The Stu­pid Selfie, Ottawa, Feb­ru­ary 2013

I bought a new pair of shoes for no other rea­son that they make me feel sexy. That, plus they were on sale, $50 instead of $120, a price I would never pay for footwear—I ain’t Car­rie Bradshaw.

Perched on these com­fort­able high heels, I feel good. My legs seem longer, I am taller, I stand straighter and I am more confident.

I want to look pretty again. I want to seduce, I want to feel sexy and I want to be desired.

After nine months of avoid­ing mir­rors and cry­ing every time I took the weekly “bump shot” to doc­u­ment the preg­nancy, after feel­ing like an incu­ba­tor and after get­ting used to my new sta­tus as Mark’s mother, I want to be a woman again. I may not have much time to pluck my eye­brows, wax my legs, put on nail pol­ish or do my hair—not that I really took the time to do so before Mark, I have always been fairly low-maintenance—but I care about “look­ing good”, what­ever that means.

After Mark was born, I bought a lot of clothes. Wear­ing my old ones didn’t feel right any­more and well, I hadn’t been shop­ping for almost a year (I didn’t buy preg­nancy clothes) so it was about time. It started with prac­ti­cal items such as under­wear, socks, and moved on to jeans, leg­gings, dresses and other pretty and girly things.

Not being preg­nant any­more was some­thing to cel­e­brate. It felt great.

Like a teen, I am search­ing for who I am and I am still deal­ing with my very own iden­tity cri­sis (and a needy seven-kilo baby dragon).

There is def­i­nitely a “before” and “after” the preg­nancy. Not phys­i­cally—I look the same as I did before, with the addi­tion of a few white hair here and there (when did that hap­pen?)—but men­tally. The year 2012 was a long hia­tus. I was a stranger to my own body and noth­ing felt right, includ­ing being “Zhu”.

I think it all started when I was in France, last year, just a few months preg­nant with a very unno­tice­able baby bump. I got cat­called in the street. It hap­pens a lot in France—I call it a side effect of “walk­ing while woman”. Any female aged 12 to 50 is bound to be hit on in a fairly harm­less way on a daily basis. Groups of guys usu­ally shout things like “eh eh, made­moi­selle, you are hot!” when you walk by, or try to get your “06” (cell­phone num­ber). Unless you are actu­ally inter­ested, you can just ignore them and keep on walk­ing. Some women may feel an ego boost, other find it demean­ing and objec­ti­fy­ing but all French are used to deal with them. What can you do?

I am no excep­tion. I have been get­ting cat­calls since I’m 12 (I did look older) and it has never both­ered me much (and no, I have never given my cell­phone num­ber to a ran­dom guy in the street either). And yes, I do wear a wed­ding ring since I am mar­ried but French guys don’t really care.

But that day, “walk­ing while preg­nant”, get­ting hit on felt hor­ri­bly wrong. I know no one could tell I was preg­nant but me but when I heard the clas­sic “mamzelle, eh, mamzelle, tu vas où comme ça?” I froze and almost burst out crying.

“I’m going nowhere, can’t you see I’m fuck­ing preg­nant you moron!” I wanted to shout back.

Some­how, being seen as what I was—a woman—instead of what I felt like—a walk­ing oven busy bak­ing a mini-baby—was disturbing.

For nine months, I didn’t feel like a woman. That’s actu­ally pretty ironic since dur­ing that time period, my female organs were poked and probed on a reg­u­lar basis and that I was doing the woman-only job to grow a baby in my womb. I was sup­posed to be glowing—well, I wasn’t.

And now I’m try­ing to over­come the adjust­ment period and to be a woman again.

Gosh, that sounds awfully corny, like a line from a Brit­ney Spears song.

But it mat­ters to me. I am not “just” a mother, I’m also an almost thirty-year-old woman with fan­tasies, desires, crushes and cravings.

So I put on my shoes, took one of these ridicu­lous self­ies with my Black­Berry, and resolved to be a woman again.

Feel free to cat­call me now. I may need that ego boost.

The Boots and I in Chi­na­town, Ottawa, Feb­ru­ary 2013

With Mark and the mas­sive snow pile in front of our home

Related arti­cles:

1. 10 Perks of Being Pregnant
2. 10 Things That Feel Great When You Are No Longer Pregnant
3. Lost: Iden­tity
4. Of Los­ing Con­trol (And Chang­ing That Pyjama)
5. Being Preg­nant: What Does It Feel Like?
6. Mark, the Sling and I Against The World