‘Sleeping with a woman remedied my body-image issues’
It was a lazy afternoon in summer 2014 when my boyfriend Joe* and I were lying in bed. We’d just had sex, and he’d been idly stroking my leg when he suddenly sat upright and leaned over to the bedside table to grab a pen. Resuming his original position, he started scribbling on my leg. Across my calf, he drew a razor, and beside it were the words ‘SHAVE ME’. I looked up to see him beaming. ‘Now you won’t forget to shave your legs again,’ he said. He thought he was being funny, but his words wounded me, cementing the feelings of shame I’d felt towards my body since I first started having sex, eight years earlier.
My first partner was Alex*; he’d take me back to his mum’s house, where his bedroom walls were covered with posters of big-breasted, tiny-waisted women. They’d look down on me while we had sex, their hairless, slender legs spread to reveal perfectly pruned, tucked-in vulvas. My own boobs were tiny, my labia didn’t look anything like theirs and my thighs were athletic and muscular. I couldn’t even begin to compete with those women and Alex did nothing to reassure me. He only reinforced how I already felt: that my body was wrong. I carried that shame with me long after we split, into other sexual relationships with men.
And then, aged 29, I slept with a woman. While I’d spent most of my twenties thinking I probably wasn’t straight, I’d never really explored it – only casually dating women between boyfriends. So, when I got a girlfriend and we started having sex, I was again consumed by awkwardness. But, unlike my first time with a man, with Megan*, it was all about communication – talking constantly about what aspects of sex felt good – and with that came an intimacy I’d never had before.
She told me all the things she loved about my body. To her, my body hair was a turn-on. After sex, she’d gently run her fingers over my hairy calves and say how good they looked. She’d grab my thighs, saying she liked how toned and strong they were. When I wore a top with no bra, she complimented the way my nipples poked through the cotton. When I undressed, she’d unashamedly look at my body with affection and warmth.
A straight female friend once said to me that she couldn’t have sex with a woman because she’d be too quick to compare her body with theirs. That thought never once entered my head. Megan confided to me that she disliked her wide hips and the stretchmarked skin of her breasts. To me, she was delusional. I loved every inch of her. It was during these moments when we’d lie naked in bed that I realised if I could look at those bits and feel only fondness, maybe the things I hated about myself were worthy of love, too.
Now it pains me to think about all the time I spent covering up and being cruel to myself. The parts I used to conceal are now the ones my partners are most aroused by. It’s enabled me to stand a little taller in all parts of my life, too.