The Cultural Mindfuck of Desire

This article presented with the “no one is responsible for your happiness or self-image” caveat, but it’s been nagging me for the last little bit, and I felt the need to share.

I might be the only person who feels this way. And, you know what? I hope that’s true. You might be a fierce, badass who never questioned your sexual and aesthetic worthiness, and I dig it. Send me a roadmap to how you got there.

But, just in case there’s someone else who feels this way, here goes nothing.

I’m slightly over 40, and I have been having sex for roughly half of my life. Notice I didn’t say good sex. That always comes later.

For all of that time, my body didn’t represent what mainstream culture deemed sexy and desirable. Sure, I had big boobs and a pretty sizable ass (I was just a little too old to benefit from the J.Lo pro-butt extravaganza), and — for a long time — I had a fairly proportionate waist. But, I grew up in the Kate Moss-era, long before mainstream, body positivity. I was never thin, anyway. I never felt comfortable in half shirts, and there was always an added thickness to me that other girls didn’t have. Never truly fat, but never, ever thin. And I hated it. That programming runs deep, and I’ve held onto it all my life.

As you can imagine, this had a pretty significant impact on my approach to sex. Most of my (very sparse) early experiences were relegated to darkened dorm rooms, eliminating any issues with my partner’s observation. No one asked, and I certainly didn’t offer. In my experience, that changes as relationships mature, and intimacy creates a higher expectation for passive and active nudity.

While I am sure you would love me to recount all my disappointing sexual experiences, let’s flash forward to the more recent past. I got married at 28 and had enough sexual experience to know what I liked and how to communicate my needs, blah, blah, blah.

But, here’s the thing, based on my body alone, I didn’t believe that I was allowed to be sexy — even with my husband. I thought in order to deserve desire, you had to earn it with a smoking body. You have no idea how much time I spent looking forward to achieving my perfect body so I could finally enjoy sex.

I believed my husband loved me and accepted my body as a part of our marriage contract. You know, he was stuck with this body, so he might as well fuck it.

It never occurred to me that he could actually be hot for my body.

Read that again.

It never occurred to me that my body could be a turn on.

Instead, I viewed it as an obstacle and internally applauded his ability to withstand it. Sick, right?

And, here’s the worst thing. He never once treated me that way. In fact, he was hot for me. When he went on work trips, he would have lingerie and all kinds of goodies delivered to me in anticipation of his return. Want to know how I responded? I treated him like a pervert. Seriously.

I acted like his attraction to me was so unnatural that he said I thought he was a deviant — just for wanting to have sex with his wife. Luckily, I’m a talker, and we talked it out, but that didn’t cure my insecurity and how I approached sex. No lights. No complete nudity. Absolutely no visual access to my body. Never mind that he could feel every lump and roll.

It only got worse after we had kids because my body changed in drastic ways and never changed back. That’s when the sex negotiations started. At that point in my life, I didn’t understand the importance of consistent sexual contact — especially to my husband.

Even so, I wanted him to be happy, and he asked so little of me that I was willing to work with him. We negotiated the amount of sex he needed, and I did my best to stick to it. There were times when sex lagged — like after the birth of baby #2 — when we had harsh disagreements about frequency, what I was willing to provide, and it ended with bitterness on both sides.

I like sex, I do. Even then — once I got into it — I liked it, had multiple orgasms, and wasn’t afraid to ask for what I wanted.

Then one day, something significant happened. I picked up his phone to Google something, and the screen was open to a naked woman. I am not opposed to porn, but we are so open with one another, it caught me off guard. It was his Tumblr account (before the great porn annihilation of 2018). I flipped through some of the accounts he followed, and my jaw dropped. All the women looked like me. He was getting off to women whose bodies looked like mine.

When I asked him about it, and he said, “It was the closest I could get to being with you.”

Mind blown. I was — and still am to some degree — astounded by his revelation. And, it’s made all the difference. One piece of knowledge changed the way I saw myself, the way I approached sex and worthiness.

It never occurred to me that it was actually my body he wanted — not just sex with a body. He was shocked that I didn’t know. I mean, he knows I’m neurotic about my body, but I’m neurotic in so many ways, who can keep up?

My husband didn’t ask me to be anything other than who and what I was. He never asked me to change, especially when it came to my body. Do you have any idea how freeing that is?

So, here’s my soapbox. When you post pictures of “perfect bodies,” big butts, perky breasts, and narrow waists, it sends a message. “This is what’s desirable. This is what’s sexy. This is what’s worthy.” But, that’s not 100% true.

It’s a fuzzy line, because, sure, a thing of beauty is a thing of beauty. There’s no arguing that. But, maybe the goal should be to include a broader range of beautiful things so that we can see our desirability reflected back to us. If we don’t see your desire for other forms of beauty, how will we know it exists at all?

So, just in case you need to hear it from someone: ladies and gents, you are desirable and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, especially your silly, neurotic, culturally-altered brain.

Go forth and be sexy!