Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross
Better Orgasms. Better World.
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Betty's Vaginal Barbell |
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My Romantic Love Wars: A Sexual Memoir - EBOOK EDITION |
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Betty Dodson's Bodysex Workshop DVD |
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Betty Dodson Liberating women one orgasm at a time |
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Carlin Ross Sex, Politics & More Sex |
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Eric Amaranth Sex life coaching and neo-male perspectives. |
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Lawrence Lanoff President of Pleasure, Tantric Master. Creator of Tantra-X University. |
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Liandra Dahl Sex Documentarian |
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LilithLand Women, Sex, Culture & Relationships |
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BorderReiver Restoring My Foreskin |
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Caitlin Bovard From the bible belt to under the belt |
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Caitlin Roberts Taking Back "Slut" |
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cajun sausage Lovin' Dr. Betty since 1996! |
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Christina Cicchelli |
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Danny Wylde Male. Libra. Whore |
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Dr. Lulu History & the Material Culture of Sex |
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Emily and Ju Queer love |
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Eric Francis Astrology & Adventure |
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Jenn Parenthood. With Cursing |
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Jessica Kramer Liberating Birth |
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jexhibitionism |
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Julia Emerald Philosophy, Sex and Freedom |
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Kasini Poet. Educator. Catalyst. Mother. |
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carlisleorama |
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LesleyS Redefining my sexual self after babies. |
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Logan Levkoff sexologist, sex educator, intellisexual, author, mom |
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Marisa Black Finding room for all of me |
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Marylou Naccarato Learn how to raise your level of “Sexability” |
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Miss Dirt Sex. Yoga. Feminism |
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Palesa Art + Sex + Media + Empowerment |
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The ED Coach Pa... Helping Men Regain Their Sexuality |
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Princess What would my mother say? |
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Scout Life...Parenting...Bodysex |
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VirginMonoblogger Thought all virgins were the same? Think again. |
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WildOrchid A selfsexual, toy loving, bisexual fetishist. |
How do you feel about your body? How do you feel about your orgasm?
These two questions focused and grounded my Bodysex experience into a tangible, personal narrative. They rang in my mind over several months, peaked with the documentary's filming, and have continued clanging since I returned home.
In tandem, the questions bounce off each other. Taken together, they intertwine, snaking into and around the other until they cannot be pulled apart easily.
Carlin and Betty asked us to send them background information and our responses to the two questions to help the team craft individualized interview questions. I sent them a couple thousand words, working out the answers as I wrote.
How do I feel about my body? Beyond the rote story I tell, or habituated beliefs, how do I feel underneath all that? And how honest am I going to be?
When I received the email from Carlin to the Bodysex participants, the first thing I did was to run an internet image search on everyone on the list. Of course I was curious about who else would be sitting in the circle. But my primary motivation in searching was to compare. How do I measure up, literally? Would I be the fattest woman in the circle, or would there be one or more other fleshy females? For reasons that are both obvious and subtle, the answer mattered to me.
Upon receiving the invitation to be part of the circle, my first internal response was abrupt. Of course I couldn't do that. Of course I couldn't be naked on camera. Of course not. No way.
Why not? came the quiet challenge. You're going to pass up the opportunity to be part of this historic and important project? Seriously? You're going to turn down the chance to do this work with Betty and a circle of other women? You're going to let your bodyshame win out? My innermost self prevailed, and I agreed. I would be naked on camera. I would masturbate to orgasm in a circle of women. Yes.
You have months to prepare, I told myself. Six months. You can pare down your excess flesh in a half-year. At very least, you can give yourself some muscle tone under the layer of padding you've acquired. I comforted myself with fantasies about the body I would create before the filming.
Then six months became five, and then it was three months away, and then it was just a few weeks, and before I knew it, I was flying to the east coast. And my body looked much the same as it had when I first learned about the project.
During the interviews and in the circle, I found that the answer to the questions changed, moment by moment. How do you feel about your body? How do you feel about your orgasm? I asked myself over and over, a mantra. The long answers I sent to Betty and Carlin captured the truth when I wrote them. That truth shifted by the time we filmed. It's shifted again since then.
