Body Image questions

Happy Bodies have a post calling for submissions, which also has soe questions to help people get started. I think as far as submissions go, I'll probably just offer a link to my "body image" tag and they can sort out what seems useful from that. But the questions looke dinteresting to have a crack at a sentence or two about each, so here's my short answers to each:

What is your favorite Body part?

My hands, easily! They make music, they make fun sex things happen, they are also proportionately quite slender and delicate, while also being big and able to stretch to do lots of things like holding big objects or playing double bass.

What part do/would you flaunt?

My hair - it's something that makes me very proud.

What part do you specifically check in the mirror?

I don't really - although I guess my face when I'm shaving.

Do you label anything on your body a “problem area”?

I'm way hairier on my body than I'm happy with. Make it go away!

Can you think of a time when the way you viewed your body changed?

Not in a sudden change sense, but there have been periods where my body view has changed gradually. It took a couple of years in my mid-twenties but that was when I changed from seeing my body as inherently unattractive to seeing it as attractive and likeable. I think it is no coincidence that this was when I really started to wake up to the possibility of r/l BDSM relationships.

When are you most aware of your body?

Listening to music, when doing any sort of activity, especially when I am in control of something - BDSM encounters especially!

Do you notice what body language you use in different situations? Flirting? Professionally? Hanging out with your friends?

Not as much as I think I should be. I worry that sometimes my body language isn't congruent with how I'm feeling or thinking or relating to someone - or rather, that my body language dialect is a lot different from that of those around me.

Do you workout? Why?

No - because I can't maintain focus on exercise for the sake of exercise. I'm much happier playing sports or hiking.

How have sexual encounters changed the way you view your body?

See above: finding my sexuality accepted was the first step in coming to see myself as being attractive (both physically and spiritually). Being appreciated in a sexual context was a very important element of that as well.

Have any comments about your body ever changed how you think about it?

See comments above. The comments mentioned below on my nude posts didn't have any effect because I was much more confident in myself by the tie I did those; if comments would have changed my self-image, I wouldn't have made those posts in the first place.

How has the idea of virginity impacted how you view your body?

Not a great deal. The idea of being a virgin wasn't much of anything to me - the fact I hadn't had sex yet was what bothered me, because it was something I wanted to do and enjoy. But the status of virginity wasn't an issue, and certainly didn't affect the way I viewed my body. Feeling undesirable just made it seem natural that nobody would have sex with me, but it didn't add to that sense, but merely was a small piece of corroborating evidence for what I already believed.

What do you think of depictions of “attractive” bodies in the media?

• Does it impact how you view your body?
• Is there a body type you aspire to?

In a way I never felt pressured to live up to attractive bodies, because when I was young I thought that it was beyond my reach anyway. When I came to appreciate my body as attractive, then there was no need to compare myself to the media images.

I would like to have a slimmer body, but not by much. My biggest aspiration is to have bigger breasts - I'd like proper womanly boobs, not my measly man-tits. I suspect that would freak out a lot of people in modern society, though.

How did you learn about your body growing up? How did your family impact your body image?

This is actually a pretty tricky question for me. The biggest memory I have is of being about 6 or 7 and reading a big hardback book called "The Human Body" that was probably aimed at children a few years older than me. It talked about the biological functions and had diagrams of the sex organs and stuff.

Family wise, it was like a generational gap, as far as I can remember: my parents encouraged me to see myself positively; my siblings (and peers) encouraged the opposite. The siblings and peers won out.

How do you think others view your body?

That depends on which others and what situation. I am, objectively, a tubby bitch. Some people (like the anonymous poster on my nudity posts) react badly to it. Others see me as the sexy beast I am!

How do the other aspects of your identity play out on how you view your body and how it is viewed?

I've already talked a bit about how my BDSM kinks have impacted on my body image. My gender fluidity is what makes me want proper big boobs (I think my ideal would be a C cup) but it also means that I am much more familiar with my body and its reactions that I suspect I might otherwise have been. I think the fact that I am willing to be a bit camp impacts the way certain types of people see me and I feel as though they think it gives them more permission to be negative and express disgust about it.

How does the way you view your body change the way you view yourself as a person?

I'm inclined to say that it doesn't, and the reason is that although there is a correlation between feeling like a bad person and also feeling like I'm ugly or unattractive, I think these have a single common cause behind them (namely, depression). I think when I was younger it was more the case that feeling unattractive also made me feel like I was an unlikeable person - but again, there were other issues going on with that, so it's hard to say whether the way I view my body has any effect.