Turn Yourself On: Sexiness & The Assumed Audience
A woman being sexy. Feminism or not feminism, that is the question.
Let’s break this down a bit more. Imagine, if you will, a woman. And, here’s the crucial bit, she’s in lace underwear.
Yikes.
What are your thoughts? Where does your mind *immediately* jump to? Exploitation or empowerment? Is she the product of a patriarchal society, it’s tendrils so deeply wrapped around this woman that, much alike a puppet, she walks and talks as the MEN intend her to - performing for them in this hyper-sexualised world where they attempt to attain self worth through the currency of beauty and sex appeal? OR, is this woman simply displaying a message of body positivity? Is she prostrating herself at the alter of Lizzo, liberating herself from the male gaze, as she celebrates her own body in the ritual of a mirror selfie?
The question, under all my florid piss-takery, is essentially - can you ever truly be sexy for just yourself? The answer, as I see it - boils down to two things. One, autonomy. Two, audience.
On the first topic of ‘autonomy’ - it boils down to choice. I know choice is a complicated matter - you could be perfectly content with the idea that you are deciding to be a page 3 girl or a stripper and be accidentally playing a game in which you’ll never win. This is such a muddy issue and I know the support of sex-workers is an ever louder debate and, importantly, I know sweet fuck all really and won’t claim, with all my lack of sex work experience, to know anything about where it leaves women in this thing we call society. However, clever as we are, womxn are able to process information and make their own decisions about their own body (pretty cool, right?) and, in the very basic situation of choosing to take a photo of themselves in underwear, I think we can trust a woman to know her own mind and know she just wants to feel sexy.
But, FOR WHO?
And so, we come onto the point of ‘audience’ on which I’d like to linger. What do I mean when I say ‘audience?’ I mean, essentially, who are you being sexy for? Let’s take the example of the photos of the women in the underwear; who are they for? Herself? Partner? The world? Essentially, I’m less fussed about this part. What I am fussed on is - the control of the audience. The audience has the power to make the sexiness enjoyable or dangerous.
If you’re choosing to take a nude for your partner then fair play, pretty hot right? But, if you’re uncomfortably taking some photos because you feel frigid if you say no - really not cool or hot or any of the good things. This is a pretty simple statement.
But now let’s say the audience is just you. You are just taking photos of yourself for yourself. Is this a thing? Can you ever truly be intentionally sexy for just yourself without ever wanting to show anyone? Can you be satisfied with only praise from yourself?
Here is where I’d like to bring in a bit about my job - I work in a Boudoir Studio. Womxn come to us and we take photos of them in their underwear. Boudoir, in its very definition, is for the person in the photo. It has no intended audience but the person in the photo - unless they choose to change that. Boudoir, therefore, relies on the idea of the self-practise of sexiness.
I *adore* it. In the process of Boudoir you have to ask yourself something very important - what do I find sexy about myself? You’re not trying to figure out what body parts your partner loves about you (the eternal question: tits or ass), you’re asking YOURSELF, what do I love in myself? It can be a body part, it can be your hair, your collarbone, your legs - or maybe it’s something deeper than that, your strength, your sass, (sass or ass: the eternal question) your femininity, whatever.
The question of what you find beautiful in yourself is a powerful question to which there are SO many answers. We have had a gorgeous trans womxn come to us and, for her, femininity was her interpretation of sexiness. We have had many other women, in their 40/50/60/70’s, who feel they have lost her individuality behind the layers and masks of Mum, Nan, Wife. Women who have forgotten what it feels like to look in the mirror and see themselves. No one has asked what they like as a person, rather than a Mum, in a while. Society has stripped them of their sexuality. What, in their 20’s, was shoved in their face whether they wanted it or not, has been taken away from them, whether they wanted it or not. Like a disgraced cop, they hand in their badge.
The other side of Boudoir is when young, stereotypically attractive women come in and get their kit off. I’ve been at markets before where an angered woman has stormed up to me to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that this is PORN, which brings me onto my next point…
This woman has all of the context she needs to know it is not porn and that the woman in the photo is in control. We are a service for which you pay so 1) someone has chosen to hand their money over and 2) we have testimonials of the woman explaining why she did it and who she did it for (in short, herself).
