“When I think about my body, I feel like I’m grasping at something I can’t quite reach and don’t quite understand,” writes author Hayley Fleming
Credit: Random House; Hayley Fleming
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher took all the girls to the media center and had us watch a video about puberty. We sat in the dark and were told that we were going to start bleeding (from an unclear location) and grow boobs (from a clearer location). One hour later, we went back to class, exchanging awkward looks with the fourth grade boys who had just been shown their own video.
That hour marked the one and only time I received any sex education at my Florida public schools. I only learned what a vagina was a few years later, when I started bleeding and my mom had to explain where it was coming from.
Over my 12 years of schooling, I was never taught about consent, birth control or STIs. No one taught me how to use a condom, or even what a condom was. No one taught me why I was bleeding once a month. I wasn’t taught about consent or bodily autonomy. I learned about the reproductive system from a biology textbook chapter called “human anatomy,” and I had only the vaguest sense of how those illustrated diagrams connected to what was going on inside my body.
Around the time I took my first biology class, I tried to wear a tampon for the first time. My mom showed me how the tampon worked, then sent me to the bathroom to try it out. I remember sitting on the toilet, experiencing sharp, stabbing pains every time I tried to insert it. No matter how I angled the tampon, all I hit was what felt like a brick wall. After 10 minutes and several bouts of tears, I gave up.
My mom told me: “You can try again later.” And my friends told me: “Oh, tampons just suck.” And so I decided tampons just sucked, and I did not try again later.
Credit: Hayley Fleming
Because I had been taught so little about my own body, I didn’t realize that my inability to wear tampons might be a symptom of a larger problem. As far as I was concerned, tampons simply weren’t for me.
Years later, though, I would be diagnosed with vaginismus, a mysterious condition that I’d never heard of and that no one seemed to want to explain. My doctor’s only words about it were: “pelvic floor therapy will help.” My first pelvic floor therapist only said: “Kegels will help.” And when they didn’t, I gave up and found a new pelvic floor therapist, who finally explained to me what vaginismus was, what could’ve caused it, and what we could do about it.
Vaginismus feels differently for different people. For some, it’s a stabbing pain; others, a burning sensation. For me, it’s an unbearable tightness. And if you research vaginismus, you find so many possible causes, it’s a wonder not everyone has it. For the 5 to 17% of people with vaginas who have vaginismus, it can be caused by both physical and mental experiences, including underlying medical conditions, sexual trauma or conservative religious teachings about sex, to name a few.
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It would be impossible to definitively say why I developed vaginismus, but I believe my lack of sex education was a primary factor. For some women — me included — a lack of education about their own body can create fear or uncertainty, which in turn triggers a physical response.
I remember when I was 18 and my mom told me she’d made me a gynecology appointment. I remember the feeling of dread that seized my body, and I remember begging her, tears in my eyes, to cancel the appointment. I couldn’t explain to my mom or to myself why I was so terrified, and even now, I have a hard time understanding what was going on in my brain. Whether I was crying from fear or anxiety or uncertainty, I’m not sure, but the end result was that my entire body seized up the moment the doctor started the exam, I burst into tears, and a very kind nurse gave me an apple juice box while the doctor handed me a referral to pelvic floor therapy. I didn’t learn the word “vaginismus” until almost a year later. Why my doctor didn’t tell me the name of the condition right then and there, I’ll never know.
Every morning, I set my mug warmer to 140 degrees and steep my Twining’s English Breakfast Tea for exactly 18 minutes, which a coworker recently described as the most Type-A thing she’d ever witnessed. I read dozens of reviews before I make any purchase, even if that purchase is just a can opener. I own the same pair of Old Navy shorts in five colors, because I know exactly how they fit my body. I made a PowerPoint presentation last weekend to help me decide between the three favorite wedding dresses I’d tried on after going dress shopping with my mom. The presentation was 14 slides long. For better or for worse, I’m obsessed with details, and I like to have control over every aspect of my life.
But when I think about my body, I feel like I’m grasping at something I can’t quite reach and don’t quite understand. I want to be able to control it, but when my vaginismus flares up, there’s nothing I can do about it. My muscles act of their own accord, and no amount of research or planning or PowerPoint-making can change that.
At that first gynecology appointment, when my pelvic floor erupted in pain, the scariest part was that I didn’t understand what was happening. Not just because I didn’t know vaginismus existed, but because I had no idea how my body worked, or what a gynecological exam was supposed to feel like, or why I even needed to get one. I was completely clueless and totally powerless.
To this day, sex education isn’t required in Florida public schools. The state standard is that all students in grades 6-12 must learn about “the benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy.” If I had lived in a school district that provided comprehensive sex education, would I have never developed vaginismus? It’s impossible to say. But I probably wouldn’t have felt totally clueless and completely out of control the first time I went to the gynecologist. And I probably wouldn’t have thought it was normal that tampons made me cry out in pain. Maybe I could’ve been diagnosed and gotten help sooner.
Credit: Hayley Fleming
It took years of therapy — some for my mind, some for my pelvic floor — for my vaginismus to become manageable. Interestingly, some of my most inadvertently helpful resources were romance novels. Through reading, I was able to learn the lessons I wasn’t taught in school. I read about consent. I read about healthy sexuality. I learned lessons about my body that no one had ever taught me.
Still, none of the characters I was reading about had bodies that worked like mine. In romance novels, physical connection never seems to be the problem. Instead, it’s always an interpersonal conflict, inflated egos, long distance or a billion-dollar inheritance that keeps the love interests apart.
But what happens if intimacy itself is a source of conflict, too? What happens if the characters’ attempts to move past true love’s first kiss run into a metaphorical — or perhaps vaginal — brick wall?
Credit: Random House
I set out to write my debut romcom, Thighs Wide Shut, to fill that gap. It started as a fun hobby and an interesting intellectual exercise, but as I got deeper into the writing process, I found it healing in unexpected ways.
The main character, Emma, suffers from vaginismus. As I worked with her character to unravel her conflicts with herself, her friends and her body, I was working through my own process of healing too. In her worst moments, Emma believes she could never be a good partner because of her vaginismus. My task was to show her outgrowing that misguided belief over the course of the story. In doing so, I reflected on the million and one different reasons that someone having vaginismus does not make them a bad partner — even when that someone is me.
I wish someone had taught me that lesson when I was 18 and had just been diagnosed. But I hope Thighs Wide Shut can help others learn this lesson sooner than I did.
I think a lot about how my younger self would react to hearing that she would one day write a novel about a girl with vaginismus. Her face probably would’ve turned bright red if the words Thighs Wide Shut were uttered in her presence. She would hate knowing that I wrote this book for her, which is exactly why I had to write it. And I’m not alone in my struggle, which is exactly why I had to publish it.
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Thighs Wide Shut by Hayley Fleming will hit shelves on July 21 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
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