Image is... everything?

This isn't going to be about sex or d/s so you may well want to skip it :p

This is about body image. And why now - after having lost all but the last 18 pounds of my weight, I still look in the mirror sometimes and get disappointed.

I did some lingerie shopping online this weekend (with a bit of help from the Southern Gentleman, who seemed more than willing to peruse pictures *wink*). I've said before, and I'll say it again - I love lingerie. It's nice to not have to look at the plus size websites anymore, I can go straight to the good stuff *grin*.

But then I get there, and I'm drooling over the good stuff, and I wonder -- ya, but what would it look like on me?

It's a fact: I'm never been skinny, and the chances of me ever *being* skinny are mostly nil. I have real curves. I also have a body that's lost a lot of weight, and is fighting to get back to what it should be. That's gonna take time. As I've already spent a year and a half losing it, I guess more won't matter. I can wait.

Can't I?

I spend too much time looking at pictures of women with impossibly beautiful bodies, and comparing myself to them, instead of comparing myself to what I looked like two years ago. I am a size 12. I am the national average. But women are conditioned to believe that men *need* us to be thin, or they won't find us attractive. And as much as women have fought it over the years, most of us still do feel a great need to be attractive to men.

I've grown so much more comfortable in my own skin over the last year, and have made great strides towards feeling comfortable with myself completely, but this little body image hangup of mine has got to go.

I'm ordering that lingerie this week and I'm going to wear it around the house until I can look in the mirror and make myself hot /wink.