It seems, even when you have all of the information you need, a woman in underwear must be being exploited somewhere along the line. Which, brings me back to my original point of an audience - there is the implied subtext of an audience.
Whether we like it or not, sexiness is wrapped up the idea of an assumed audience. Sexy is not what you find in yourself, it is what others find in you. It is a badge that can be given and taken away.
So therefore when people see photos of women in underwear, they don’t see the women first - they see the invisible, ever present, audience.
What about if get rid of that? What if we, and get this, we hold all the power?
Even more than that, what if we could simultaneous demystify and celebrate sexiness? People try again and again to pin attributes to sex - which are, at their core, totally arbitrary. Having kinky sex or having sex a lot can make you fun, cool, spontaneous, it can make you seem like a better partner or in a good relationship - or a slut. Depends who you ask. Not having sex can make you boring or frigid - or proper. Again, depends who you ask.
Sex is sex - it doesn’t make you anymore fun or spontaneous or cool or slutty or scandalous or anything good or bad.
And, moreover, sexiness - although it may this sound ludicrous - doesn’t need to have anything to do with sex. The word ‘sexiness’ is an amalgamation of experiences and ideas from an individual. For some, sexiness is intrinsically linked to the act of sex itself and for others it it has nothing to do with it; it is a power and a presence - a feeling. Sexiness is not necessarily an appeal or invitation to have sex; there can be a purity there too - it can be synonymous with confidence and celebration.
The truth is, in a a-la-Roland-Barthes-death-of-the-author way, you can’t control how everyone else perceives your sexiness; once your image is out there, it’s inevitable.
However, you can control how you invest and perceive your own body. And, the way I see it, finding out what you find sexy about yourself and leaning into that…well, it’s all a method of building your confidence, and if there is one thing I have ever learnt from Boudoir, it’s that having confidence can transform your life. Body positivity, self-love, self-worth whatever you want to call it - confidence should be an ever present practise in your life and it’s in the little things in life that strengthen your confidence - whether that be taking a few nudes and telling yourself you look fiiiiiiine or just battling any negative comments that pop up.
You can have fun with figuring out what is ‘sexy’ because sexiness is so much more than what we presume it is; it isn’t for the audience it is to decode and interpret ourself; it is a way to honour our body.
Treat your body like a piece of art. Appreciate it for everything it does as a whole; yes it can be desired by others but what about what it is for you too? Bodies can give life, feel pleasure, carry you, heal, strengthen, protect. Your legs can carry you to the mountains, your arms are what push you along when you swim, what hug your friends when they need you most; your wrinkles are testament to a life lived and emotions felt, your stomach is the meals shared with friends, the achievements celebrated with raised glasses of your favourite wine, your face is this mark on the world.
We have come to see and talk about beauty in this singular, reductive and, in my mind, totally nonsensical way. We talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘sexiness’ and so often mean something that we know beauty is not; when we talk about beauty in terms of the ever changing trends of the times - waists and boobs and bums - we butcher ourselves into meat.
Beauty is what you see when you look at your best friend’s face. Beauty is in the way in that when you come to know and love someone; you stop noticing how they look. You stop seeing or listening to the definition of beauty we have been offered and start understanding what it is. You stop butchering people into body parts and symmetry and start seeing the person. When you think of your best friend or your partner or your Mum, you don’t think they are beautiful because of their hair or their weight - they are beautiful because it is them. They are your experiences together, your memories, the love you give and receive. Over time, they are just who they are.
Beauty is when you are sat on a kitchen table and you look over at your best friend, who is talking at you and laughing at something bizarre, and in your corner of your mind you get lost in a thought; you look at your best friend’s face and you think they are beautiful.
Being sexy for yourself or seeing yourself as beautiful can be as simple as liking a curve of your body; but to me - and my practise of it, as hard as it is, is to celebrate my self; body and soul. I want to marry the two. To find beauty not in the sum of my parts, but in everything I am. To make myself the only audience I need.
“The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
- Derek Walcott
Written by Jess Blackwell, The Everyday Founder
I’m Jess, the founder of The Everyday Magazine. Day to day I work in marketing and am training up as a photographer in a Boudoir Studio in Bath. As a general rule, I like to write about things that would be awkward to discuss with the family. Try not to blush.