There is interesting evidence that how women feel about their body has little to do with how their body looks and far more to do with what they tell themselves repeatedly. If you pay attention to how you talk to yourself, you may be shocked. Will you begin paying attention to what you say to yourself and take notice? Do you say something like “you are disgusting, fat, ugly, your thighs are hideous etc.” each day to yourself? Most women do, many times a day.

When we become aware of what we say to ourselves we may realize that we would never let a friend or lover speak to us with such little love, respect or honor. We can be buoyed by the evidence that we can change these thoughts, slowly but surely, if we decide we want to. And that this change can makes a real difference in our lived experience of our body and how we interact with others. We can essentially choose to notice these negative thoughts and re-train the brain to take a different route.

Current neuroscience research is showing that the brain makes circuits that it gets used to running and that these neural pathways get strengthened as the thoughts become habitual. So if you have made cruel body-hating thoughts a habit for yourself, you will probably continue to unless you choose to interrupt those thoughts and re-direct them. If you choose to re-direct your thoughts, slowly but surely, the brain circuits can begin to adjust.

What we think about ourselves matter, it effects how we treat ourselves, what we deem ourselves worthy of, what we go for in life or don’t. How women feel about their body determines a lot of other intersecting factors in life. It is important that we begin to choose to adjust our thoughts to be more kind to ourselves, thought by thought, day by day. Because how we choose to speak to ourselves and our body matters, because we matter.

There are disproportionately fewer images out there of larger women being unabashedly sexy. This tongue in cheek video has some fun, fabulous moments of bigger women enjoying their bodies.

I particularly enjoy the video at .36 where they do a slow pan over her whole lingerie clad body while she seems to enjoy being viewed, and 1.35 where we are treated to close ups of her jiggling thighs on top of the washing machine in a fabulously sexy way and 2.15 and 3.00 where the woman in the black corset and suspenders is definitely enjoying being in her own body.

It is always a joy to watch a woman have fun and feel free in her body, no matter what her size. I hope seeing images of larger women feeling sexy and free gives all of us permission to let our own sexy self come out to play, whatever size or state our body is in!

As a culture we are obsessed with breasts.

Breasts are essentially a mass of fat.

Thus, we actually love fat in “correct” places but loathe it as soon as it moves location a wee bit.

Weird, no?

We all know there are extremely large women who feel like curvy sex goddesses and tiny slim women who hate their bodies.

At some point we choose how we feel about our bodies and thus how we carry ourselves in the world.

Every sexy woman at some point has made a choice to let herself feel sexy, gorgeous and delicious and to share herself with the world through her presence.

Maybe she doesn’t feel gorgeously delicious all the time, but when she chooses to, she can go out into the world feeling fabulous about herself.

What would happen if we chose to carry ourselves as if we are incredibly attractive and gorgeous? Who says we can’t?

Choosing to believe in our own sexiness does nothing but improve our lives and those around us.

Big women who choose to honor and stand in their own attractiveness are incredibly inspiring to me. No one gave them permission to feel attractive, in fact our culture is focused on telling them they are clearly not attractive. But at some point some of these women just decided the strong, money-making cultural messages were wrong and they determined for themselves their own attractiveness and worth. And we are all better off because of it.

Some women are making the choice for themselves that they are attractive in their own body, whatever their size.

What are you waiting for?

In Western culture we spend so much time vilifying fat.

Have you ever moved your judgement out of the way long enough to really feel the fat on your body or someone you love?

If we stopped hating fat so much and started getting curious about the sensations we feel under our hands we could begin a different relationship with the fat on our bodies.

We might begin to notice that fat creates incredibly beautiful curves that are truly delicious to run your hands over, that touching fat is profoundly soft and that fat has a tenderness that you can’t find anywhere else.

What would happen if we experimented with noticing how fat feels under our fingertips in the absence of judgement.

What might you feel under your hands?

Is it possible that fat could be delightful to feel?

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Interestingly, while we are all busy being concerned about what we look like with the lights on, if we are skinny enough, sexy enough… we often forget that all of our bodies are potentially able to experience tremendous pleasure.

While our culture is so wedded to this myth that life is better all around for traditionally beautiful women we assume that they must have better sex or orgasms. Fortunately for all, pleasure, bless it, is seriously democratic. Every single one of us has an equal opportunity to feel profound pleasure in our bodies, no matter what trauma or abuse we might have experienced.

Whether or not we choose to access this pleasure is up to us alone, of course. We can begin this process by shifting our focus from being primarily aware of what we look like, to what we feel like. Only then does true beauty begin to have a pathway out of us. When we feel good, we look good. Which is what many larger women have figured out already and are out there shining their beauty around like the stars they are.