Confidence 102: Body (ody-ody-ody-ody Real Hot Girl Shit)

Body confidence can make a significant impact in the way you navigate the world. Appearance isn’t everything, but not having anxiety about the way you look is such a game-changer, you carry yourself differently, and people responding differently as a result.

I spent the majority of my life with no body confidence and it’s only through doing sexwork that I have come to an understanding that I do not have to worry about my appearance. I have been showered with compliments. I have people pay me thousands of dollars to spend time with me and I have often referred to my arse and titties as my “Money Makers”. But that is not my secret to body confidence. Having all these people externally validating my appearance did not fully allow me to validate my own appearance. I’m going to get back to what actually did it for me, but first I’ll tell you a bit about where I came from.

The 90s were kinda brutal

When I was a little Ember, I was bullied for developing early. I was pointed at and laughed at in swimming class change rooms for having tits when I was 10, bullied for my butt being so big that it took up too much room when lining up outside class when I was 11, For a brief moment when I was 12, I was celebrated for being the first girl to shave her legs and I felt like a celebrity. Kids I didn’t know would come up to me during lunch break and ask me how far up I had shaved, ogling my smooth thighs and comparing their legs to mine.  Then they would ask why I had such fat legs and giggle.

To be honest, as a child I always wondered how other people managed to walk on such thin legs, where was the structural integrity coming from?

I took up too much space as a not-so-little girl and I was shamed for it by my peers and also by adults. I was also the first kid in my grade to get pimples and be teased for them – though I was happy I got it out of the way early, because during my teens my skin was flawless, while everyone else was struggling with acne.

I was not actually overweight, it was just the 90s. My father had various pet names for me which we mostly references to me being fat, like lump, pudding, blimp, fatarse.   He would make me go on diets and force me to run laps, trying to whittle me down to size. None of these worked. As an adult, I’ve come to learn that genetics are genetics and some people are just naturally rounder, softer, curvier. I have been stick thin once in my life and it was only because I was very unwell at the time. I was underweight and even then my ass was bodacious. When I am eating healthy and exercising regularly, I have always looked about how I look now.

The impact on my social life

By the time I hit high school, I was thoroughly in the mindset of making myself as small as possible, and that meant shrinking my personality as much as it did covering up my body.  This lead to a pretty friendless, scary high school experience and a whole gamut of social problems.  People mooing at me as I walked past did not help. Again, I want to point out that I was not overweight, just curvy.  It was the year 2000 and girls that were size 12 were getting mooed at. 

I generally held the belief that I was ugly until I was about 30. Sort of an “it is what it is” mentality, but it deeply impacted the way I carried myself.  I was lost in the sauce of societal beauty standards and genuinely felt like less of a person as a result. The patriarchal conditioning had me thinking that my value laid in my appearance, and as my appearance was so mid, I had no value.

The positive impact of sexwork

When I got into sexwork initially, my offering was that I was horny, available, interested and willing, not because I thought I was attractive enough to do it.  I went independent straight away, not because I was confident, but because the thought of working at a brothel being compared to a bunch of other women who would outdoubtedly be hotter than me was too intimidating and I couldn’t stand the thought of being rejected to my face.

It did not take very long for me to concede that actually yes some people did find me attractive, hundreds of them, and being someone very logic-driven, I was able to let go of my mindset surrounding being unattractive to others, and was happier for it. I was able to let go of the crushing anxiety of body-shame and trust the process.

Being paid big wads of cash by dozens of people who come to worship my huge ass and titties was priceless. It’s such an interesting thing to reflect on that the things that I got bullied for are now a big part of how I make a living and are celebrated by a whole sea of people. I have concrete evidence here that my bullies did not know what the fuck they were even talking about, so their opinions are not valid and I’ve successfully eradicated them from my intrusive thoughts. I think all the amount of reassurance in the world by one partner wouldn’t have been enough for me to dig myself out of my insecurities, but cold hard cash did the trick, I had to believe them when they were actually paying, rather than just complimenting me to get something.

