashing where the mouth of the river opened into the sea.

As she grew, so did her love of the sea, and she would seize any opportunity to slip away from her chores and dive into the ocean waters, playing in the waves and singing her favorite songs. This annoyed her mother who tried in vain to teach her to sew, to cook, to sweep, to wash. She scolded her time and time again, “Sirena, you spend too much time playing in the ocean and too little time with your chores. You need to learn what a girl ought to know.”

Her mother’s words had little impact on Sirena and she continued her love affair with the sea. One day her exasperated mother said, “I absolutely forbid you to go swimming when I send you out on errands. You are to return directly home so that you will have time to complete your chores before nightfall.”

Sirena was not a bad girl and she wanted to be a respectful daughter. Her intention certainly was to obey her mother as she headed down the dusty trail toward home, but she got no farther than halfway before she smelled the intoxicating scent of salt air and heard the murmur of the waves lapping the sand, calling her name. Before she knew it, her longing for the sensual caress of the sea overwhelmed her and she found herself once again immersed in the water, losing all sense of time.

When Sirena returned home at dusk, dripping wet, her mother flew into a rage and said, “You are a worthless, irresponsible girl! Worst of all, you refuse to obey your mother. If you love the ocean so much, so be it. May you spend the rest of your days as a fish!”

Luckily, Sirena’s godmother was nearby and overheard the tirade. She understood that when a curse is spoken with such strong emotion, it has the power to be binding. “She may be your daughter,” she said quickly, “but she is my goddaughter and therefore only half of her is subject to your curse.”

In tears, Sirena ran to the water’s edge, seeking the solace only the sea could give her. As she submerged herself in the water, she felt a change come over her body and was startled to find the lower half of her body covered with glistening, opalescent scales. Her legs had transformed into a long, undulating fish tail with a wide, graceful fan at the end. With her new tail, Sirena was thrilled to discover she could glide through the water with an ease she had never known before.

Sirena was never to be seen by her family again. Some say, however, if you listen very carefully on days when the sea is calm and the air is still, you can hear her singing among the waves. And if you are lucky enough to find yourself walking along the seashore when the moon is full and the tide is in, you just might catch a glimpse of her combing her long black hair in the moonlight.

While the legend of Sirena held great fascination for me as a child, it was only as an adult that I recognized how poignantly it spoke to my emerging feminine sexuality. The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirit. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of our personalities. While the mermaid can plunge to the watery depths of the feminine unconscious, she can also surface to sing her songs and have her voice heard. She is able to respond to her mysterious, sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side.

When a woman can trust her instinctive sensuality and sexuality, balance her conscious desires with her unconscious impulses, remain true to herself, and feel proud of her womanly body, she is embodying the archetype of the mermaid. Unfortunately, mermaids are hard to find these days. They exist mostly as enchanting but mysterious, faraway images in the minds of young girls.

Why are so few women able to be mermaids, comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality? Why are we frightened of or repulsed by our sexual nature? Why do we reject the most womanly aspects of our bodies? What happened to the girls who dreamed of becoming mermaids?

When a girl begins to become a woman, one of the first tasks she encounters is to learn to deal with the arousal of her sexual energies. Most of us are ill-equipped for this task, given the constraints of our culture, which tends to educate us about female sexuality as seen through the eyes of the patriarchy, where sexuality is equated with lust and women are portrayed as sexual objects, trophies, or prey. Little attention is given to the role of love or matters of the heart and none is given to the sacredness of the sexual act.

Just when she is beginning to experience her own sexual awakening, a girl is confronted with the reactions of others to her budding sexuality. Her sexual development is earlier (some begin to menstruate as early as nine or ten) and is more obvious than boys’. The growth of a girl’s breasts is witnessed by all her class-mates and the messages a girl gets in a society preoccupied with breast size can be one of the most traumatizing aspects of an adolescent girl’s life. She usually does not have much time or privacy to develop a subjective view of her sexuality, to discover her own sexual nature, as seen through her own eyes and defined by her own experience. Any efforts to discover the true nature of her sexuality are undermined by the subtle and not so subtle messages about female sexuality she receives from school, from family members, from traditional religion and politics, from the music she listens to on the radio, from the TV shows and movies she watches, and from the magazines and books she reads.

