Body Love: C is for Clothes

My first two posts for the A to Z challenge, about my ass and my boobs, are a really good representation of how I feel about my body: ambiguous. I have the good days, I have the bad days, but I also don’t really know how I feel about my body in general. I hate it for so many reasons, and I wish I had a prettier one, a skinnier one, one with better boobs, longer legs and one that is healthy. But I also love it for other reasons. I am flexible, I have a nice ass and a pretty face, and my body is very resilient. It is just hard to really come to a place where I feel like I have a balanced view of my body. I can feel confident sometimes, and other times I just want to hide and don’t let anyone see me. There is one thing that I am really good at, and that helps me with at least portraying a sort of confidence in my looks and my body: I know how to dress right. Body love and clothes are definitely connected for me.

You will never catch me leaving the house not properly dressed. It might be a social anxiety thing too, because I want to show the best version of myself to the world. I don’t want to be judged, or laughed at, or people thinking that I am disgusting. So I dress in a way that makes me feel confident, and sexy, and accentuates the things about myself that I like. And hides the parts that I don’t want anyone to see.

I have always had a sort of good fashion sense. But I hate shopping for clothes! I can’t understand the people that can browse through shops for hours, try on a million different items, twirl in front of the mirror. So when online shopping became a thing, it was a heaven’s gift sent for me. I didn’t have to stand in dressing rooms, trying on clothes that I knew were a size too small but were in the biggest size they had at the store. It is so so hard to find proper clothes when you are short and overweight. It feels like most clothing stores are really just focused on a skinny and normal weight demographic.

So online shopping became a thing, and I knew my size, so it was a whole lot easier for me to find clothes that fit me, and there were the style I wanted. Ah, the style I want and what I wear? I only wear black clothes, and things that are goth. It doesn’t mean that I only can get stuff at special stores though, I am a good mix and match person, and I often buy basic items and then make them look cool by wearing them with something stylish. And hey, black makes you look slimmer, so there is that!

I love dresses and skirts, and I often wear jackets. My calves are one of the better parts of my body, so wearing skirts that show them off, is really great for me. I also like wearing dresses that accentuate that I have an hour-glass figure. It is pretty basic, really. Show off: shape, calves, butt. Hide: non-existing cleavage, thighs, upper arms and belly.

I have had many compliments about the way I dress, but some feel quite back-handed. I get to hear that I am really great at hiding my weight, or that for someone my size, I know how to dress. And I don’t even think it is about weight or size. It is more about that everyone has parts of their bodies that they like, and those that they hate. That is so common. So everyone would benefit from dressing in a way that makes them feel good about themselves and their bodies.

I don’t judge how others dress and I would never tell anyone to wear something, or to avoid wearing something. I don’t know which parts of themselves they love, and which ones they hate. What you like about your body, doesn’t have to be the same thing someone else likes about it. But you can ask yourself the question: do I dress so I feel beautiful and sexy, or do I dress so others think I am beautiful and sexy? – I think most of us do it for the latter, and that is okay. I don’t like when people try to insinuate that it is a bad thing.

Compliments make us feel better, knowing that others find us attractive, can make us feel better. In the best of worlds, we would all be sufficiently happy if we loved ourselves, and appreciated our own bodies, but let’s be honest: we need the attention from others too. We are social animals after all, and we have the underlying evolutionary urge to procreate, whether we want it or not. So yes, if others think we are attractive and fuckable, matters to us. It definitely matters to me!

I am not confident naked. But I can be confident when dressed, because I can airbrush my appearance and show off the sides of my body that like and cover the ones that I am ashamed of. Don’t get me wrong, at home, I might just wear a pair of leggings and a bandshirt, but even then, I would only wear things in the right size and that make me look good. I am blessed with the skill to know what works for me, in a way that it makes me feel okay about myself in the mirror. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to translate that into appreciating my body when it is naked, but hey, it is a start.

I am doing the A to Z challenge during the month of April. My theme is Body Love. So you will get 26 posts from me, following the alphabet, related to the topic body love. You can check out more about the to A to Z challenge by clicking on the banner. You can find a list of sexbloggers participating in the challenge on Mrs Fever’s site.