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Sexy Dandy
The Dandy

I was taught throughout my younger life, thanks to religious interpretation, that having self-confidence and feeling sexy were a sin, and that your only source of confidence comes from outside yourself, not within yourself. Having to realign my brain to allow for myself to feel sexy and confident has been an extreme struggle because of that, and my well-meaning friends have never understood, never fully understood that is, why it's a struggle for me to do so.

Then came dandyism.

The ability to feel confident, beautiful, and even, in my own way, sexy, as far back as 2008, has been nothing short of a miracle for me. I understand now that I can look my absolute best and feel my absolute best, and win an award or two on occasion. What I wasn't prepared to experience was the feeling of being sexually desirable, something that I've always wanted but felt unable to ever achieve in a world that doesn't celebrate bodies like mine.

I go every year to a gay leather festival called Mid-Atlantic Leather, primarily for the menfolk, but not necessarily for my more artistic dandyism expressions, as it is culturally out of touch at such an event, as dandies "blend in by sticking out" (I will write more about that another time). With a growing sense of self-confidence, along with the understanding that we still live in a culture that prizes certain bodies over others, I decided to expand my dandy art universe into.. flesh. I met up with an amazing photographer who captured me the right way, wearing as little as dandily possible while remaining 100% Gothic Steampunk Dandy, goggles and all, showing off my body as well as my art, and the photo above is the result (the smile, IMHO, is a bit too goofy, but that's nickpicking). I feel confident in this, but, more importantly, I feel that I can be sexually desirable in spite of non-classical traditional body looks, and, for further proof, this is one of my pics on my Scruff profile, and, on occasions, I get woofed at.

While you may say that looks are subjective, and, ideally, they are, you have to admit that the mainstream culture has assigned Greco-Roman physical appearance as the norm and the ideal, and anyone, like me, outside of those physical norms, will not necessarily be viewed in the same light as someone hot and exciting, which is why someone like Lizzo can still receive hate in spite of her spectacular self-confidence in her body image, while someone like Colton Underwood, who was accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend, can be celebrated for coming out, primarily this being due to his physical appearance.

References regarding how society's Greco-Roman based decisions on physical ideals have affected everything from business success to sexual and romantic relationships:

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All in all, I wasn't exactly feeling Sexy Ugly today; I was, instead, feeling Sexy Dandy!

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