Rather than delivering messages that inspire awe, respect, and reverence for her sexual nature and the mysterious transformation that is occurring in her body, these messages can be demeaning and alarming, and instead may provoke fear, shame, and loathing of her new womanly shape.

At school, boys tease girls who are “flat-chested” or have “big boobs,” girls are ridiculed for having “big butts” or “thunder thighs.” All of a sudden their bodies are up for scrutiny, as boys feel free to critique how they look, and they discover that their popularity is based more than ever on their physical appearance.

How girls are expected to respond to their own sexual instincts can be confusing. They encounter the double standard of the patriarchal power structure that calls boys who have sex “studs” who gain social power from being sexually active but calls girls who have sex “sluts” whose social status is at risk because of their sexual behavior.

Being popular seems to become more important than anything else, and they learn to focus on their desirability rather than on their desires. How they appear to others becomes more important than how they feel, than what they want or don’t want. Fulfilling their desires, responding to their sexual appetites, can diminish their stature with others.

The media, which inundate us with imagery of how a beautiful girl or woman should look and provide us with only one acceptable body type (large breasts, narrow hips, thin thighs, flat belly), can have a tremendous impact on those who are looking for guidance on how to be more desirable. When a girl is learning about her sexuality from outside sources, she is easily influenced by the magazine, TV, and movie industries’ distorted images of what female sexuality looks like, images that have nothing to do with what female sexuality feels like.

At home, a newly developing adolescent girl is often confronted with her parents’ unresolved issues about feminine sexuality. If her father is threatened by the power of women’s sexuality, he may make disparaging comments about certain parts of her body or her weight; if he views women as possessions, he may become overly protective and hostile toward boys who express an interest in her; or if he feels uncomfortable about his own sexual feelings, he may withdraw his physical affection. Brothers, especially those who are insecure about their own identity and personal power, can be especially merciless in their taunts about their sisters’ physical appearance and in their use of sexually demeaning language. When an adolescent girl notices that the males in her family are uncomfortable with the outer signs of her emerging sexuality, she may reject her own changing body. She may use food to numb feelings of rejection and inadequacy or to alleviate the pain of being unacceptable.

Some mothers may experience envy toward their daughters’ youthful, attractive bodies and become critical and competitive with them when they enter puberty and discover their sexuality. Compulsive eating or self-starvation may become a way for these daughters to distract themselves from feelings of confusion, estrangement, or anger. Other mothers, in an attempt to help their daughters adjust to this new phase in their lives, respond only to the dangers associated with their daughter’s sexuality, dangers they know all too well from their experiences as women in a patriarchal society: sexual abuse, rape, incest, sexually transmitted diseases, and the shame and burden of unwanted pregnancies. Their fears can get transmitted by comments about the nature of male sexuality (boys only want one thing), through angry tirades over sexually provocative clothing, or by an uncomfortable silence or stiff body language whenever the topic of sexuality is raised. If they have learned to spurn their own sexuality through dieting or eating compulsively, this becomes a powerful model for their daughters desperately trying to cope with the pressure of defining who they are as sexual beings.

Regardless of the messages from her mother, an adolescent girl soon finds out on her own that she must defend herself from unsolicited sexual attention and invasive sexual advances from boys and men, whether they are strangers, relatives, or friends. More often than not, this occurs long before she has developed the assertiveness she needs to set boundaries. And so she may turn to food and fat to insulate, protect, and hide her sexuality. Or she may begin to diet and count calories in a vain attempt to reclaim the girlish body that no one noticed, that caused her no problems.

The wonder of her sexuality, her sacred connection to the natural forces of the universe, the awesome power of her body’s ability to create and sustain life, the importance of her own sensual desires are banished from her awareness as she struggles to find her place as a woman in our culture.

