I have often heard the phrase, “To be a woman is to perform.” You are watched, critiqued, analyzed, deconstructed, broken apart, and degraded to the small bits of who you thought you were. But do not treat this existence as a performance. This is being a woman. This is bleeding.

In the 6th grade, my body had begun to undergo many changes. I didn’t feel like a different person. I was still athletic, talkative, bossy, just me. I had gotten my period at the age of 10, and I grew frustrated with who I was becoming at 11. My mom said I couldn’t wear shorts or skinny jeans anymore because my thighs were too big. But I also couldn’t cut my hair too short or I wouldn’t be pretty. I had to go to school and run the mile and be as fast as the boys while also bleeding; it didn’t help that my cycle was irregularly heavy.

Like me, there was an 11-year-old girl named Thérèse who now lives in a painting called “Thérèse Dreaming” by Balthus. I once praised her brazen position, impenitently showing her garments to the world. I figured she knew better, but was more rebellious than I could dream of being. I thought her intentions were to be defiant and spiteful, unlike me.

Thérèse reminds me of the most prominent memory I have from middle school: the time I bled through my shorts. I sat comfortably in my chair, full trust put into the pad I was wearing. Until I felt my shorts grow damp and warm, an unwelcome, familiar feeling that had happened at home, but never at school before. I could only hope the seat below me wouldn’t betray me now.

I wrapped my sweater around my waist. It would conceal the crimson stain, but not the tint that rose to my cheeks. My body was no longer 60% water, but 100% shame.

I had asked permission to go to the bathroom, and thought I had escaped the worst of it. To everyone else in the class, it looked as if I was only taking a small restroom break. But the second I stepped out of the classroom, a classroom I felt safe in, I was defenseless. Ms. Wride’s class, pretty and pink, and a place I didn’t feel vulnerable being a girl in. Ms. Wride would always go out of her way to scold a boy that was mistreating us, or would embrace anyone with tears streaming down their face. But the hallway was free for all.

A boy named Jacob made it a point to announce his presence. Jacob was never a nice boy, but he was friends with Johnny, the boy I liked, so I figured I should smile and brush off his obnoxious existence. He would be sent out of class every other day for being disruptive, so it was of no surprise to see him. Only, Jacob wasn’t satisfied with my passiveness, and like Thérèse, I didn’t know I was being watched until it was too late.

“Did you piss yourself?” I could hear him stifle a laugh.

And I know every classroom with a door open in that hallway had heard his question. I couldn’t even get myself to turn around and continued to speed walk to the restroom.

The hallway seemed to both elongate and suffocate me all at once. The end of the hallway seemed to get further and further with each step I took. I could still hear Jacob’s laughs and feel his perpetually bloodshot eyes peering at me. I was so sure I was in The Shining, only the river of blood from the elevator was coming from my uterus.

Public embarrassment was horror movie material for a middle schooler.

After lunch, I had heard from my friend Arleen that Jacob had talked to Johnny. Not only that, but had gone out of his way to tell his whole math class about how I had bled through my shorts.

Thinking back, the only word I can think about is humiliation. Yes, I had felt humiliated, but because Jacob wanted me to feel embarrassed, deliberately. I am not ashamed to share this story because I know how many other young girls have been through something similar. I am not humiliated or deteriorated. I am bleeding. I am a woman, and not for the sake of defiance, but do not assume I am ashamed of my girlhood.

The only shame I hold inside of me is being a part of a society that created the system and cycle of degradation that raised Jacob. He was only 11, but so was I, like Thérèse.

As I’ve grown, I refer back to this painting when I feel criticized or condemned for being born with a different genetic makeup from men; I find myself resonating with Thérèse in this way. She is bold, but not defiant. Thérèse is at peace and completely unaware of who watches. If you choose to look under her dress, that is your choice. As a girl in a painting, her purpose would appear to be a subject of dissection by pretentious critics who try to dismantle her from the walls of The Met. To simply be a supposed prepubescent muse of Balthus.

But Thérèse is much more than a symbol of voyeurism and an object of infatuation; she is me, she is my best friend, she is my mother, she is my sister. Thérèse is all women, and is not open for interpretation. Like so many young girls, Thérèse is dreaming, only to be told to close their legs.