Bringing Sexy Back

I once read somewhere that truth is sexy.  

Pictures are popping up everywhere with "big" vs. "small" or "fat" vs. "skinny" women.  Asking questions like "Since when did this become sexier than this?".  (See below picture for reference).  In my opinion there should be no “vs.” involved.  When we sit down and reflect on the people that appeal to us as sexy it is generally not just their physical appearance but instead a deeper sense of spark they have. Something we often refer to as confidence; the way the hold themselves, speak, or smile.    

Confidence by definition is :

full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing

belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities

certitude; assurance

I strongly believe this needs addressed.  Articles are constantly popping up about what a proper body should look like, what proper eating should look like, what proper exercise looks like, but we are still not getting to the root of the issue here.  To address the physical, we must also address the mental / emotional.    

  

There are many different perspectives on what sexy is, and thanks to the media we have exploited skinny as sexy.  Perhaps the worst part is that we have followed suit for many years, promoting this appeal by buying the clothes, the magazines, the advertisements, and so on.  We, in part, are responsible for this imaging and the distortion that it may hold. 

As an on and off model I will say that the behind the scenes of being that skinny involves sacrificing your soul and continual verbal abuse.  Being that I weighed 110-120lbs at 5’9” and you could count my ribs through my shirt I often found myself being insubordinate to my agent.  However they still managed to pinch, prod and click their tongues that I should shoot heroine between my toes for a few days to slim down for a casting that could be potential big bucks.  I have seen girls drugged, slept with, black listed, verbally abused, and made plastic by surgeries for the price of what our magazines want to portray as “sexy”.  In fact we all have. 

It took an 11 year old girl saying to me that she wanted to look just like me before it hit me just how shit that industry is.  It is important to note that there are companies out there that do not require such things of the people that model their clothes.  But they are fewer and farther between than the ones that do. 

Now as we are beginning to wake up to the disgust that we feel for the lines drawn in the sand about “sexy”.  We are becoming proactive in saying that sexy is dependent on the eye of the beholder, and we will continue on this path of making it more balanced, because it is time we took a healthier approach to our lives. 

Meaning no more anorexia and no more obesity… accepting ourselves at a body weight that works for us and putting the effort in to eat healthy and stay active. 

Truth is sexy, and that truth differs from person to person.  There is no cure all diet, no perfect exercise program, no right way to apply your make up, or to dress.  Instead we have opportunities everyday to take care of ourselves by eating the foods that give us energy and make us feel good, whether that be a carrot or potato chips.  We have the chance every day to go for a walk or stretch, or do some jumping jacks.  It is in these processes we learn about ourselves and our bodies, we create the space for us to connect to what works for us rather than what our neighbor said they did to “get the weight off”. 

Humans are brilliant.  I mean look at the things that we create on a daily basis and through the centuries, and yet we fail to embrace a healthy lifestyle.  We blame our jobs, our busy life, our money situation, our emotions, and our health when really we are in charge of it all.  We set the boundaries in our own life, in each and every situation.  And when we go to the store and we buy a shape magazine with a little “perfect” body on the cover we support the idea and the definition of what is sexy and appealing.  We literally buy into it every time we spend our money on it, proving to the people behind the scenes that this is okay.  So, ask yourself, do you really think this is okay? 

We can become sexier by putting in the effort and creating the confidence that we are able to take responsibility and accountability for ourselves, because that is truth, individual truth., and that is a sexy that no one else can possibly mimic.  It eliminates over eating, under eating, stress eating, and laziness because we listen to ourselves and our needs, and then we act on those needs.  

Grow your own food, or at least some of it.  You can grow herbs and veggies in just a pot if that’s all you have space for.

Go for a walk, we all have spare minutes in our day.  Just get off the phone, off the computer, off the couch and see where you go, even if it is laps around the living room.

Stretch.  Bend over try and touch your toes.  Bend from side to side.  Twist and turn.  There are endless podcasts out there and endless information on the internet.

Don’t by fashion magazines, diet pills, exercise gimics, and “guaranteed to fix you” information. 

Only you can fix you. 

Tell your boss, your family, your friends what you need.  Create boundaries, it builds respect. 

Dammit, I didn’t want to create a list of “fix it” ideas.  I just wanted to give you ideas for how you can take charge in your life.

Rather than a size or a weight wouldn’t we prefer if sexy was a state of mind, an empowered state of mind.  I am not talking feminist “I am woman hear me roar”, I am talking about “I know who I am, I will honor who I am, I will act on my beliefs, I know how to take care of myself”.  Thank you and have a great day. 

Be sexy in your own right, because you deserve it and the world deserves it.  No 11 year old should think that “skinny” is the definition of sexy.