In order to heal from shame, we must first reconcile with it, writes Melissa Petro.
here are no shortage of reasons for women to feel shame in our over-exposed, image-obsessed world: We’re shamed for being too fat and too thin, for being too sexual or not sexually available enough. Women are shamed for choosing not to have children and the choices we make when we do. We’re penalized for being too aggressive in the workplace at the same time “lean in” culture suggests we’re not assertive enough.
Freud described shame as an anxiety or an impending sense of harm. When a person feels shame, the brain reacts as if facing a physical danger. The prefrontal cortex activates and triggers a cascade of stress hormones, just as it would if we were facing a threat. And, in some sense, we are: shame—a fear of a rejection—threatens us on a primitive level, signaling that we have deviated from those around us and triggering our fear of abandonment.
Before this, we’re told that our body is a temple, a thing of value. A woman’s body, we’re taught, is a source of power and capital even as we’re warned we ought to never take advantage of that. To do so—that is, to trade sex for money—is literally a crime.My choice to trade sex for cash was complicated. My decision to become public and the way I did it, naive. I did not anticipate that I’d become the victim of mass media humiliation that would ultimately cost me my career.
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