When I was 11, I was sent to this local girls' house every day after school so her mom could babysit us until my grandmother got done with her shift at Payless. Her mom spent most days in bed, so Shannon and I spent most of that time doing things 11 year old girls shouldn't do. We'd smoke cigarettes, look at dirty magazines, and play doctor. Shannon was a stronger personality than I was, and she usually took the lead.

One day Shannon wanted to show me something. She lay on the ground, naked. She hoisted her hips up into the air and trapped some air inside of herself. And then dropped her hips to let that air come out. I was mortified. Then she said, "Now you do it."

Years later, in math class, a boy I liked started to kick the back of my chair. I knew that this was, in 7th grade, a sign that he totally wanted to be my boyfriend. When I took my nerdy glasses off and turned my pimply face toward him, all slow motion and dreamy, I was met with his sneering face as he whispered, “You're a queef.” Cheeks hot, I turned back to my algebra. “You don't even know what it means,” he continued, “do you?”

I'd learned not to answer that one in 2nd grade. If you say you know what something means, then you spend the rest of recess pretending you're just too good a person to repeat what it means out loud. I sat still, figuring out what X would be if A times B were equal to Embarrassment minus X. “It's a pussy fart,” he reported.

For years after that, the word queef made me sick to my stomach. That boy had made the word and the act seem like such a dirty, disgusting thing. Then, the first time it happened to me during sex, I nearly made myself fart just to try to pass it off as anything but a queef.

There are so many things about our bodies that we can't control, and those things can get in the way of allowing us to have fun, adventurous sex. This month, still in the light of the New Year, I wanted to share four things about my own body that I've come to accept over the years. There are many more that I'll continue to get red-cheeked about, but I hope these four are enough to maybe help someone else laugh and learn that there are many things about our bodies that are okay.