Am I a slut when I show the beauty of my body?

Ok this might sound like a stupid question for some, but for me it isn’t. This is the part where I am basically not that woke in the current feminism narrative, but I think I am getting there.

In today’s social media I see so many women ‘exploit’ their body for likes. Their sexuality is part of their business model. But apparently that is a feminist thing. As in ‘I own my sexuality’ and ‘I will monetize my body before someone else does’, ‘ I do with my body what I want’ et cetera, and I get the theory of it. 

It is beautiful in the way that women are celebrating their sexuality, that they can express it, get artistic with it, feel free and enjoy it. I can be jealous of women that shamelessly show what they want to show and say what they want to say. I am fascinated with all those strong and sexy women doing their thing in the online world. I don’t like that young girls think they have to be like that or that that is the norm, but I do love the freedom they allow themselves. That they don’t pretend.

The big but (not butt) for me is that it is still a whole bunch of horny lads jerking off behind their screens that give you the traffic. You know that and you get along anyway. 

And that’s the part where I get confused. Something in me still tells me that it is wrong. On the other hand I find that now that I am over forty I just want to celebrate my sexuality and be happy with all of me. Ha, before I turn into a granny and it is too late right?

I did the opposite; When I realized what my body summoned in people, I changed. I didn’t want to be liked for my body. I wanted to be seen as intelligent and talented, not as sexy. I saw that part as enjoyable but not achieved by me. I didn't make my body, I didn’t even work for it like someone who might go to the gym everyday or had to work hard to loose weight. Non of that. So how could I get credit for it or could I be proud of something that was basically a coincidence?

Jeez, I’ve gotten so much abuse for just looking the way I did. From both men and women. Good things too, but still. I have been accused countless times of using my body to get what I want and it was never true. I ended up being ashamed of having a good body. Like my body was sinful in itself. And at the time I didn’t even liked it that much. I already grew up with a mother who didn’t like our bodies either. Growing up she told us the sleep with a bra on so our tits would grow so much. As if it were the bandaged feet of ancient Chinese ladies. Well, that shit didn’t work. I was young. Listened to every crazy thing people had to say.

I am delighted that I was young in a camera and social media free age. Most of the shit I pulled (and fun I had) went undocumented and is alive only in the memory of the people that were present. And only I know whether the experience was beautiful to me or not and why. On the other hand I wish I knew that I could celebrate my body instead of feeling bad every time the focus lay on my appearance and not so much on my brain. I still struggle to see mind and body as one. Both part of the person that is me.

The relief when I shaved the hair on my head super short for the first time was immense. I could take a train without being bothered by some annoying dude who wanted my phone number. And I felt like only the people that were interested in me as a person stayed. But then I got abuse for shaving off my hair.

A guy I worked with said: '

“What did you do? You can’t even see if you are a boy or a girl.

Do you think that if Shakira cut her hair like yours she would have gotten famous?” 

No, I didn’t think so. 

And I didn’t want to get famous. 

I ended up being nicknamed Shakira for as long as I worked there.

I could laugh about it. I started to know who I was and what I liked.

And it had nothing to do with this guy’s taste in women’s hairstyles.

I started dressing down more and more. Funny enough the way I had learned to think about how others saw me never left no matter how I dressed.

Another part to this story is that to be accepted at the arts academy I did there was a process of two weekends of classes and doing writing exercises. Plus you had to deliver a portfolio and convince the school leaders of your motivation in a conversation.

I got in with 14 others out of 80 something, so not bad right? I just turned 18 that spring. I was aware that I was probably the last one in and they might have had their doubts about me, but I was in. Later that year when the admission came up in conversation a guy who was present during that process said: You were already in because of your picture.

That was probably the worst insult I have ever received and it was remarks like that that made me give up when things got complicated. When I allowed my negative brain to take over for a while his voice became one of the voices in my head and I started telling myself that every compliment I ever received was because of my tits and ass and that every time someone told me I was a good writer had been a lie. The voices became so loud that I couldn’t hear my own inner voice anymore. When you write or want to be creative in any way, being able to listen to that voice is crucial so I stopped altogether and I vowed to never do it again until I could do it just for my own secret fun, regardless of whether it was good or not or if there was a single other person in the world interested.

The moral of this story is the baseline of happiness: Celebrate what you got, your physique and your intellect. Don’t try to impress people with either or, they are going to be interested in you, a part of you or all of you, whatever, you can’t influence what others think about you and trying to do so is a waste of your time.