Today I want to write about a realisation I had during the week.
It’s about beauty and worth and the intrinsic nature of these two in regards to the ‘Woman Essence’ (a controversial topic for some feminists and gender studies academics!).
I’ve been doing a ‘conscious erotic dance journey for women’ called ‘Dancing Eros’, run by the amazing and FULL POWER Vanessa Florence (find out more here: http://vanessa-florence.com/offerings/events/). This course is really all about connecting with your own pleasure through spontaneous, un- choreographed dance, expressing that primarily for YOU. The extension of this as a practice is then consciously remaining in that pleasure and inner impulse while with eye contact, offering it to another woman in the group (or to your partner at home, if that is your situation). It is astoundingly powerful and transformational stuff to be witnessed in your pleasure, beauty, femininity and self-expression in a totally loving, allowing and empowered sacred space. The opportunity to be able to offer that as a GIFT in it’s pure raw form, and also to have it received FULLY is a rare treasure indeed.
Anyhow, I’ve done quite a bit of work like this before (around sexuality and sacred sexuality), which been integral to my E.D. recovery, but this has been a deepening and flourishing of that laid and still being paved road. Being in this course has reminded me (in a western culture – Australia – where I am bombarded daily with billboards and advertising depicting malnourished women – well, at least, ONE TYPE OF WOMAN – as the ideal of beauty and female sexuality) that there are so many billions of bodies out there. That there are just as many different ways of expressing beauty, femininity, pleasure, sexuality, emPOWERment and the Divine. And the special thing about that is the uniqueness of each one. To witness someone truly deeply in the expression of their personal essence… you can never see that again with ANYONE else. Only that person. Only this one person can express THEM, and that is what is sacred.
In seeing this in the outer, it has brought me, or reminded me (especially in the days I forget), that I also have a unique and divine beauty and sexuality and for me to be in, dance in and express that – sharing it as an offering from self to another – is one of the greatest gifts I could give anyone. It is one of the greatest gifts that person could give me in receiving it in full conscious presence (I know I’m repeating myself, but roll with me, I’m getting seriously enthusiastic and passionate here!).
SO. For a very brief time I (was) seeing this lovely young man who I became quite smitten with. I can be quite the dreamer and yes, I have amazing visualisation skills when it comes to building castles in the sky! Anyhow, I got all excited about this course and wanted to share it with him. So I texted said young man, offering him a private dance viewing should he ‘ask nicely’….
Cue crickets chirping in empty night air.
….
I didn’t hear back.
well, not at least until the night of the next day. What I got was a
”Haha. I’m going to see the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with a friend. How cultured!”
?????????
Ummm, excuse me, the woman you’ve been chasing for the last few weeks offers you a sexy dance show and you say what now?!
I’m an Aries. I’m pretty fiery. I’m also pretty aware, so I didn’t just vomit my spleen all over him. This is how it looked.
Courtney internally :
FUCK YOU! Don’t you REALISE that I just offered to share my SEXUALITY, my ESSENCE with you and you’ve just friekin blown it off like I DON’T MATTER??!!!! I MATTER damn it!
Courtney in rational Non Violent Communication speak (aka, how the conversation actually looked):
Hey yeah, so about the text, I just wanted to let you know I felt a bit dismissed and brushed off and unimportant…
Courtney Internally:
And fat and un-beautiful and undesirable and undesired by the person whose clothes I just want to tear off with my teeth while they throw me onto the bed…
Courtney in conscious non-blame non-explosive speak (aka, real time):
And I just wanted to let you know it was a really big thing for me to offer that to someone, so if you feel like it’s too overwhelming, please just communicate that to me in the future, rather than nothing, so I have less room to go into rejection.
….
From his side he’s just young and inexperienced and didn’t realise what a massive thing for me (and many women I believe) to get up in front of a man and dance my sexuality for him where my whole body can be scrutinised completely. That I wasn’t just offering my body or my rhythm or my joy, but my essence as a woman.
By the way… we’ll get to the essence stuff later, I’m using the definition before I’ve even come to the part where I fully realise it. Bear with me and my non-linear concept defining story-telling-incorporating!
ALL of my body stuff came up. I had sexuality and body rubber band snap back. I looked in the mirror and what I saw was an Au size 10 Courtney walrus!
Oh my god! Just LOOK at those THIGHS! (my mentally weakest body part) Wow Courtney, you really need to go for a run! You’ve really let yourself go! You know, you looked WAY better last year when you were still on 800 calories a day…
(FAAARKED UUUPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!)
It’s been quite some time since I’ve had these thoughts, but they all came up this one day. And of course, it wasn’t about my body. I was no bigger than the day before when I felt great. What it was was my feelings of rejection and unacknowledgement towards my feminine self, her sexuality rising up and manifesting in body hatred. For so long I have unconsciously drawn men into my life who don’t fully see me, so therefore don’t see my beauty and therefore don’t make me FEEL like I’m seen as beautiful or desired. I just started to believe that I wasn’t those things.
So I got thinking. What do I need right now?
Answer: to be (if I am going to be) in partnership with a man who sees me in that way and makes me feel those things. This is an actual need for me in relationship.
And if not (and as well as), to see myself that way, helped by surrounding myself with the people who love me who see me that way.
I felt a little bit… hmm, at odds with the ‘feminist’ inside myself. Why? WHY do I need to feel these things? Um, hello media and billboards and 1% of the woman body type being represented in advertising as the unattainable ideal. Is THAT what I wanted?
No. I wanted (want) to be seen AS MYSELF and for THAT to be perceived as beautiful and desirable.
I realised that for so long, women have been objectified for their beauty and their sexuality. As a way of breaking from that objectifiaction, many women – well, I can only speak for myself so ME – told themselves/myself that it was WRONG to need to been seen as beautiful and desirable to a man. I alienated myself from the NEED to feel that way. But actually that beauty, that feminine sexuality in the many different ways she manifests herself, is at the core of what it means to be a woman. You’re not wanting to be seen as a doll,or a picture – not something lifeless and untouchable but beautiful; but something whole and living and breathing and complex. Something that is ever growing and changing and UNIQUE. Someone who is the embodiment and aliveness of these qualities (and many others), not just a voiceless inanimate object. As YOURSELF. WOMAN! Woman is powerful and amazing and totally sexual. Women are the bearers of life. That creative life force energy is sexual energy, so how can being in your woman essence POSSIBLY be separated from your sexuality and beauty (it is always there in it’s different representations) ?? It’s given to you by nature from before birth!
Through being unacknowledged in the essence of what I am as a woman (and triggered so deeply back into disordered body thoughts), I was able to acknowledge it as a truth at the core of my being. My uniqueness and my sexuality are a part of what makes me beautiful. Acknowledging that myself, and bringing into my life those who see that in me is not only deeply healing in my relationship to my body, but to my complete and total empowerment, joy, happiness, fulfillment and love.
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