It was strange how the guys acted like they wanted our bodies but simultaneously seemed like they hated them.

I really appreciate what you’re doing. My experiences had more to do with body-shaming than slut-shaming, but I think they both stem from the same kind of attitudes. I remember that in seventh grade, the boys on the school bus would make really derogatory comments about vaginas. One day, someone had seafood in their lunch box and a kid said, “It smells like fish in here.” One of the guys shouted out in response, “All the girls in here, close your fucking legs!” Even though it wasn’t directed at me, it was embarrassing. Those kinds of comments made me wonder if guys were really disgusted by our genitalia. It made me afraid to let my first boyfriend touch me there, even though I wanted him to. It was strange how the guys acted like they wanted our bodies but simultaneously seemed like they hated them. Instead of standing up for each other, the girls would gang up with the boys and enthusiastically join in the body-shaming. They must have thought they were diverting the negative attention away from themselves and gaining male approval, but they were really just internalizing the misogyny. In hindsight it seems so obvious.