When I watched Spider Man-for the first time, Tobey Maguire’s muscles and softly awkward voice entranced me. I was twelve years old and had been having annoying thoughts of puberty and growing up. All thoughts for another time. Fifteen minutes into the movie, and after the spider bite, Peter wakes up and his senses are overwhelming him, in a way I had never seen before. He jumps up and runs to his mirror, removing his glasses and gazing at his newly toned body. He had the spider to thank for that. He raised his arms towards his head in a sort of flexing position. My twelve-year-old eyes had been stuck on the way the meat in his arms moved. He muttered “Big change?” and looked down at his underwear, tugging on the elastic for a better look. “Yep. Big change.”
While I don’t have male genitals and haven’t been bitten by a radioactive spider, I felt a lot like Peter for a while. My chest had bloomed like tiny flowers. I was still flat but I was bigger than before, which was a big deal among young girls who wanted nothing more than to be grown. I remember gazing at myself in the mirror, my eyes squinting at the lumps, analyzing every blemish and stretch of skin. Yep. Big change. The flesh was slightly tender and I had concluded that the marks had been bruises from the growth. When did they grow? It was as if boobs had grown overnight. “Maybe I was bitten by a spider and the growth that was already happening was just sped up because of it!” I thought to myself.
While Peter’s newfound spider powers enhanced his senses, it seemed like mine had dimmed. Or maybe it wasn’t my senses. Perhaps it was my ability to completely ignore social cues. I wasn’t sure if awkwardness ran rampant like some sort of disease, but if it had, then I had caught it and was deathly ill. At times, I had wondered “What if that spider had never bitten Peter?” I would imagine him getting bullied and doing math homework like a normal teenager. The image felt peculiar. It was hard to imagine Peter as anything other than Spider-Man because that’s who he is. That is who he was chosen to be. Not Peter Parker, a Mathlete from Queens but, Spider-Man, Hero of New York. Of course, he is still technically Peter Parker, but does that even matter if no one cares about him?
A few years later, in high school, watching my peers mingle with their friends and talk about the football games they would be attending saddened me. Even as a sixteen-year-old girl, I felt that I was out of touch with everyone around me. I felt as if I didn’t have any actual friends or anything to be known by. My name was Kyndal but I wasn’t “Kyndal Chaney, a pretty girl who makes good grades, has a banging body, and endless friends.” I was just Kyndal. “Kyndal Chaney, a girl with an okay face and an okay body.” Who actually was I? Did I serve a purpose to anyone?
As it turns out, I didn’t. Getting bitten by a spider wasn’t fun and I wouldn’t gain powers like Peter, which was a major bummer. I wish that powers did appear after my bite from that random spider that appeared on my pillow, so I would be able to fight the person who killed my father.
Re-watching the movie for the 30th time, I paid close attention to Peter’s face when he found out that Uncle Ben had died. He looked awful. Distraught. Sniffling and clenching his teeth, Peter forced out his words like vomit could come out at any second “Uncle Ben.” Uncle Ben said Peter’s name in a whisper, and his hand fell out of Peter’s. The old man’s fingers practically froze over and Peter’s gaze hardened when the location of his uncle’s killer was spoken on the walkie-talkie.
The night my father died, I was ten years old and over at my neighbor’s house with my sister and she got a call from our mother. “Come home.” Is it wrong to say that I already knew what had happened just from the shiver in my mother’s voice? Because I did. But I prayed that I just had a messed up imagination. I had never prayed before. At home, when my mother told us that my father had died, I didn’t immediately start crying. I tried to trick myself into believing I heard “Your father didn’t bake it,” referring to the cake I had baked early that morning because, yeah, I did, but I couldn’t because my brain wouldn’t allow me to play dumb. I did cry at some point that night and when I did, I couldn’t stop. Pain, anger, and sorrow flooded my veins, and just like Peters, my eyes hardened over. They resembled a frozen lake as I thought about ways that I could somehow murder cancer. My eyes closed on my mother’s lap and I pictured cancer as a weak, frail old man. One who fell when you took away his cane. I saw myself beating cancer with my hands, which flew toward him with a strength only someone like Spider-Man could have. With every punch and bite I threw, my happiness had dwindled. I felt like a star swallowed by a black hole.
At twelve years old I had my first counseling session. There is a scene in Spider-Man where Peter is pushed up against a train, preventing it from falling off the edge and killing all of the people on it. His arms are spread and his teeth clatter together. His eyes are shut and with exhaustion, he falls. The people on the train reach out to catch him and drag his worn-out body towards the center. His suit was ripped. The man who sat closest to his body tugged off his mask and frowned. “He’s just a kid.” When I want to feel a little sad, I remember that Peter Parker was a child. He was a sixteen-year-old boy who was bitten by a spider and had to watch his uncle die. I think that part of why I love Peter so much is because we were both children when we suffered the most. Children, who want nothing more than to be close to loved ones. Children, without a say in who lives or dies or how life can turn out. I was just a kid and at times I have to remember that the ten-year-old girl who watched her father suffer through his final moments, didn’t understand. Being hard on myself is something I’ve done often and it didn’t feel good. I would watch movies of people my age smoking and having sex; letting their bodies be manipulated into all sorts of shapes of disparity and thought “That must be how I can fix myself.” With every thought that came to my head of harm, I felt myself stretch further and further. My body ached and I wanted to cry every time I got a look of myself in the mirror. I looked sad. I looked burdened. I looked anxious. I looked different. Unlike my younger self who had eyes bigger than the moon and a smile that reached Saturn, my present self looked depressed. I never acted on these ideas of harm. I think it’s because I was scared that I would ruin my body before it had its first real run at life. I surprisingly thought very carefully about my health and I learned to prioritize it. My brain had been good for something after all.
