Right with the skin I'm in?
"Jean Kilbourne, one of the more thoughtful critics of the impact of advertising on women, writes eloquently about the way imagery-- particularly sexual imagery, which is so coolly passionless and so unequivocally appearance-based-- can tamper with a woman's gut-level feelings about what it means to be sexual, numbing thinking about sex, skewing expectations about it, confusing real sexuality with narcissism, fostering a plastic and superficial view that's all about arousing others, never about the emotions that might underlie arousal, like intimacy or connection or trust. 'This not only makes real intimacy impossible,' she writes, 'it erodes real desire... We are offered a pseudosexuality, a sexual mystique that makes it far more difficult to discover our own unique and authentic sexuality. How sexy can a woman be who hates her body? How fully can she surrender to passion if she's worried that her thighs are too heavy?'" --Appetites, Caroline Knapp
New York City tampers with my body image more than any other place I've ever been. The bodies, the clothes, the fellow females. I can't help but compare and notice...
While I cannot say that I don't hate my body, I can say that I have never once thought about my thighs being too heavy (or any which-way) during sex. People think about their thighs during sex? Their minds aren't in the right place...
The book I'm reading makes some remarkable points, and the portion I'm reading now is discussing the male gaze, how it's all over advertising... very negative, blaming, in many ways... but I just want to say that it's pretty remarkable that I've never once felt unattractive, naked or otherwise, in front of the males I've been with... shy, yes, reserved, yes, but never "ugly" or "fat"... and that is remarkable, because I tend to be pretty down on my body otherwise.
So, thank you to the boys who make their girls feel beautiful, confident, sexy, hot, wanted...
...although this is all wrong, because we should be feeling beautiful regardless. Sans boy, sans products, sans clothes, sans image. Sigh. It's enough to put a lump in my throat.
New York City tampers with my body image more than any other place I've ever been. The bodies, the clothes, the fellow females. I can't help but compare and notice...
While I cannot say that I don't hate my body, I can say that I have never once thought about my thighs being too heavy (or any which-way) during sex. People think about their thighs during sex? Their minds aren't in the right place...
The book I'm reading makes some remarkable points, and the portion I'm reading now is discussing the male gaze, how it's all over advertising... very negative, blaming, in many ways... but I just want to say that it's pretty remarkable that I've never once felt unattractive, naked or otherwise, in front of the males I've been with... shy, yes, reserved, yes, but never "ugly" or "fat"... and that is remarkable, because I tend to be pretty down on my body otherwise.
So, thank you to the boys who make their girls feel beautiful, confident, sexy, hot, wanted...
...although this is all wrong, because we should be feeling beautiful regardless. Sans boy, sans products, sans clothes, sans image. Sigh. It's enough to put a lump in my throat.