One of my issuses with the fashion and beauty industries is that they encourage us, particularly as women, to be self-deprecating. To be painfully aware of our flaws and to be willing to spend lots of money “fixing ourselves up”. Out of desperation? Well, if that’s the case, that’s okay… but it seems many of us just take it for granted that we have to strive to constantly look better. And it’s so big, so pervasive, so seductively delivered, that we don’t even realize that it’s all an expensive ”put down” to who we are, naturally!
Do you really know what you look like? 360 degrees, top to bottom? Do you ever really look? Or touch… feel? Personally, these days I’m carrying some extra weight so I avoid looking. I figure I’ll start looking more closely again when I lose it… when I get “better”. What if I don’t? Can I just ignore my own body for the rest of my life? It’s not going to get “better”… according the the natural laws of aging and the belief that beauty and youth are synonymous and mutually exclusive traits.
This drawing is from a series of self-portraits I took alone in my room with a digital camera several years ago when I was struggling with bulimia and rather debilitating self-doubt and self-hate. It’s funny to me now how awful I thought I looked then, because I have moved on to heal some of these issues and continue to work on others. My vision and perspective have changed, and now I can see the beauty in this image. Before I was too busy criticizing the imperfections; I couldn’t see the positives. This is a great illustration of one of my favourite quotes from Anaïs Nin: “We don’t see things the way they are; we see them the way we are.” Simple, but so, so true.
This was a contemplative photo session. I was looking at my body, touching it, taking different postures and letting it express itself. I love pictures where people’s hands are on their own bodies because how they touch themselves says something about how they relate to themselves. Just like with a partner, we can’t always be “on”… we can’t always be at our best, but in learning to also accept our worst, we can learn to appreciate who we are and what we came here with.
Yesterday I saw an advertisement for a pair of breasts that looked alot like mine that had been “fixed” with implants. I used to hate the shape of my breasts. Now in my forties after having had four babies, I wouldn’t change a thing… I’ve grown to love them dearly. I think I’ve grown to love them by touching them… by caressing them when I am without a partner to do so for me. Your own touch is as different as the touch of two different lovers, but it is still touch, and can still be very nurturing. It seems so crazy to me that entire generations of people were taught that touching and enjoying their own bodies was wrong or bad; imagine if we’d been told that enjoying using your body to walk from one place to another or practice sports were selfish acts of self-indulgence.
I know male and female desire and sexual expressions and needs can be very different. We tend to imagine male masturbation as quick and rough – like “jacking off” or “getting your rocks off”. And some females masturbate in similar ways; some days it’s just a quest for release of built-up tensions. Other days it could be a gentle self-massage with a sponge in the bathtub that leads to genital contact and satisfaction. Sometimes we don’t take the time to tend to ourselves, to touch ourselves, or even to look, except to criticize. I met a woman this weekend who teaches sensual dance to women, who go in thinking they’re learning something new to seduce their partners, when in fact what they’re learning above all is to get more in contact with their own sexual energy to be able to also better love themselves.
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