Grading Curves

Contrary to popular belief, I do have interests outside d/s and sex /wink

I've spoken here often enough about my lap band. I belong to a couple of message boards for that subject, too. Most of the time, beyond talking about the trials and tribulations of learning to live with the band, there isn't much exciting to discuss, but recently a subject came up that relates to some of my other interests (sex), and I found the discussion interesting.

When you're 'bigger than normal' or 'bigger than society finds normal' (whatever), you're usually not thinking about things related to your body that women of 'normal size' would be thinking about. These things don't enter your mind. You know what your flaws are, and so does anyone else who looks at you dressed.

But as you get closer to normal size, and you feel pretty damn good dressed up, those other insecurities tend to creep in. If you've been heavy almost all your life like I have, there are not things you've ever had to worry about before. You may not have liked how you looked naked, but you had accepted it at least.

Once you get closer to your goal weight (I'm about 15 pounds from mine now), you start to notice a myriad of other things. (I'm not going to list or discuss them. I do have some things I keep personal :p). And those things lead to a whole new brand of insecurities.

"Why don't I look as good naked as I do dressed?"

The men on our board pretty much think we're crazy. Some of them are banded; some of them are spouses of banded women. But they all think that we've completely lost our minds feeling insecure about some of these issues.

Society tells us that to be attractive to men, we have to look like super models. Okay, rational women everywhere (me included) *know that this is total bullshit. Nine times out of ten, if *we are confident and comfortable with how we look, our weight, size, etc don't make a damn bit a difference to a man who finds us appealing. But those images creep in. And any woman in my situation who does not admit to feeling insecure about the issues that come from losing 100+ pounds is lying. I think that it's because we were SO far from it before, and now we're closer to it than maybe we've ever been, that those insecurities tend to peek out and poke us when we least want them to.

For instance, I've made no secret of my lingerie addiction. It's gotten much worse over the last year or so, as I've been able to buy much more 'normal' size lingerie. I love the stuff. I love how it feels, I love how it looks, I love the purpose of it, and the idea of what it will provoke *grin*. I've bought a lot of it recently. And bought it with confidence. Rationally, I know that no one expects me to look like the skinny little bitch that's modeling the stuff on the website. But irrationally, occasionally - I do expect that.

I have to remind myself that I feel awesome compared to what I was 2 years ago. I look better, I feel better, I'm healthier than I have ever been in my life. I am much more accepting of myself - flaws and all.

But there is still this tiny voice that comes into the back of my head ..... If I catch it fast enough, I just bash it over the head with a baseball bat and shut it up *grin*. And if I don't, I'm left with an uneasy feeling for a day or two.

The point is, I guess, that as is typical with most people, we are much harder on ourselves than anyone else would be on us. While I've gained a lot of ground in that respect, I'm still not to a point where I can say that I'm 100 percent happy with where I am.

But I'm at about 85 percent. And I'm pretty happy with a B. *smile*