Building a positive body image with a gigolo
How booking a gigolo can help you build a more positive body image, real confidence, and lasting self-acceptance.
Glossary
Body image
Why how you experience your body does more to your sex life than your measurements, and what really drives shame in bed.
What is body image?
Body image (Dutch: lichaamsbeeld) is how a person perceives and judges their own body, and what they think and feel about it. It is a multidimensional, subjective, and changeable concept: it is not about how your body actually looks, but about how you experience it. In bed, that picture often weighs more than what someone else thinks of your body.
| Dutch term | lichaamsbeeld |
| Also known as | how you experience your body, your body’s self-image |
| Category | a psychological concept that acts directly on the sexual response cycle |
| Positive or negative | a positive body image goes together with more sexual satisfaction, a negative one with less |
| Where it comes from | upbringing, media, other people’s remarks, and your own comparing |
| Most important caveat | it is about the experience, not about your actual looks |
What body image does in practice
Body image decides how much of your attention goes inward or outward during sex. Take a common picture: a woman is lying in bed with her partner, but part of her is standing beside the bed, watching how her belly sits or how her upper arm looks. That focus on her own appearance pulls her away from what she is feeling herself. That is exactly the mechanism Nazarpour and colleagues (2021) describe: concentrating on your own body draws attention away from your own sexual feelings, and a negative body image can in this way reduce desire, intimacy, and sexual response. In a study of middle-aged women, body image was significantly related to sexual function, Afshari and colleagues (2016) found.
How does body image affect sex?
It works through attention, not through appearance itself. In the objectification theory of Fredrickson and Roberts (1997), women in particular learn to look at their own body the way an outsider would. That constant self-monitoring, keeping an eye on how you look, spends working memory that you are not putting toward arousal in that moment. So it is not your body that gets in the way of sex, but the camera you have aimed at yourself. Switch that camera off and nothing about your body changes, yet what you take in from it does.
Why does body image matter in bed?
The reason this concept earns its own page is that for many people it matters more than technique or positions. What a better body image gives you is presence: less watching yourself, more room for what you feel.
- For you it means your attention can stay with your own pleasure instead of your reflection, which helps arousal and response.
- For your partner the tiring role of someone who has to keep soothing your insecurity falls away; they can focus on you instead of on reassurance.
- For the two of you sex becomes less of an exam and more of a meeting.
What it is not is a switch. A body image shifts slowly, and resolving it does not repair a relationship where other things are grating. It only takes off a brake that gets stuck more often than people think.
Misconceptions about body image
“A better body image means a more beautiful body.” No. It is about the experience, not the appearance. You can have a body that someone else finds gorgeous and judge it harshly yourself, and the other way around.
“My partner watches my body as sharply as I do.” Rarely. The self-monitoring that objectification theory describes runs more intensely toward yourself than toward the other person; the gaze you fear is usually harsher than the gaze that is actually there.
“Losing weight fixes it.” Often not. Because a negative body image sits in how you experience yourself, it can simply move along to the new body. The size changes, the judgment stays.
What I see in practice
I am Victor, a gigolo with a background as a psychotherapist, and shame about the body is perhaps the subject that comes up most. It shows in small things: the light that has to go off, a shirt that stays on, an apology in advance about a belly or a scar. What strikes me every time is how little that shame has to do with how someone actually looks. The woman who apologizes most is by no means always the one you would expect based on her body. What they share is the gaze turned inward: the attention sitting on their own appearance instead of on what is happening. And almost always that shame drops away the moment someone notices that no judgment is really coming. Not because the body changes, but because the camera is allowed to go off.
What you can do
- Shift your attention from how you look to what you feel. Where your skin is being touched is more concrete than how you look in that moment, and it is the place where sex is actually happening.
- Say it out loud to your partner instead of hiding it. Spoken shame almost always loses ground; unspoken shame steers the whole evening.
- Switch off the mirror and the comparing, not the light. The problem is in watching yourself, not in being visible.
- Find a psychologist or sex therapist if it blocks you structurally. When shame about your body gets in the way of sex again and again, that is a complaint there is help for, and reaching for it is no admission of weakness.
More reading about body image
- Building a more positive body image with a gigolo. My own story about how attention without judgment can shift the picture.
- Body insecurity after a divorce. Why a breakup in particular touches body image, and what helps with it.
- The association between sexual function and body image on PubMed Central. The research behind the link between body image and sexual function.
Where this fits on this site
If you notice that shame about your body keeps you away from sex, then attention without judgment is often what helps, and that is exactly what I work with. What an appointment involves and what intimate togetherness without any rush looks like, you can read on the service page. This page only explains the concept; you may always ask your question with no obligation first.
Sources
- The association between sexual function and body image among postmenopausal women. Nazarpour et al., BMC Women’s Health, 2021 (DOI 10.1186/s12905-021-01549-1, PMID 34876095). Provides the description of body image as a multidimensional, subjective, and changeable concept, and the finding that a negative body image can reduce desire, intimacy, and sexual response.
- The Relationship Between Body Image and Sexual Function in Middle-Aged Women. Afshari et al., Electronic Physician, 2016 (DOI 10.19082/3302, PMID 28070265). Provides the significant link between body image and sexual function in middle-aged women.
- Objectification Theory. Fredrickson & Roberts, Psychology of Women Quarterly 21(2), 173-206, 1997 (DOI 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x). Provides the mechanism of self-objectification: learning to look at your own body as an outsider, and the constant self-monitoring that follows from it.
Related concepts
- Sexual response cycle. The phases of arousal that body image acts on by drawing attention away.
- Fight-or-flight response. The stress response that shame about the body can help set off.
- Libido. The desire that a negative body image can slow down before sex even begins.
Frequently asked questions
What people still ask about body image.
What is body image?
Body image is how you perceive and judge your own body, and what you think and feel about it. It is a multidimensional and subjective concept: it is about how you experience your body, not about how it actually looks.
How does body image affect your sex life?
A negative body image can reduce desire, intimacy, and sexual response, research by Nazarpour and colleagues shows. It works through attention: when you watch how your own body looks during sex, you are less present with your own pleasure. It is not the body that gets in the way, but the monitoring of yourself.
Can you improve your body image?
Yes, but not by losing weight or changing how you look. Because body image lives in how you experience your body, it helps to shift your attention from how you look to what you feel, and to name your shame out loud instead of hiding it. If it keeps getting in your way, a psychologist or sex therapist can help.
Is a negative body image the same as an ugly body?
No. A negative body image is about how you experience your body, not about how it actually looks. You can have a body that someone else finds beautiful and judge it harshly yourself, and the other way around. That is also why losing weight often does not fix a negative body image.
Who can you turn to with questions about body image?
Victor, a gigolo with twenty-five years of experience and a background as a psychotherapist. Shame about the body is the subject he hears most, and he works precisely with attention that carries no judgment. You can ask him a question with no obligation through the contact form or first chat for free.
Blog
Articles about body image and self-confidence
How shame about your body forms and shifts, firsthand.
Insecure about your body after a divorce: how do you get going again?
After a divorce your body can suddenly feel wrong. Where the insecurity comes from, why losing weight rarely helps, and what actually does.
What I do
Intimate togetherness without judgment
Attention for your body without anything having to happen, at your own pace.
Intimate togetherness
Intimate togetherness with a gigolo is about connection and trust. An evening with a man who is really there for you, with or without sex.
Learn more
Still have questions about your body image?
I am Victor, a gigolo with a background as a psychotherapist. Shame about the body is the subject I hear most, and it is something you can talk about openly. Feel free to ask with no obligation; I will text you back when it suits you.
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