Five things I Learned From My Butt

#5. It tightens when I’m not at ease. 

Of course, this happens when all muscles are under some sort of siege... a brace-myself moment of in-balance on an icy patch, sitting on the edge of my seat when my ball-handling-challenged kiddo gets passed the basketball on game day, an abrupt awakening from a dream involving one-eyed flying hippopotamuses out to get me.

It happens when my body is thoroughly unthreatened, too. Then, it’s my thoughts that aren’t particularly at ease. When I find my butt, place attention on it, and recognize the clenching I’m doing there - that’s when i can see my not-at-ease-ness for what it is. The butt muscles are like clues for me. Recognizing them knocks me into inquiry: what was I just thinking about? What task is challenging me right now? What am I dreading? What is causing distress?

I reverse-Kegel to get myself back on track. But, mind you, not so much that I get a worse butt affliction.

*I should pause here to make the confession that, for me, there’s a lot of mystery about all the muscles down there. Is pelvic floor muscle tightening different from butt hole muscle tightening? Would a reverse Kegel induce a hemorrhoid? I suspend all anatomic research and let you be the judge.

#4. I look at it a lot. Do you yours? I need to pay attention to how I look at it.

A woman’s butt is a funny thing, because it’s the source of much levity, the woman-and-her-butt relationship universally acknowledged as a comically complicated one and, meanwhile, it’s very, very serious. In dressing and bath rooms across this great globe, pensive stares and glares at one’s toosh are issued with great frequency. 

I have, on more than on occasion, dispensed a playful correction to my elementary school boys, when they say my butt is in the way (squeezing past me in the kitchen, not feeling they have enough space while cuddling on the couch)... “You saying my butt’s too big? Listen good, cuz this will take you far, son: Never... and I mean NEVER… speak about the size of a woman’s butt.”  We giggle. I often wonder what message I’m sending, but my unbridled silly side generally drowns out further contemplation.   

It’s so fair game to joke about that in the children’s movie The Incredibles, when Elasta-girl catches her reflection in the heat of a rescue, she haults, doubling back to inspect her rump’s size. Even with her face masked, you can see Elastagirl’s disapproving expression. 

Why can’t we all just accept our butts the way they are? I suspect the answer boils down to the fact that we rarely manage to accept our anythingthe way it is. Butts – maybe because of their bumpy break-away from the rest of our figure, by nature “sticking out” – are a convenient scapegoat for the inner self-loathing we don’t know we are already carrying. Next time I pass my 80s style wall-to-wall bathroom mirror naked as a Jaybird, I will know where my insides are by what my face does looking at my outsides, ass-specific.

#3) We people are subconsciously obsessed with the backs of things.

For a long, long time, the English word “ass” meant the animal of the horse family and - derived from “ars” - it also has for some time been used to describe the bottom or backside of a person. We all know this. 

What I was fascinated to find out was that ass as a description for a contemptable personis relatively new. According to the book Ascent of the A-word, the word itself did not become widespread (in the U.S. anyway) until WWII. Soldiers used it as an epithet for superior officers they were annoyed with who acted too superior, and when they returned from war it stuck. Goodbye to the former minor insults of the day, hello “ass.” When I went to find out what the minor insults of the day were, I learned prime among them was “heel,” also known as the back of the foot. 

Backside of a person. Backside of a foot. Someone so annoying you want to kick them off the backside of a bus. All synonyms.

#2) I talk out of mine incessantly.

It took me awhile to realize that I have this unflattering habit of filling the space in a sentence when the facts at my disposal reach their finite end. What do I fill that space with? Why with more words, of course. It would be rude to just stop in the middle of a sentence, when my brain’s limitations are met. So, I do the polite thing and keep talking.I believe what I’m saying, it’s just that I make it sound like the truth. 

My husband is the one who put the mirror up on this. And, since I’ve been a life-long welcomer of All-The-Ways-I’m-A-Lovable-Idiot, it’s become a bit of a warm joke. In social settings, I only know I’m doing it when my husband does a subtle charades-move of thrusting his finger towards his own butthole. That’s code for, “You’re talking out of your ass. Proceed it you wanna, but pretty soon you might sound like a heel.”

Turns out, talking out of your ass can make you sound like one. 

#1) Given the proper care, they can be spared unnecessary multitasking.

I went all plural here, because “butt” is short for “buttocks” and it’s TWO, not one, rounded portions of the anatomy that fill up that region. 

But you wanted to know what I meant by “proper care,” and I shall tell you. 

I sorta used to like no one but me going near my naked butt for the first good chunk of my life… until I let someone else near it: MY DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE THERAPIST.

When you’re in your plush robe in the dimly lit room and your masseuse busts out that opening set of inquiries using big words about which muscle groups to tend to, just make sure you perk up when anything close to “gluteus” comes up and say this, “Yes, yes, I totally want you to give attention to my butts.”  

Because apparently we store some shit there (intended). And its lovely when it’s unlocked, when the butt can return to its singular physiological function of enabling weight to be taken off the feet while sitting… not a place for our deepest psychiatric stresses to fester. 

Practice it now: “Yes, yes, I totally want you to give attention to my butts.”

And then let them roll and needle and lean and nudge and press the hell out of them.

You'll be surprised how much happier they - and you - are.