The kicker for me though, is having conversations with so many different people about attraction, about what is hot for them. It’s seeing the delicious diversity of people that are successful in this industry. It was taking stock in the reality of what “attractiveness” is, instead of believing the media and the bullies. Although sadly a lot of people still subscribe outwardly to conventional beauty standards, behind closed doors they say very different things. Yes, I was getting paid. But so are all these other people who look nothing like me. There is a beautiful, diverse range of people in this industry. Being conventionally attractive is irrelevant, because deep down people will like what they like.

Attractiveness is subjective, not objective

I realised that there is no one version of what “attractive” is. We were sold that lie by the media in the 90s, but as I’ve lived through a few fashion cycles now, I’ve seen Kim Kardashian’s arse rise to fame, I’ve become blissfully disillusioned. People are gonna like what they like. I can just be me, and some people will think I’m hot, some people won’t.

When I have examined my own attraction to others, I have to concede that my tastes are diverse and interesting and constantly changing, so why wouldn’t everyone else’s tastes be just as diverse and interesting?

I would love to be able to say I realised that other people’s opinions don’t matter. I do care very little about what others think of me, but I got to that place via the mindset that actually I’m not a mindreader and I shouldn’t presume to know what others think of me. I decoupled the media and societal portrayal of attractiveness from reality. Without that, who knows what anyone likes, it’s a total mystery.

It’s all noise

Yesterday, according to analytics, my Ivy Societe profile was seen by 2133 people, 83 people clicked into my profile, and only one of those people reached out about a booking. Perhaps those other 82 didn’t like my copy, or perhaps they didn’t like my prices. But in one day, 2050 people thought “Nope, not that one” based off my pictures alone and kept scrolling. I am not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t have to be. I don’t even have to be my own cup of tea. None of this matters. It’s all just noise. In a world where even conventionally attractive people like Margot Robbie get haters online, these metrics are nonsensical and pointless.

I do not find myself physically attractive, I would not book me or date me based on my appearance. But that’s actually okay, I don’t have to. I like other things about myself, like my personality, my dedication to living my values, my intellect, my creativity. And from an industry perspective, the people with the most success are those putting their personalities out there on display, which says a lot about what people are actually attracted to.

Anxiety about appearance can be a real hit to your self-esteem, so it’s important to examine and try to deconstruct our societal conditioning as much as possible.

You don’t even have to examine tribes in Africa with their varying beauty standards. It’s right here, it’s all around us. Stop listening to the media, look around and you’ll see people of all different shapes, sizes, colours, genders and abilities, being hot, being celebrated. And if you want to be objectified, there is absolutely someone out there that will be happy to oblige, just post on Fetlife.

Harnessing your appearance to make connections

I think a more important facet of our appearance is self-expression. Some very cool, confident people are out here practicing self-care and dressing for themselves, rather than other people’s external validation. The way you present yourself to the world is a form of self-expression whether you like it or not. If you lean into this in an intentional way, you will find that you attract others that are compatible with you. Appearance isn’t everything, but it is the first point of contact. It can be used as a fantastic tool for letting people know who you are. You have to show the world who you are, if you want the right people to find you.

Next time you are getting dressed, rather than thinking “what will others think of me?”, think “what am I saying about myself?”. After seeing a particularly sentimental reel on IG about the positive impact of rainbows, I’m going to be putting in more of an effort to wear a rainbow pin when I’m out and about. Not to convey my queerness (though I am very queer), but to let other queers out in the wild know that I am an ally.

As a side note, I recently found out that Gen Z thinks of Converse shoes as “teacher vibes”. So now every time I pull mine on, I’m thinking “I’m hip, I’m with it” in a Dr. Evil voice. I’m not going to stop wearing them, but wow. Wow. This whole ageing thing is a real trip. Trends are transitory, confidence is timeless. Just be yourself, none of this matters.

In my blog Confidence 103, I’m going to talk about the most important facet of all, Confidence to be authentically myself.