Who's Sexy Now?

I'm too sexy for my car
too sexy for my car
Too sexy by far ...

And I'm too sexy for my hat
Too sexy for my hat
What do you think about that?

Right Said Fred
"Too Sexy"

This week, I found myself inspired by Heidi's post about her personal efforts to bring "sexy" back ... to herself. To that end, I have a question: Everyone out there who thinks they're sexy, please raise your hand.

Now, think for a moment. Did you raise your hand? Do you think many other people did?

I didn't raise my hand, because I was typing. If I hadn't been typing, I would probably have given it a half-raise, or a categorical raise. Because after thinking about this question for awhile, I've come to the conclusion that the way I evaluate my sexiness has changed over time. As a young person I tended to evaluate my own "sexiness" through the eyes of others, but as a mature woman, my focus is more turned inward, still taking into consideration the reactions of others but less concerned with cultural hoo-hah and primarily emphasizing my opinion of myself. I'm wondering if this is common, and if it has an association with upbringing or parents or culture or geography or age, and whether it can be connected specifically with any one of the other of the myriad other things that influence us across the course of a lifetime.

I was a shy teenager and young adult who always had body-image issues; I was frustrated with my weight and considered myself fat, although now at 30 years later and probably 50 pounds heavier, I find I don't feel fat anymore and my body self-consciousness has diminished into a trickle of irritation when I don't look right in some article of clothing I'm particularly fond of. Now, when I fret about being overweight (and intellectually I know I'm overweight, I just don't feel it with the life-or-death level of concern I struggled with as a teenager), it's usually from a health perspective. I am, after all, une femme de certain age, as the French so charmingly call it. Body weight is attached to all sorts of real health concerns, and in true Baby Boomer fashion, I want to stay healthy and active far into my "Golden Years." But when I was in my teens and 20s, my interpretation of "sexy" was clearly associated with maintaining a certain weight and dressing a certain way. It was associated with self-confidence, with male attention, and with being able to project a certain individualist point of view. Even though I didn't have a name for it then, "sexy" was definitely associated with my "juice," with where my whole lifeforce movement came from. If my pants were tight enough and the right person was looking at me in the right way, I definitely felt "sexy," but I also felt strong and confident and powerful and whole.

Now, I find "sexy" is more of an attitude for me, and it has far more to do with personal power and intelligence and wit and engaging the energy of a particular person or room full of people as it does with physical attractiveness of a sexual nature. I'm not self-conscious about my body anymore, despite the fact that I am quite sure its naked form probably appeared far more pleasing by generic standards 20 years ago than it does today. Yet it was not all that long ago that a man looked at me in that delirious, primal just short of drooling and wiping his mouth on his sleeve "I've lost control of my wits altogether" sort of way. He was most definitely NOT reacting to a low-cut neckline or flash of thigh, a stiletto heel or a skin-tight mini; I was dressed in my normal relatively schlubby fasion--I probaby had on a pair of boots, an old loose pair of jeans and a sweater or sweatshirt of some kind. The turn-on wasn't coming from my surface trappings, it was coming from me, from who I was, from my brain and my heart and my attitude and my personality. He was lusting after the real me rather than some generic visual interpretation of "sexy."

That, to put it mildly, is an incredible rush.

I began writing this as a "deconstruction" and fully expected to find myself largely unsexy for all the reasons my young self believed me to be so. But as I made photographs of myself and considered what I have learned and what I had to say, it became apparent that my definition of how to be "sexy" has changed. In this case, the delusion is my own—at some point I forgot to worry about looking sexy and just began being sexy. So I'm going to ask that question again, and this time I'm going to stop typing, because I'm going to have to raise my hand.

Question: Are you cognisant of a change in your perception of your own sexiness over time? What does your internal assessment seem to be attached to? Assignment: Take or make three pictures of yourself; represent your physical body and your emotional/intellectual body. How do you feel about them?

Talk to us!

—E. Marie