The Weekly Mindfuck: Body Image

Recently, at a house party, I was listening to one very belligerent guy talk about this celebrity he wanted to sleep with. He cupped his hands in front of him, crooning about how fantastic her tits are. Fair enough, I thought. They sound pretty great. But he kept talking, you see. "My girlfriend, her tits are just OK," he said with a disappointed look on his face. His girlfriend was in the next room out of earshot, but the moment still broke my heart. She's beautiful with a body that's an indisputable 10; a fitness enthusiast with long, flaxen hair and the longest eyelashes you've ever seen. I know she didn't hear him, and thank god - but I'm almost certain she's thought it, with or without his unaware musings.

See, every woman (and likely, every man) has a similar story: As a little kid, you see the beautiful people on the covers of magazines and in movies and commercials and think, with a sparkle of glowing optimism in your eye, that you're going to look like those grown-ups one day, already envisioning yourself as an attractive and accepted adult. It's a mental image of your future self that forms long before we learn about the simultaneously terrifying and amazing reality that all bodies, in fact, are different. Unique. It's something we should relish, and I think somewhere in the depths of human history many moons ago, we probably did. Not so much these days.

Instead, we grow up and realize that we don't look quite like the fabricated standard of "sexy" we've always envisioned ourselves as. Some women realize their bodies stay boyish throughout (and after) puberty, void of the supple, hourglass curves we see on the cover of Sports Illustrated and in Victoria's Secret ads and adorning the walls of our brothers' and male friends' walls. Some women never really grow boobs, or at least not great big ones, and feel like they can never have the sex appeal of their bustier comrades; that they will always be less wanted than their more endowed friends. 

And then there are the beautiful women who are a little thicker than the fit, toned models on the cover of Women's Health and in the faux yoga classes depicted on TV and in the movies. Thigh gaps? Ab lines? A butt so pert and toned that it seems to defy gravity? How are you supposed to have all these qualities at once?

You're not, of course - not really. Women with low body fat percentages generally don't have big boobs or bouncing butts, because guess what? Both of those things are made of body fat, and those glossy Victoria's Secret photos are doctored to give B cups D cups more often than not. And it's nearly impossible for women with large, luscious tits and amazing asses to have visible, defined abs and thighs so skinny they don't - gasp! - touch in the middle. In my opinion, all these bodies are equally sexy in their own unique ways - so why are so many people left to feel that they're not? Why should a beautiful, confident woman have to worry that her boyfriend is in another room, lamenting that she doesn't have the rack of a bikini model? 

Not every man will do such a thing, of course - and they feel it when they're compared to the burly biceped men of action movies and Calvin Klein campaigns too. As much of a cliche the term "societal standards of beauty" has become, there are deep ramifications to their existence. Sure, the strongest of us can learn to accept ourselves just as we are, to embrace what makes us unique. But that doesn't mean we're never left to worry that our partners don't wish they could swap out a few body parts or that they'd rather fuck someone with a smaller waist or bigger boobs - or in the case of men, a more chiseled physique, a bigger dick, and a few inches in height. 

Despite the growing body (and sex!) positivity movement, I still find myself in living rooms at house parties overhearing conversations like that one, and I wonder if the person looking for greener grass ever really stops to notice and appreciate the beauty their partner already has, or if they know how they're buying into what everyone told them they should like without trying to find their own expansive, authentic definition. 

Regardless of gender or age or orientation, the message still sometimes seems gloomy: Even if you're the best version of yourself - the healthiest, most glowing, most actualized and confident version - you still aren't necessarily good enough to merit the kind of consuming attraction you deserve.