Self embrace

If things like self-objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and restric­tive gen­der norms lead to rela­tion­ships with our­selves that are under­whelm­ing or unful­fill­ing, what would a more ful­ly human approach look like? What approach­es towards our­selves allow us to flour­ish and thrive, with­in our­selves and in relationships?

Based on in-depth inter­views with women explor­ing pos­i­tive body image, Nicole Wood-Barcalow and col­leagues define this con­cept (or rather way of being) in a rich, expan­sive fashion: 

An over­ar­ch­ing love and respect for the body that allows indi­vid­u­als to (a) appre­ci­ate the unique beau­ty of their body and the func­tions that it per­forms for them; (b) accept and even admire their body, includ­ing those aspects that are incon­sis­tent with ide­al­ized images; © feel beau­ti­ful, com­fort­able, con­fi­dent, and hap­py with their body, which is often reflect­ed as an out­er radi­ance, or a ‘‘glow;’’ (d) empha­size their body’s assets rather than dwell on their imper­fec­tions; (e) have a mind­ful con­nec­tion with their body’s needs; and (f) inter­pret incom­ing infor­ma­tion in a body-pro­tec­tive man­ner where­by most pos­i­tive infor­ma­tion is inter­nal­ized and most neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion is reject­ed or reframed. 

Here peo­ple appre­ci­ate their body’s com­pe­tence and skills over its appear­ance, whilst also see­ing its beau­ty, which is not teth­ered to a nar­row ide­al. Body accep­tance and appre­ci­a­tion may inter­twine with wider self-accep­tance and radi­ate as a ​‘glow’. The body forms a ​‘func­tion­al yet mod­est part’ of iden­ti­ty. Women for exam­ple commented: 

Appre­ci­ate the things you were giv­en in life rather than wish­ing that you had the stuff that you don’t; that’s when life is good and what it’s sup­posed to be

I’m treat­ing my body with love. My body treats me back with love. It just is like this bond.

If peo­ple are say­ing pos­i­tive things about your body, but that’s still the main focus of their con­ver­sa­tions and what’s on their minds, that’s bad also.⁸⁷

With this men­tal­i­ty, there is no need for body self-con­scious­ness. Instead of the body’s appear­ance being reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tored to check how it is com­ply­ing to stan­dards, its feel­ings and needs can be lis­tened and attuned to. This is reflec­tive of the love felt towards one’s body, just as the appre­ci­a­tion of all that it does is reflec­tive of the love felt from it. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, whilst self and body are in rela­tion­ship, intu­itive bod­i­ly aware­ness also means that a per­son is deeply in their body – they are embod­ied. Research finds that this body appre­ci­a­tion and accep­tance is asso­ci­at­ed with mul­ti­ple ele­ments of psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing (such as hap­pi­ness, life sat­is­fac­tion and intu­itive eat­ing) as well as increased sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion⁸⁸.

How we approach our bod­ies close­ly relates to how we approach our wider selves. We can not only appre­ci­ate and embrace our bod­ies, but all that we are, in self-accep­tance. This is recog­nised as an intrin­sic and pro­found human good in var­i­ous philoso­phies and ther­a­peu­tic approach­es⁸⁹. The founder of one such ther­a­py, Albert Ellis, defines this state as when peo­ple ​‘ful­ly accept them­selves as valu­able and enjoy­able human beings whether or not they are self-effi­ca­cious and whether or not oth­ers approve of or love them’⁹⁰. There is a sense of inher­ent self-worth and being enough as you are. Peo­ple feel love and com­pas­sion towards them­selves, a sense of self-embrace. Self-acceptance’s oppo­site is inad­e­qua­cy – a sense of only being worth­while if… . The per­son is only ​‘OK’ if cer­tain con­di­tions are met, for exam­ple hav­ing a cer­tain body, hav­ing oth­ers’ approval, being pop­u­lar, rich etc. Clear­ly these posi­tions are on a spec­trum and many peo­ple move around between the two – influ­ences in life pro­mot­ing one or oth­er approach at any giv­en point. Ado­les­cence and ear­ly adult­hood, with their devel­op­men­tal tasks of iden­ti­ty for­ma­tion and self-clar­i­fi­ca­tion⁹¹, would seem par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive peri­ods for these influ­ences, pro­vid­ing fer­tile ground for one or oth­er ori­en­ta­tion to take greater root⁹².

As is clear from these dis­cus­sions, var­i­ous ​‘ideals’ and norms of main­stream pornog­ra­phy push peo­ple away from body- and self-accep­tance and towards con­struct­ing a self whose worth is tied up with spe­cif­ic ways of look­ing and behav­ing (via objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, and var­i­ous gen­der norms and sex­u­al scripts). None of these ways cen­tre attune­ment towards one­self or others.