In early adulthood, when these girls are attempting to establish meaningful relationships or sexual partnerships, they have already become separated from the beauty of their sexuality. They see themselves as unattractive and therefore not entitled to their sexuality. They find support for their beliefs in the media, which use images of thin, scantily clad female models in a state of orgasmic ecstasy (head thrown back, lips parted, eyes half shut) to sell everything from motorcycles to hand lotion to food products. In the absence of other sexual images, the viewer gets the message that this is what feminine beauty and sexuality are all about, and in order to feel the beauty and power of her sexuality, she has to look like that, to have those features, to have that kind of body. She buys into the myth that her sexuality comes from being “beautiful” rather than understanding that her beauty comes from her sexuality.

Many women feel ashamed of or threatened by their sexual feelings. It is not uncommon for women who struggle with disordered eating to have had sexual experiences they feel guilty about. They may blame themselves for sexual encounters that were forced upon them as children or chastise themselves for “giving in” to forbidden sexual pleasures as adolescents. They have been taught by traditional religions that if a woman is sensual or sexual, she is bad. Her sexuality is sinful.

Part of the recovery process involves remembering the experiences that disconnected us from the inherent beauty of our sexuality and reclaiming the aspects of our sexuality that were disowned because of those experiences. For one woman it may mean recalling early sexual experiences of masturbation, rubbing up against her cat, or exploring her body with other children, and the shame she felt for responding to her natural sexual instincts so that she can appreciate her innate sensuality. For another, it may mean recounting painful incestuous experiences with her father, brother, uncle, or cousin, or a time when she was caught off guard by the sexual advances of a friend and was not able to say no for fear of hurting his feelings or “making a scene.” If a woman feels she cannot say no to unwanted sexual advances, she cannot say yes! to her feminine sexuality. Yet another may recall a period of promiscuity where her focus was on whetting and satisfying the sexual appetites of men in order to feel loved, attractive, and wanted. In order to reclaim her sexuality she must learn to focus on her needs, her desires and not feel guilty or selfish for wanting to be fulfilled.

Many women who struggle with disordered eating have difficulty experiencing sexual pleasure. Throughout the day, the more they focus on caring for and giving to others, the more they are consumed with food obsessions, the less aware they become of themselves as sexual beings. The practical matters they tend to from day to day take precedence over their deeper sexual nature. They fail to recognize (and therefore are unable to inform their partners) how much they need to be reminded of their sensuality and how much they need a gradual buildup of sexual tension in order to feel their sexual desires. And so they focus on sexual performance rather than on receiving sexual pleasure. Sex with their partners becomes just one more task, one more responsibility.

When a woman does not recognize that much of her sexual pleasure can come from the extension of sexual excitement rather than simply the release of sexual tension, she often fails to give herself (or ask for) the time that she needs to let go of the responsibilities of the day and become aroused. She becomes unaware of how much she hungers to feel her desire increase and she mistakenly assumes that her hunger is for food.

If a woman becomes pregnant, any unresolved issues with food, body image, and sexuality can become amplified. If she experienced difficulty honoring her body changes as an adolescent, it may be extremely difficult for her to celebrate the beauty of life growing within her as her body expands. If she felt out of control as her body thrust her into the world of woman before she felt ready, those feelings may resurface as, once again, she finds herself moved by biological forces beyond her command. Her increased appetite and emotional sensitivity can be alarming if she has spent most of her life trying to diminish those aspects of herself. She needs to appreciate that during pregnancy her bodily sensations are most pronounced, providing her with an ideal opportunity to learn her physical hunger signals for when to eat and when to stop eating, to discover subtle signals that can even tell her precisely what to eat.

Once in a while, she may catch a glimpse of herself as the embodiment of the sacred Madonna, the Great Earth Mother, but this image is as fleeting as it is quickly overwhelmed by her fear of becoming fat and disfigured, by her revulsion toward her puffy cheeks, disappearing waist, large thighs, and swollen belly. If she knows of no other way to cope with her fears than by focusing on food, fat, and dieting, then this obsession will take over, not allowing her to fully honor and appreciate the wisdom of her body. She becomes unable to see her feminine sexuality as her inherent connection to nature and its most profound expression of power, the power to create life.

