I'm too sexy...

It's been a long week, and getting home from work felt like I was getting through a particularly long to do list. Finally, in my door I went, and things started shedding, the jacket, the shoes, business attire, the torturous pantyhose, the bra. Down came the work day updo, my hair tumbling into hippie's stringy tendrils. Ahhhhhhhhh, freedom. On came my long soft knit dress in the shade of blue that makes my eyes just zing and my skin glow. I felt comfortable and soft, knowing I was right on the border of mature sexiness and frumpiness. My mood, which comes through my body carriage, would make the difference. With it came the pleasure that it was just for me. There's no one to flash my oh-so-blue eyes at tonight, no one to notice the gentle sway of an unfettered body and that's exactly the way I want it. It's nice to really get again that my sexiness doesn't depend on my having a man around.

I was always one of those people who believed that trees still made noise when they fell even if no one was around to hear it. I always thought that was such an egocentric position -- that it took a human receptor for the sound to exist. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that sexiness is the same way. I was raised in a very old fashioned way that barely recognized that people were sexual creatures at all, so I learned about sex appeal in the most dangerous place of all. Not the streets, not the school bathrooms, but the magazines. Sexiness was something that you put on with strategically designed clothing, makeup mapped out as carefully as a schematic diagram, hair cut, colored, curled and tossed in just the right ways, a voice pitched just so, a body moving a certain way. I admit I enjoyed learning those things. I can be such a girly woman. I know that I'll never fit the culturally accepted mold of a sexy woman. My body has more in common with the Venus of Willendorf than it does with the Venus de Milo, yet I know that I am still sexy.

I don't know how long it took me to know that being sexy had to come from the inside. I had to learn that it is inseparably intertwined with loving yourself with a deep acceptance and appreciation. It requires courage and risk taking. It takes vulnerability. And it takes loving your body. I know my body's flaws so intimately. I can croon individualized, raging lullabyes to my scars, bulges, dimples, skin tags, broken capillaries and asymmetries I know them all so well. Despite this, my body is home and I do love it for the miracle it is and the miracle of me it holds within its ample frame.

I've had to fight to get to this point this week. Like most good things in life, this wonderful attitude comes and goes. I've had to go without a prescription diuretic this week due to a miscommunication about dosage between my doctor's office, pharmacy and insurance company. Despite adhering to my diet, this caused an eleven pound gain in one week. Inside I went nuts. What a forceful reminder of why I've hated structured diets so. I followed the freaking rules and still got fatter. Eleven pounds of water!! That has to be around three gallons that are sloshing around my ankles. No wonder my feet feel like water balloons. I felt like a failure. Last night after my weekly weigh in, it was all I could think about. I was aware of every extra ounce of me. Hearing about the womanchild's honor roll grades and the husband's job interview paled in comparison to the news about my weight. So did getting my paycheck after the identity theft disaster. Gone was the victory of the three previous weeks in one fell swoop, even though I still have a net loss that's considered right on target for the length of time I've been going to Weight Watchers. I wondered how much more weight I would have gained if I hadn't been intentionally dieting. I was obsessed, and I was about as far from sexy as a woman could get.

Somewhere overnight, I got my brain back, and with it came my body. I'm supremely comfortable in my skin tonight. My eyes are glowing an incredible blue. The candlelight I'm enjoying just for me is dancing on the highlights in my hair. The evening air feels like cool watered silk on my skin, and the person who most needs to appreciate these things is here. Me, appreciating myself.

sexiness
body image
self acceptance