On the morning of the first day of filming the workshop, the first day I would appear naked on camera, I took some notes. I wanted to have talking points, to ground my on-camera answers, to help me stay focused.
My body is a roadmap, a scrapbook of my life. The bruises, scars, stretch marks -- these give specific context of where and how I've been. I cherish those reminders.
My body waxes and wanes like the moon. Over seventeen years of adulthood, I have gained and let go of a significant amount of weight. Sometimes it's in five or ten pound increments. At other times it's been forty or even sixty pounds acquired or released. The numbers add up to make a whole other person, my wax-and-wane persona, my shadow self.
At the time of the Bodysex filming, and in earnest since, I have been actively integrating that shadow self, embracing her, absorbing her into the body in which I currently inhabit. For years I have battled her, shamed her, regretted her existence and the patterns that have created her corpus. And in so doing, I simply contributed to her shadow being.
This is not a war, I came to realize. My shadow is not my enemy. By loving her, breathing into her, welcoming her with an open heart, I find it easier to ride the wave of my constant state of flux. My body is not static. Its cycles of big and little, wax and wane, are beautiful. And I don't stop or shift them with hatred or shame.
Participating in the Bodysex circle grounded my presence in my flesh, and deepened my resolve to love what is, to love myself fiercely, without reservation.
My body is the vehicle of sensation, carrying my orgasm to me, and I float away with it in a sea of pleasure.
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Mairisa you inspire me.
This is the perfect example of the so-called "teacher" learning from her students. The beauty of the Bodysex Groups has always been the first person sharing and in that sense, it is leaderless. But until this last group, I had no idea how awful my aging body looked until I watched the first rough cut last week. Talk about a blow to my ego! High definition film is unforgiving and I still have not recovered although I'm thinking about it a little less. My make-up was gone by the time we we were ready to film, I was exhausted and defeated and I didn't even sit up straight. It's not like I will have another chance to do this. One thought that helped was I'd do it again, I'd film another Bodysex group when I am in my nineties. By then I would be "in shape" which means what? That's it right there. At some point in the future, I will have the body I can love. I have been humbled by this experience.
This was really lovely to read
It feels easier to love myself and to accept the state I'm in after having read what you wrote here. Appreciate it.
Wish I was there
I wish I could have joined all of you in the US. I read post after post and watch the videos - it's all so exciting.
Your body looks similar to how mine looked after the winter minus your fabulous boobs. Now I'm a good few pounds lighter but I'd happily go back to my slightly oveweight state if the reason for the recent weight-loss dissapeaperd. Sorry to unload here but I'm in a really bad pleace now. Ordering a small tank of hellium bad.
The media ignores a wealth of diverse beauty
Marisa you look really good!!! If you google Rubens paintings I think you look better than Rubenesque as you have lovely subtle female curves and soft skin. I don't think he was good at capturing that and I tend to think the ladies in his paintings looked like you before he painted them :) But Rubens and others definitly place the way you look up there where you belong very definitely as beauty appreciated. I love the way you've written this blog post too and expressed yourself in lovely lyrical concepts.
Betty I think your really brave to be naked on film at 83 without any popular cultural point of appreciative reference and you must know that there are gynosexuals who find you atractive because your 83!! I think that's great! and just because most porn seems to be disrespectful reflecting societies sex negativity, doesn't mean the truth of that desire isn't there as it's always been, just waiting to be intelligently expressed in a way that respects the contributer and their desires. Because that doesn't seem to exist, let alone filter into mainstream culture, the reality that you have a small number of appreciative viewers who think your hot as hell is lost, and your subconscious mind says you have none. I would bet all the money paid by those people to see images of people just like you that your wrong :)
I think the popular notion of beauty in the media is beautiful, but it's one kind of beautiful, when in reality desire for physical hotness is diverse. And that's before we consider how someones hotness is enriched by their life essence and personality.
