Embodying Venus

I HAVE A clear memory of the buttons – large, translucent-white plastic – and the teacher’s fingers unbuttoning the first one. She was shouting: ‘I’m going to take off your clothes! I’m going to strip you naked in front of everyone!’

The child’s maroon tunic, with those big buttons down the middle, hung down to her ankles. In our little township school, parents often bought uniforms three or four sizes too large so they’d last.

The teacher’s brows were riven with her frown, her eyes wide, her voice transformed by rage. Her flushed face was level with the child’s. And the child was howling.

I’ve forgotten what I, a senior prefect, was doing there and what the child was being punished for. Perhaps she was in the wrong uniform; we wore white on Saturdays. At any rate, it was not unusual. The boys especially were often beaten or subjected to threats like: ‘I’ll take your pants off if you... (insert any act of disobedience here).’ Still, twenty years later, I remember that howling kid. She was not stripped after all. A promise was extracted that the mistake, whatever it was, would not be repeated. But I do remember wondering why the child was so afraid. She’s so little, I thought, she must be bathed and dressed by other people. Why does she care if her clothes are taken off?

But the child did care. At three or four years old, she was aware that the taking off of her clothes was an act of public humiliation. And she was howling out her terrified little heart.

Read the rest of it here: https://griffithreview.com/articles/embodying-venus/

I had written this essay on bodies, shame, and the politics of nudity and it was published by the Griffith Review a year ago. It is now available online to read in full.