I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “how to maintain your sexual self-esteem when you’re a short, chubby, middle-aged woman” thing that I was talking about in The Aging Slut. It’s such a complicated circle — thinking that you’re hot and being confident in your hotness makes you hotter, thinking that you’re dumpy and being insecure about your looks makes you dumpier… but then how do you break out of the dumpiness/ insecurity circle and break into the confidence/ heat one?
I was re-reading what I wrote in Woman Eats Brownies, Gets Laid:
… what I wind up doing is seeking sexual affirmation, not by looking in the mirror, but by looking at other women who look like me. When I catch myself drooling over some hot babe with a nice meaty body that I’d really like to get my hands on, I remind myself that other people — especially other women — probably feel the same way about me.
And so lately I’ve been doing something I’m calling Ogle Therapy. When I see an attractive woman who looks something like me — forties, chunky, strong muscles, big tits and ass — I make a point of taking a moment to look at her. And I mean really look at her. I try not to be obvious and obnoxious about it, but I take a moment to enjoy the view, to luxuriate in her hotness and really take it in… and to remind myself that if I can look at this woman in this way, then chances are at least some other people are looking at me the same way.
I realize this isn’t much help to the heterosexually-inclined. But I had an opposite-sex version of this experience the other day — and it gave me a whole new perspective on this question.
I was at the gym, getting ready to use the bench press (my favorite weight set — it’s so fucking hot). Both benches were being used, so I waited… and while I waited, I watched the guys who were benching.
One was a very short, skinny, wiry guy in a Picasso T-shirt, in I’m guessing his late thirties or early forties, benching about 85 pounds. The other was a tallish, youngish (early 20s), well-muscled guy in a college sports team tank top, conventionally handsome in a frat-boy/ Tom Cruise/ Rock Hudson sort of way, benching about 150 or 175.
And if a fairy godmother had appeared to me at that moment and said, “You can have sex with either of these two men — pick one,” I would have picked the short, skinny, Picasso guy in a heartbeat.
He just looked… I don’t know. Interesting. Smart. A character, a guy with a mind of his own. Like someone I could relax and have a conversation with. Like someone with potentially interesting ideas about sex. The other guy looked… bland. Not bad or anything, but just kind of boring.
But it occurred to me: It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that the short, scrawny guy was insecure about his looks. Every bit as insecure as I can be. The beauty myth doesn’t just hit women, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he was comparing himself unfavorably to the big, beefy guys at the gym, just like I compare myself to the slender young women.
And yet here I was, thinking he was the hottest thing in the weight room.
And I realized: If I’m hot for the wiry little slip of a guy in the Picasso T-shirt, chances are someone at that gym has looked at the tough, chubby, forty-something dyke with the scary Jabberwock tattoo and thought, “Yeah, I’d do her.”
And for the rest of the evening, I was back on the confident/hot circle.
So at least sometimes, it works. What works for y’all?
I find that breaking out of a rut is hard to do for myself. Ogle Therapy certainly works sometimes. When I’ve been in LA for too long, coming home to the Bay Area and discovering the hottitude of the women around here — way less beauty-myth, way more diverse in all ways, and way more sexy — reminds me that blondes with nose jobs are not the universal standard of beauty.
But NOTHING works so well for me as the “the more you get, the more you get,” phenomenon. I don’t even need to get laid. If my sass is flagging, an evening around someone who I know WANTS to get me into bed jumpstarts the upward spiral.
A Jabberwock tattoo? Hell, I’d do you for that alone!
“A Jabberwock tattoo? Hell, I’d do you for that alone!”
Yup. Wicked scary-looking, too. I actually had a teenage girl stop me on the street last week to tell me the tattoo was “tight,” and that she had “seen some tight tattoos, but that is sick for real.” I spent the rest of the day running around telling everyone, “I have street cred! I have street cred!” (Which I suppose rather diminishes it when you run around excitedly telling everyone about it…)
And thanks for the props. That’s sweet.
A crisp white french-cuffed shirt, with one too many buttons unbuttoned and the collar up a bit. More eyeliner than a nice middle-aged woman is supposed to wear. Shoes with a bit of a heel — not enough to make me unsteady, just cowboy boots or somethiing to give me a bit of a swagger. A bit of scent, just enough that you have to be standing close enough to touch me in order to smell it.
Never fails.
Huh, good post. Usually, nothing does work – body issues are just paralyzing for me, and it sucks. Intellectually, I know I’m doing just fine, but then I get caught up in the comparison game – and that’s a total downward spiral.
I don’t appreciate enough women who look like me. Hell, I notice the women who /don’t/, since I’m so busy deciding I’m grotesque in comparison that people my size (my age, with my style) are invisible.
Thanks for the ideas. Your post really touched a chord.
🙂
I actually have what I think is an unusual insecurity: I’m a straight male who compares himself to women appearance-wise, and finds himself lacking. I’ve been working on trying to see what anyone sees in men, or what exactly is attractive about “male-ness”.
A) a friend just directed me to your site tonight. I love it. Thank you.
B) I think I’ve decided that this will be my first blog to comment on since I have two similar therapies.
firstly, I’m not very old, and, according to my admirers, not as grotesque as I often feel I am. Nevertheless, I think everyone’s insecurities are valid.
Therapy A: My girl friends and I decided to do this after we went on a run one day. As I listened to my beautiful friends complain about their bodies, and all of us protest their self-depreciation, I suggested that we could only complain about as many features as we could decide on good ones. As it turns out we didn’t hate ourselves as much as we thought.
Therapy B requires much less self awareness. In fact, its beauty is lies in its lack thereof. I’ve found that while I can hate myself in many ways, in many places, at many times. I cannot hate myself while dancing. All it takes is a hot hip-hop song and an empty room to turn my feelings around. The living room, my bedroom, all down the hall. Wherever I get a chance to be alone and see my form dancing. I love reveling in the innate sexuality that comes with dancing and it always makes me feel better. While I may imagine a wall to be someone I dance up close to, I would never apply this therapy in a club.Other people have the capacity to reject me while I’m dancing–I lack the ability.