That we have to dig deep into our soul and make such an enormous emotional effort to be at peace with the way we are, and are constantly forced to compare ourselves all our lives on an almost subliminal level to someone elses very narrow idea of beauty is aweful. I know I'm a complete sap and cry very easily :) but the way the bodysex group seems to have lifted that horrible oppression as well as many of the other sexual oppressions made me cry as well :)
Again, you get it right on the nose.
Marisa,
I have been reading the blogs of the Bodysex group and really get the sense of something very unusual and powerful that goes with it. Although, Betty would perhaps say it's not unusual with her long experience of this transformative workshop. I have been wondering what it is that has made the experience both individual in its perspective for each member, and collective in the similarities of the fears and joys of the encounter. You all seem (by your blogs anyway) really confident in who you are and have become over time, despite different backgrounds and journeys to this point. Yet, humanly, all of you experienced anxiety of some sort prior to the sessions and fear that your bodies would not be up to scratch, that they would be looked at in an appraising way that was negative and reinforcing all the mores that we all see and feel in our society especially towards the sexual woman. And in the end, all of you seemed to accept not only the others but especially yourselves for what you were/are - intensely alive and being in the now. It has been hugely inspirational to me both that it happened at all, and that all of your reactions were are vulnerable and empowering as they were. The full extent of what happened exactly, will only reveal itself to you and us over the course of time and as you explore and write your deepening understandings of the group and the session. I was profoundly moved by the experience and I was 5000 miles away and only getting the information second hand!
Perhaps that is what love looks like.
Nice to read
"My body is the vehicle of sensation, carrying my orgasm to me, and I float away with it in a sea of pleasure."
My new mantra!
Tardy Responses
I fell off the radar on these comments. My apologies and thanks to all of you who chimed in on my body-baring expression.
@Betty: Dear sage one, how I adore you. One of the things I took away from this Bodysex work is that all of us, in some form or another, have pain and suffering around our bodies, whether in the past or presently. The ubiquity and universality of that condition says a lot. I have tremendous compassion for your shock, as I contemplate what it will be like to watch myself when the video is uploaded and released. Your honesty, about your reaction and your feelings, about all of it - that honesty is the core, the guiding light of this work. Being honest, radically honest, is the fuel applied to this flame. Thank you.
@CEL: That means everything to me. That's why I do this. Thank you for appreciating it.
@WildOrchid: Oh, I wish you could have been there with us! I have visions of some videochat Bodysex groups in the not-distant future. I do hope that in the weeks since your comment posted you have been feeling better, and the helium tank you mention is a faded memory. The wax and wane of bodies can take so many forms, and when reasons conspire, the "loss" isn't always a welcomed state. I hope you are well, or at least better.
@Jake E: I agree that a narrow band of "beautiful" is usually represented in media. And I understand (and appreciate!) your telling Betty and me that we are beautiful. What continues to nag at me, however, is the voice in my head that says, "Yeah, so *you* say I'm beautiful and others might as well, but why is it so damn hard for *me* to say I'm beautiful, and really believe it in the core of my being?" For me, that's the underlying foundation of it all. Yeah, sure, okay, we'll blame it on the media, but in the process of doing this shoot, I met women who objectively fit into the standard-media-image of beauty, and they also had uncertainty around their body at some point. That's what strikes me most about all of this. Not "fixing" that reality, but taking a breath and acknowleding it fully. Which you did when you wrote, "dig deep into our soul and make such an enormous emotional effort to be at peace with the way we are." It's a digging and a peace-finding that is well worth it, and seemingly ongoing. The journey is the destination, as it were.
@mayward: Ah, yes. Yes yes yes. Talk about getting it right on the nose! I read your comment and I nod like a bobble-head doll. Yes yes yes. " Perhaps that is what love looks like." Indeed.
@Heylin: Hooray for mantras that serve us!
Hi!
No longer suicidal. At least for a while. My problems haven't disappeared but I ignore them better now;) And I stopped worrying about my face. It looks how it looks.
O the plus side for the last couple of days I recommited myself to finding time for pleasure and orgasms again. I'm looking forward to getting my laptop back and having a virtual worshop with you all!
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