Critically acclaimed author and Publishing Triangle Award finalist, Melissa Febos, stuns audiences again with yet another emotionally packed collection of essays in “Girlhood.” “Girlhood” is described as “a gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become.” Beginning when Febos first begins to understand her body as a source for male violence, around age 11, this essay collection carries readers through her adult journey in understanding the impacts and traumas of girlhood.
While this entire collection will stay with me and continue to inform the ways I understand my girlhood, two essays in particular, “Intrusions” and “Thank You for Taking Care of Yourself,” spoke to my experiences.
In “Intrusions,” Febos discusses her adult experiences with stalkers. Living in a ground level apartment near a subway stop in New York City, Febos describes a man who would stand outside her bedroom window and whisper profanities to her paralyzed body in her bed. She describes her experience being watched as “a terrible hardening of the flesh,” and explains the terrors associated with being stalked. Did she know him? Has she seen him before? How did he know a woman slept in this room alone? As a woman who has experienced stalking, Febos’s description rang true. The terror of feeling watched in your own bed, the subsequent gaslighting you experience from peers and authorities, the self doubt exasterbated by a lack of sleep. Febos perfectly details this experience and is able to support her claims with data and details of friends’ similar encounters.
In “Thank You for Taking Care of Yourself,” Febos details her experience at a cuddle party. At a cuddle party, attendees are told to dress comfortably, always ask for explicit and specific consent, and never make sexual advances towards a cuddle partner. When asking a partner to cuddle, one was to ask for specific positions and durations. For example, “Would you like to cuddle with me? I would like to spoon for 20 minutes or so.” If one was to decline the offer, the propositioner was required to say, “Thank you for taking care of yourself.” To me, I considered this an experiement in non-sexual touch. What would it be like to be held by someone with no intention of taking it farther? As someone who is averse to physical touch as a form of love communication, I was intrigued by this experiment. For Febos, she began to understand this party as an exercise in saying no. She explained that several of the attendees were males who exuded a sense of desperation rather than curiosity. During her first cuddle party, she felt inclined to say yes to everyone who asked out of a need to please her male counterparts. She went a second time with the intention of saying no to every person she wanted to. She was practicing taking care of herself in an extreme setting.
Melissa Febos is thought-provoking and insightful in her conception of girlhood. With both highly relatable and extreme experiences, this essay collection spans the full scope of girlhood. This is a must read for women exploring their identities and attempting to process the trauma of girlhood. While I chose to and recommend listening to this audiobook on Audible (as read by Melissa Febos herself), you can find “Girlhood” on Amazon, Thriftbooks, and bookstores near you.