The Process of Attraction OR Why I am Soooo Freaked About My Body

Provocative is my middle name: Bad Provocative Penny. I have no difficulty with provocation. I can provoke anger, disgust, ardor, tenderness, frustration and jealousy, ad nauseam. So, when I say I have difficulty with my body image, it's not the ability of my body (with me inside there picking out the undies) to provoke a sexual response in men. My difficulty is with the not-so-sexually provocative moments. You can't be ON all the time. You have moments of great ugliness, everyone of us does. What about those times?

I've known women who do not leave the house without make-up on. Without the hair do done to its best do-ness. Spritzed with smelly stuff. ON. All the time. AK! I can't be on all the time, I get tired.

So there has to be some middle ground, some reality, I guess. A place where you can reveal the unadorned you and not worry that it will be judged lacking. That's my trouble. The worry that when the mystical (mythical) girly powers are off, that I will be judged lacking.

It scares the hell out of me. and generally I would call myself the sort of person who is not easily scared... So what does this really mean?

Foremost, I think that it may suggest that I am a shallow person. If I tend to imagine that others will judge me in such shallow ways, doesn't that mean that I judge others in exactly the same shallow ways? HELL YES. That is exactly what it means. I have rudely rejected dozens (If not hundreds) of men OUTRIGHT. Dismissed them out of hand as being not right, lacking in some superficial quality. This is not sexual dismissals but the general social ones of not dancing with or sitting with, chatting with, or considering beyond the quick "not my type" assessment. Of being encased in a protective shield of bitchy-ness which effectively shut out the vast majority of the world without even a slight consideration. Why the hell was I like that?

I say was because I have not really been out to discover if I am still like this. I have been an attached, loyal and monogamous married lady for too many years to know whether I would turn some guy down flat anymore. I'd like to think not but... Maybe it's still there inside me. This bitch.

I think that I have changed in some pretty fundamental ways since my shallow bitch days. Most of that was just a protective coating anyway. I hope that my fear about others is no longer an indication of my own mental state, but more a recognition that people like that do exist (just like rattle snakes, horse flies and biting spiders). In that case there is hope for me. Meanwhile, the project continues.

So, cyber-therapist? What does all of this mean? *** You must be patient, Grasshopper, if you are to ever learn ***