I like to think of myself as a pretty badass lady. I’m smart, a massive geek and I can probably trade witticisms with the best of them (except with Stephen Fry. I wouldn’t dare.)
My brain is incredibly sexy. If you don’t believe me, I’m pretty sure that my other half will say something to that liking. He might also mention that he finds my body sexy.
Which I’m not so sure about.
My relationship with my body is a tumultuous one. I grew up as the token large broad in school, and therefore got to experience those childhood joys of being called fatty fat arse and getting shoved face down into a sandbox just because I had the audacity to look the way I looked.
Kids can be dicks, that’s for sure.
If you think I didn’t put any effort in to losing weight, guess again. I did. I’ve seen a ton of dietitians, psychiatrists and health professionals in my time. Mainly recommended to me by people who thought I’d gone a bit wrong with my life.
I’ll never forget the P.E. classes, mostly spent sitting on the side, watching other people do a running test (a rite of passage for many a 13-year-old) and thinking that I was pretty damn lucky to have a teacher that understood I wasn’t capable of such feats of athleticism.
I’ll also never forget the puns made on my name, the social assistant who called my mother a bad mother because she let her child go fat and just about every single painful minute of my childhood. Until the day I decided I’d had enough. And weirdly, that wasn’t the day I booked myself in for a gastric bypass.
Nope.
It was the first time I made love to my partner.
We had been teasing and playing all night, until I found myself completely blocked by nerves. I couldn’t do it. What if he was repulsed? What if he suddenly went off me?
I went to sleep topless, wearing a pair of shorts and knickers and a ton of regret on my shoulder. But by dawn’s early light, I had decided something.
Fuck this. I’ll be naked.
I’m the fucking Barenaked Lady!
I took the remainder of my clothes off and slid next to him in bed. And I had never been prouder of myself, because it was the first time that I felt no shame about my body. And it’s a feeling that I have managed to hold on to. It was something that needed to happen to help me find that part of myself. That part that is able to get naked and flaunt her body without thinking “Shite, is he looking at my wobbles?”
I like my wobbles.
In fact, I think they’re quite sexy…
It took me a very long time to get confident in this body. But knowing what I know now is helping me get one step closer to becoming a kick ass lady.
And that’s the way I like it.
Jillian Boyd, Curvy Love Goddess (so sayeth my better half)
Jillian Boyd is a writer, blogger and geekazoid, based in London. She had been published by the likes of Constable and Robinson and Cliterati. Her blog, called Lady Laid Bare, charts her sexual evolution and revolution. In her spare time, she likes crafting, reading, cooking and dancing like no-one’s watching.
Twitter ~ @JillyBoyd
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