Body Acceptance and your Love Life
with Mia Glanville
I asked Mia Glanville about how body acceptance and body esteem impact on our intimate relationships. 
Mia, better sex 4 women is such a fabulous topic to create a website about. I'm wondering how you came to be interested in women and their sexuality? When I migrated to Australia about seven years ago, I was appointed to the position of Senior Psychologist at a correctional centre and later became Regional Coordinator of Sexual Offending Programs in Queensland. In the latter position, I specialised in working with sexual offenders and received intensive training from international experts in risk assessment and treatment of sex murderers, rapists and paedophiles. After leaving Corrective Services I returned to private practice and found that a lot of my clients were victims of sexual abuse with body acceptance problems. I therefore worked on both the perpetrators’ and victims’ side of the sexual offending fence. Given that so much of my time and energy have gone into dealing with the dark side of sex, I’ve become really drawn to healthy sexuality. So many of my female clients seem to have problems with expressing themselves sexually. My mission is to empower women by providing them with information that will give them the tools to keep the balance between being joyfully sexual whilst keeping themselves safe. These tools often revolve around helping them with body acceptance and body esteem issues.
I know from my own life that when I'm feeling fat, I don't feel sexy, I'm embarrassed to be touched and how to avoid having sex are about the only thoughts I have about sex. How important have you found a woman's relationship with body acceptance to be when it comes to the quality of her sex life? A woman’s body esteem has an enormous impact on her comfort levels when making love. If you feel fat or think you look fat, you’re in self-protective mode. You try to hide yourself from your partner, which isn’t the best recipe for intimacy. The key is to make a distinction between body esteem and body acceptance. Body esteem has a lot to do with the stories your mind tells you about what you look like at any given moment. These stories change all the time, so most women’s body esteem is pretty fragile. Body acceptance, on the other hand, is to make your peace with your body with all that’s good and bad about it. It’s about shifting your focus from what the different bits and pieces look like to being in awe of the miracle of how they function. You may not think your nose is pretty, but it gives you the miracle of scent. You may not like the shape of your breasts or legs, but when lovingly stroked by an adoring partner, it turns both of you on and gives you the gift of having a marvellous, close, shared experience with someone you love.
I was interested to read that you think nakedness can improve a woman's body acceptance, I've noticed something similar interviewing women at nude resorts. How can nakedness help women feel better about their bodies? 
Women put enormous pressure on themselves to try and live up to their expectations of the perfect body. But truthfully, how realistic is that? Women tell me all the time that they can’t bear to look at themselves in a mirror – with or without clothes. How sad is that? If you get on the road to self-acceptance, you need to call a truce with your body exactly as it is. After all, it’s the only one you’ve got. If you’re willing to discard your clothes, you’re willing to cast off the protective shell that keeps your body hidden from not only the outside world, but from yourself. I recommend that women do lots of mirror work. Stand in front of the mirror – naked – and just observe the colour of your skin, the texture of it; look at the curves and shadows. When your mind judges what it sees, observe your thoughts, but don’t emotionally hook into them. You don’t have to stop the stories your mind tells you about your body and you don’t have to struggle with those thoughts either. Maybe you can just turn the noise down a little bit, like you would a radio. That’s a start.
Women with larger bodies are often victims of sexual abuse, their large bodies have become their protection. They have many issues around body acceptance. They no sooner start losing weight, and attracting attention, when old fears come back to haunt them and soon they're back eating again. What would you suggest for these women? The issue here is dealing with the trauma of sexual abuse in more helpful ways. When victims of sexual abuse over-eat, it’s their way of protecting themselves because their sense of being safe in the world has been shattered. But think of it this way: if you have an itch on your hand, you scratch it. That’s the solution to the problem. However, if that area becomes inflamed, the scratching actually makes it worse, so the solution becomes ineffective and unhelpful. In fact, it can become the problem. It’s the same with overeating to try and protect yourself: it’s an ineffective solution to the problem of feeling unsafe in the world. The question is not how to eat less, but what needs to be done to re-establish a sense of safety. Journaling helps. So does meditation. There are all kinds of strategies that women can use to deal with traumatic memories. Mindfulness techniques are very effective in this regard: to get yourself out of the story in your head and into the present moment where you can see and hear and feel and smell and taste what happens right now. Here’s an analogy that I love: Imagine a traumatic memory as a horror movie that you’re watching alone and in the dark. That can be pretty scary and overwhelming. Then imagine watching that same movie in full daylight with the curtains drawn and sunlight streaming into the room, and listening to the voices of people around you and taking in the taste of the delicious popcorn that you’re eating. Being aware of all these things through your senses in the present moment won’t change the contents of the movie, but it changes the impact that the movie has on you. For other self esteem-building exercise please click here.
In your experience do women in relationships with other women have the same kinds of body fears as women in relationship with men? I believe that women with body fears feel insecure in their sexuality regardless of whether they are in relationships with men or women. The problem resides in their judgment of their own bodies, which they then project onto their lovers, imagining that their lovers would have the same problems with their bodies as they do.
Is there anything else you'd want women to know when it comes to having better sex?- You have better sex when you turn the noise in your head down and focus on the experience.
- You have better sex when you concentrate on the connection between you and your lover rather than what your body looks like.
- You have better sex when you stop taking yourself so seriously and start playing and having fun.
Psychologist Dr Mia Glanville specialises in sexuality and relationships. Born in South Africa, Mia obtained 4 separate degrees in Psychology and Education. She wrote regularly for women's periodicals about parenting and published 6 books. After arriving in Australia in 2001, Mia worked as a forensic psychologist supervising clinicians within Queensland prisons. Mia currently works in private practice with adults, couples and children. Thanks Mia for great body acceptance advice. For more of Mia's fabulous advice on better sex 4 women click here.
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