A new mother finds little support or recognition in our culture for the concept that feminine sexuality and motherhood are parts of the same whole we call woman. The less pregnant she looks after giving birth, the more people comment on how good she looks. For a woman who has struggled with a poor body image, this can be an extremely difficult time. She cannot fit into her prepregnancy clothes but no longer feels justified in wearing maternity outfits. If she believes that she must be thin in order to be sexual, she may feel unattractive and estranged from her mate. If her self-esteem and sense of personal power have been based on being thin, she is at risk for becoming depressed. She may feel a sense of urgency to exercise in order to lose weight as quickly as possible, but find that she is too exhausted or too busy with the demands of motherhood. If she has coped with feelings of depression in the past by numbing herself with food, she may enter a vicious cycle of eating to deal with feeling bad about herself and then feeling bad about her eating behavior. If she has a tendency to nourish others endlessly, she will then compensate for feelings of deprivation by eating in an attempt to fulfill her emotional or sexual needs with food.

It is not uncommon for a woman who has felt unfulfilled sexually to try to satisfy herself with certain foods, like chocolate. Eating chocolate becomes the perfect substitute for sex because eating it elicits feelings that are similar to the feelings she may have about her sexuality: it is “sinfully” delicious, it is forbidden, it is sensuous, it is not necessary, she doesn’t deserve it, it is bad for her.

A woman who has been cut off from her sexuality hungers for a connection to this deepest part of her feminine nature. She is beset with a longing for wholeness and fulfillment. And because she no longer recognizes what she truly hungers for, she imagines that what she hungers for is food.

To reclaim her true sexual nature, a woman must tune in to her body, her instincts, and her feelings. If we look outside ourselves to define our sexuality, we run the risk of seeing ourselves as sex objects and become vulnerable to feelings of disappointment and self-recrimination for failing to meet the standards of others. When we consider our sexuality as worth exploring from a personal, subjective perspective, we can begin to free ourselves from assumptions about women’s sexuality based on patriarchal distortions.

Remember your earliest childhood experiences with sexuality? What kinds of messages were you given by your mother, your father, your brothers or sisters? What kinds of experiences did you have in school when you were entering puberty? What intrigued you? What frightened you? What were the explicit or implicit messages about feminine sexuality you received from your religious upbringing? What experiences have you had that separated you from the true nature of your feminine sexuality? How have you used food to fulfill sexual desires or to distract you from sexual yearnings? How have you used judgments about or obsessions with your body shape to deprive you of the joy of your sexuality?

When we begin to explore our sexuality, we often find that it barely resembles the images we inherited from our culture. Many women discover that the sex act is only one aspect of the totality of their sexuality. Some women discover their sexuality seems to be intimately connected to nature and can be stimulated by a full moon, the scent of a rose, the heat of the sun, or the sound of the ocean. While some women find their sexuality in stillness and silence, other women are aroused by the sound of certain melodies, beats, or rhythms in music. For some women pornographic images can be very exciting, yet other women find them demeaning and a turn-off. While many women may experience their sexuality most profoundly as a desire to feel connected, to communicate with another, others discover that they do not need a partner to experience sexual pleasure or feel sexually fulfilled.

When a woman explores her sexuality, she often discovers that it is cyclical in nature. Instead of a constant, steady, unwavering stream of energy, it seems to ebb and flow like the tides. The times she is most easily aroused may correspond to certain phases of her menstrual cycle, certain times of the day, certain seasons of the year. When you are able to view your sexuality as cyclical, those times when it seems to wane can be experienced as a transition time leading toward renewal, rather than a sign that you are no longer sexual.

Feeling free to feel sexual desires does not necessarily mean acting them out. Instead of impulsively acting on sexual urges that arise, without any regard for the consequences, you can make conscious choices about how to express your sexuality and can be responsible for your actions. When a woman reconnects with her sexuality as an innate creative life force, she recognizes that it can take many forms as she expands her creative expression of her sexuality to include dance, poetry, art, or music. She understands that embracing her feminine sexuality allows her to have all her senses heightened, be fully present in the moment, to experience her truth, and to feel complete. To be sexual as a woman is to be alive.