photo by Mangiu

Our regular commenter/contributor Figleaf weighed in on the body image debate in last week’s Wise Guy installment:

Based on quite a bit of personal sex-pundit research into people’s attitudes about their own self-images.  People have an extraordinary eye for their own flaws.  Even weirder, we have an unbelievable tendency to fret about parts of our own bodies that we ourselves never notice about other people!  The classic example being noses — we’re generally remarkably critical of our own (to most plastic surgeon’s delight) yet repeated studies show that even highly-critical people are overwhelmingly unlikely to judge the noses of other people.  (Clue: noses are too close to eyes for most people to spend much time assessing them — eyes are just way more expressive and attention-getting.)

Another good example was from a confidant who worried that her upper arms looked funny when she reached back to take off her bra.  When in fact if someone’s taking off her bra <em>nobody</em> — not her partner, not her doctor, not even her mom — is going be looking at her arms.  And never mind that <em>everybody’s</em> arms, men’s, women’s, athletes, and accountants, look “funny” when they reach back like that.

And finally to answer the first part of your question?  Yes, a sexy attitude (especially a sexy <em>unconcerned</em> attitude!) definitely compensates for all manner of flaws: real and imaginary flaws, visible and character flaws too.

— figleaf