This takes us to the final ele­ment of what we are describ­ing here as self-embrace: a holis­tic and inte­grat­ed sex­u­al­i­ty. Pornog­ra­phy con­veys to its view­ers that their sex­u­al­i­ty is their imme­di­ate arousal to the images and videos it pro­motes. View­ers are implic­it­ly invit­ed to fol­low their lev­el of arousal to find their sex­u­al­i­ty, this approach lying behind the fre­quent­ly dis­joint­ed, frag­men­tary view­ing expe­ri­ence. A com­mon­ly cit­ed ​‘pos­i­tive’ of pornog­ra­phy is its sup­posed util­i­ty in help­ing peo­ple ​‘explore’ and ​‘dis­cov­er’ their sex­u­al­i­ty. Yet sex­u­al­i­ty is far rich­er and more mul­ti-faceted than sim­ple arousal. To ignore these oth­er ele­ments and pri­ori­tise arousal in a vac­u­um leads to all sorts of prob­lems and con­fu­sions, and on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el, reduces what it is to be human.

Sex­u­al­i­ty includes sex­u­al attrac­tion, sex­u­al desire, sex­u­al ener­gy, and sex­u­al arousal – one can involve oth­ers, they can lay­er upon and deep­en one anoth­er, but they are not col­lapsi­ble⁹³. Sex­u­al­i­ty also involves how we think and feel about each of these ele­ments with­in our­selves. The fol­low­ing exam­ples attempt to unpack this mul­ti-dimen­sion­al nature of sex­u­al­i­ty, show­ing how the dif­fer­ent ele­ments can relate or oth­er­wise not. 

A young per­son is attract­ed to a friend of a friend he has recent­ly met. They expe­ri­ence great sex­u­al chem­istry and as their rela­tion­ship devel­ops, he expe­ri­ences increas­ing sex­u­al desire for him/​her. Dur­ing a sex­u­al expe­ri­ence togeth­er, he expe­ri­ences high lev­els of sex­u­al arousal. An under­cur­rent of arousal was present in his attrac­tion and desire, but these feel­ings were not reducible to that – sex­u­al attrac­tion moti­vat­ing a desire to be with that per­son, the sex­u­al desire being about want­i­ng to have a sex­u­al expe­ri­ence togeth­er. In this rela­tion­ship, attrac­tion, desire and arousal align and they are feel­ings that the per­son desires, accepts and enjoys.

A per­son in a sat­is­fy­ing monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship is attract­ed towards a per­son they’ve recent­ly met through work. There is the aware­ness that if they were sin­gle, she/​he would explore this attrac­tion, allow­ing it to deep­en and to lead to sex­u­al desire. As this would con­flict with their rela­tion­ship how­ev­er, she/​he choos­es not to go on that inter­nal and inter­per­son­al journey.

A per­son finds their lev­els of sex­u­al arousal height­en to pornog­ra­phy focussed on women’s bod­ies, how­ev­er in life they only expe­ri­ence attrac­tion to men, some­times devel­op­ing into desire.

An indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences a sex­u­al ener­gy with­in them that links to their cre­ativ­i­ty, and their self-embrace. They expe­ri­ence it as some­thing that gives them ener­gy, con­fi­dence and ​‘glow’ and it is not focussed on a par­tic­u­lar ​‘object’ of attrac­tion, desire or arousal.

Clear­ly human sex­u­al­i­ty is rich and com­plex. In large part this is because we are human, with all that that brings includ­ing the poten­tial for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, rela­tion­al depth, moral­i­ty, agency, and sec­ond-order think­ing and feel­ing. The argu­ment put for­ward here is that our sex­u­al­i­ty con­tributes most pow­er­ful­ly to per­son­al and rela­tion­al flour­ish­ing when it is holis­tic and inte­grat­ed. Here a per­son recog­nis­es the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of their sex­u­al­i­ty, and aspires to align them with one anoth­er and with oth­er intrin­sic parts of who they are. Arousal is not split off and rei­fied as it is in pornog­ra­phy – indeed a per­son may choose not to incor­po­rate arousal that is manip­u­lat­ed for another’s ends (as it is in pornog­ra­phy) into their sex­u­al­i­ty if it doesn’t align with their deep desires and needs. In con­trast, the sex­u­al ener­gy that peo­ple might find spring­ing from with­in them when they adopt a holis­tic stance, an atti­tude of open­ness, can be acknowl­edged, delight­ed in, and may emanate in var­i­ous parts of life. This is rem­i­nis­cent of fur­ther com­ments from young women dis­cussing body appre­ci­a­tion in the study by Nicole Wood-Bar­a­clow and her colleagues:

It’s almost like that sparkle in somebody’s eye. You can def­i­nite­ly tell when some­body feels great

You have per­son­al glow… your body’s just glow­ing, like a spot­light… every­one sees that you’re happy

The thread run­ning through­out is that humans do well, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, when they appre­ci­ate and embrace them­selves, includ­ing their bod­ies and their sex­u­al­i­ty. This accep­tance sup­ports embod­i­ment (i.e. being in one’s body and self, ver­sus adopt­ing the per­spec­tive of an onlook­er), as well as sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ships with oth­ers and agen­tic liv­ing – both explored next.