My newsletter this month is about how to develop body confidence (sign-up for Venturesque at www.uksexcoach.com) and writing it reminded me of an interesting and encouraging experiment conducted by Trinny and Susannah on the show they did about Getting Britain Naked (or something similar). When I start working with clients who want to accept and celebrate their body, at some point we end up talking about sexual attractiveness and self-esteem. I ask people to think of at least 3 people that they would consider to be attractive but who they themselves are not attracted to in the slightest. And everyone can do this and do it easily. There is always going to be someone who is not attracted to you but this does not have to affect the way you feel about yourself and how much you like and value who you are. There is no one person who is attractive to everyone so why should we worry so much if someone is not attracted to us? A very positive take on this was provided in the unlikely guise of T&S who conducted an experiment that indicated that as well as there being no one person who is attractive to all of us, there is also no one person who is not attractive to someone.
T&S gathered together a large group of people of all ages and shapes and asked everyone to rate each of the others for attractiveness between 1 and 10. Grading physical appearance is not something I generally support but bear with me. What they found was that no one person was rated as highly attractive by everyone and also, and interestingly,
not one person was rated as less than 7 by at least one other person.
Every single person was seen as attractive by somebody else. I found this very encouraging and inspirational. As I talk to and work with so many different people I am able to see how attraction is something magical and wonderful and that far transcends social and cultural standards of physical ideals. No matter how good-looking someone is, if they bore you, if they have nothing interesting to say, if they don't make you laugh, if they can't listen and show an interest in you, sooner or later you will not want to be with them. Your attraction to them will fade and there beauty will no longer attract you. Working on body confidence is about the mind as much as the body, usually more so. It is a process of learning to love your life and who you are before clarifying how and whether you actually want to change anything about your body. We all need to be attractive to ourselves before we can become attractive to others.
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