With age came insecurities and I was full of them. My eyes crossed over the other, my stomach bounced with every step, my forehead littered with acne, was huge, and my skin… oh my skin was dark, and what was there to love about that? I dreaded waking up in the morning and brushing my teeth because I knew that I would have to gaze at the dark pile of ugly that stared back at me, her eyes equally saddened by the fact that I wasn’t wearing a superhero suit. I couldn’t take off my skin or face. This was who I was and I knew that anything I could do, if there was anything, would be enough for me. “I wonder if Peter hates being Spider-Man,” I thought to myself in the darkness of my bedroom, the crickets disrupting the barrier of silence. I’m sure he does. His powers are the reason why Aunt May got hurt, why Uncle Ben died, and why Mary Jane didn’t trust him anymore. Nothing good came from the changes and staring up at the Spider-Man poster above my bed, I understood why Peter covered his face. Sure, he wanted to keep his identity a secret but also, being perceived as anything but amazing was one of Peter’s biggest fears. Behind his red mask was a boy who wanted nothing more than to be good at everything he did. But he wasn’t. He couldn’t take perfect pictures, he couldn’t get the girl he wanted and he couldn’t save the people he loved most. The cancer that my parents told me was asleep was unpreventable so I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about that anyway but the nagging voice inside of me tells me that I could have done something about his smoking. I could have helped him feel better before he died. He wouldn’t have died as early if I had done something to get him to stop smoking.
“You were a child Kyndal,” my therapist told me with furrowed brows and eyes full of what I believed to be faux sympathy. This woman didn’t care. She just wanted money and I wanted to go home. Her office smelled of Axe body spray and the small aloe plant wilted near the window. I guess that the moral of her Sunday lesson was that I had no control over my father and his health. As an eleven-year-old, I fought with her on that. I could have done something and not helping him made me a coward. As I age, I begin to agree with her that any of my efforts would be for nothing and he would still die. Why did I ever want to be grown? Aging has done nothing but bring me closer to getting my license and being dejected. I wish I was a child again.
Grown up Peter Parker was broke and had nothing but his suit to rely on. He pinched pennies and lost his girlfriend because of an idiot mistake. What did he really have to live for? I imagine that Peter thinks about this often and when he does, he immediately has to save someone from death. When I ask myself, “What do I have to live for?” I say nothing but my brain searches for memories of my family. Oh yes, my mother and sisters. I have them to live for.
When Stan Lee created Spiderman back in 1962, he was judged and the idea was nearly scrapped because “Nobody wants to read about a teen with issues.” Lee, pushing the idea to his publisher, responded “Don’t you know what a superhero is?” The publisher falls back in his chair with two hairy palms covering his face, “Stan, I’m surprised at you. A hero can’t be a teenager. A teenager can only be a sidekick! And you say you want him to have problems? Don’t you know what a superhero is?”
Can teenagers be superheroes? Yes, they could, and my seventeen-year-old sister Kori was a prime example of a hero. While Kori and I didn’t always get along and had fights that usually resulted in cursing each other out, she was one of the biggest heroes in my life for a long time. I would never admit it out loud but I admired Kori. She was a small but ferocious girl who always knew what to say in my times of need. I can recall crying on my bed one day after my friends dumped me and her saying “Girl, wake up. Those girls don’t deserve you. I can see why they left you though. You annoying as shit.” Her words were never the kindest but they helped ease me out of my delusions. I can remember the night our father died, she wasn’t there. She was in Thibodaux for college. We texted her telling her to “come home.” similar to how my mother had done with me. When she got to the house at midnight and we broke the news to her, she didn’t cry. She didn’t frown and her eyes didn’t soften like they should’ve. I wasn’t sure why. Instead of crying like expected, she walked out of the house. It was dark out and she wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood. One of my mom’s friends went to get her and when she returned, she still wasn’t crying. Not a tear was shed and looking at her, lip between her teeth and the slightest bit of skin hanging from it, I realized that she was still my hero. She was brave but it felt as if her soul cried out.
The third week after he died, Kori still hadn’t gone back to college. Her voice was as frail as the skin around her wrist and from the hushed conversations she had with our mom, I knew she wanted to stay at home and never go back to Thibidoux. She lounged around the house staring off into the distance, probably near a painting. When I would speak to her, attempting to get things back to normal, she would yell at me over nonsense and I would yell back, not angry with her but angry at the fact that if our father hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have been arguing in the first place. I loved Kori. She meant everything to me. Her yells and cries wouldn’t change the fact that she was my hero.
At sixteen years old, I still get curious about my body. I still drool over Spider-Man and his huge muscles and at sixteen years old I’ve started to accept that I’m pretty similar to Peter Parker, but not completely. At sixteen years old, I start to wonder why the weakest soldiers take on the strongest battles. I believe that I can be weak. Weak like Peter Parker before the spider bit him. What would it take for me to be strong and not flee at every possible chance? A bite from a radioactive spider would be the best answer but I needed something realistic and attainable. I needed confidence, bravery, and faith.
Watching Spider-Man at sixteen years old feels slightly surreal. I feel as if I’m watching my life play out in front of me. The bulging muscles capture my attention for a few seconds before the scene changes and Peter is waving at a child from the top of a building, swinging away immediately after. When I watch the trilogy now, I begin to understand that Peter’s strength came, not only from the spider but from himself. He had always been strong in a nonphysical way, so why has it taken me years to understand that I’m strong too? My strength does not lie in my muscles or how many weights I can lift at the gym. It comes from how many mental ambushes I can face without giving up and how I treat myself during them. I’m very strong and this realization is definitely a change. Yep. A very big change
