Body Shame Work
Body Shame
BODY IMAGE, SEX, and the Stories We Carry in Our Bodies
BODY IMAGE—a topic whose time has finally arrived—is often framed as a problem to be fixed. But BODY SHAME and BODY IMAGE ISSUES are not solved with “6 Simple Steps to a Better Body Image.” The ways BODY SHAME develops and plays out in our lives are complex, nuanced, embodied, and deeply personal.
This is a conversation about rage and despair.
And about SELF-LOVE and HOT SEX.
And about saying “fuck you” to the systems that taught us to hate ourselves in the first place.
BODY SHAME Is Not a Personal Failure
We need to be heard. We do not need media, faceless experts, or authority figures trying to fix us with platitudes like “all bodies are beautiful,” especially when those same institutions were the source of our SELF-HATRED, SELF-DOUBT, and pain.
Parents, doctors, teachers, religious leaders, and medical systems are often left out of conversations about BODY IMAGE and SHAME. Instead, all the blame gets placed—sometimes justifiably—on advertisers and social media. But BODY SHAME didn’t start on Instagram.
The impact of BODY SHAME ON MENTAL HEALTH, PHYSICAL HEALTH, INTIMACY, and SEXUALITY is real. Actual lives are on the line. Access to quality medical care is routinely shaped by systemic bias around body size, race, disability, gender, and class. Medical fatphobia, racism, and ableism are not side issues—they are central.
BODY IMAGE, Power, and Who Gets to Be Human
Advertisers are a massive force, and pretending we can simply “opt out” of their influence ignores reality. While some people can ignore these messages, many cannot. Advertisers exploit body shame that was already deeply embedded long before social media existed.
Blaming social media alone is a form of victim-blaming. Who is social media if not us—and influencers who have themselves absorbed body shame and learned to leverage it to survive, make money, and be seen?
Body shame is about fatness and thinness—but it is also about so much more.
It is about:
Hair, wrinkles, smells, stretch marks
GENDER DYSPHORIA and lack of access to GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE
Penis size, labia symmetry, asshole pigmentation
Skin color, clothing, class, race, disability
CHRONIC PAIN, illness, and NEURODIVERGENCE
Intelligence, privilege, IMPOSTER SYNDROME
The glass ceiling, religion, politics, and power
It is about sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
It is about SLUT-SHAMING, DESIRE, LOVE, and INTIMACY.
It is about who gets to feel safe in their body—and who doesn’t.
How BODY SHAME Impacts SEX and INTIMACY
BODY SHAME doesn’t stay contained in our thoughts. It lives in our nervous systems. It shows up in SEX, in INTIMACY, in how much PLEASURE we allow ourselves to feel—or deny.
I want to hear your story.
I want to hear what happened to you.
Who told you things about your body that weren’t true.
Things that hurt you.
Things that almost killed you.
Messages that kept you from reaching for your goals, from fulfilling your potential, from receiving the LOVE and PLEASURE you deserved. Messages you knew were lies but had to pretend to believe just to get by, get along, or get ahead.
I want to hear how it hurts to be “too pretty” just as much as it hurts to be labeled ugly. How you are punished for being too thin, too fat, too perfect, too tall, too short. For having a lisp or a stutter or a limp or using crutches or a wheelchair. For thinning hair or hairy legs. For needing care you couldn’t access.
This shit is weaponized against every single one of us.
SOMATIC HEALING: Reclaiming the Body From the Inside Out
Let’s start the conversation with rage and tears—and also with hugs and cuddles and snacks and art.
Let’s lift each other up and hear each other out. Let’s build solidarity and uncover the truth buried beneath layers of BODY SHAME. We can’t outrun it, but we can dismantle it—together.
The wounds live in our bodies. So does the healing.
What if we could fall in love with our bodies—not conceptually, but SOMATICALLY?
What if we could co-create spaces where bodies are met with loving touch, care, and consent?
What if we could be held while we cry, joined while we scream, and then collapse into laughter and eat delicious food without anyone calling it “bad”?
What if we could bathe each other, groom each other, massage each other, tickle each other—and feel our bodies from the inside?
Maybe then we would walk back out into the world a little more fortified.
A little more confident.
A little more rebellious.
A little more open to receiving PLEASURE and demanding what we deserve.
The Solution to BODY SHAME Lives in the Body
The solution to hatred and shame about our bodies does not live in our heads. It lives in our bodies.
Through EMBODIMENT.
Through SOMATIC AWARENESS.
Through INTIMACY, PLEASURE, and CONNECTION.
When we reconnect to our bodies—especially in safe, consent-based, TRAUMA-INFORMED ways—we begin to loosen the grip of the lies we were taught. We begin to see ourselves more clearly, with lenses wiped clean of shame.
This is the work.
This is BODY SHAME HEALING.
This is reclaiming SEX, INTIMACY, and PLEASURE through the body.
