Every Body Is Worthy of Pleasure: Body Image, Autonomy and Sexuality

By Carla Jones. 

The 4th September is World Sexual Health Day, and this year’s theme is Every Body. It recognises that it is a sexual right for us to know our bodies, explore and enjoy to whatever extent we please. But in a world where bodily autonomy is not a given, and where bodies are criticised and held to impossible standards, it’s important to recognise how our sexual rights can be endangered. This blog will explore some of the risks posed and what we can do as individuals to ensure that every body is considered, and has the right to sexual health and pleasure. 

When our bodies become something to be judged.

We are surrounded by messages about what makes a body desirable. Beauty trends change, however at any given time there is always a “right” way to look/move/age/sit/jump/pose/exist within a body. Social media, porn, advertising and pop culture can all contribute to these expectations. We can find ourselves comparing our bodies to carefully curated and edited images, internalising ideas about what makes someone attractive, and becoming increasingly aware of the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the ideal.

Given sex requires us to inhabit our bodies, criticism from ourselves or others can have a pretty significant impact on our sexuality. To experience pleasure, we need to be able to notice sensation, respond to touch and, often, allow ourselves to be seen by others or ourselves. Yet body shame can make it difficult to be present in our bodies at all. Instead of thinking “how does this feel?”, we might be thinking some variation of “how do I look?” or “do they think I look hot?”.

Research published in 2020 looked at cis women with a wide range of body mass index (BMI) and noticed that BMI itself had no bearing on someone’s sense of sexual satisfaction, rather having lower sense of self-esteem and a higher body dissatisfaction saw women with a higher BMI have a lower sense of sexual satisfaction. It’s not our bodies that are t problem, it’s the meaning we make! And so often this meaning is derived from unhelpful external sources. So instead of focusing on pleasure, we might be monitoring our stomach, breasts, scars, hair, genitals, arms, legs or weight because of some idyllic standard. We might avoid certain sexual positions, keep the lights off, avoid being naked, or become uncomfortable when someone looks at or touches particular parts of our body. And these will be the moments that lead to less sexual satisfaction. 

You don’t have to love your body.

The body positivity movement offered an important challenge to shame and unrealistic beauty standards. But the undue pressure to love (!!!!!) your body every moment of every day is also unhelpful and unrealistic. Perhaps a more useful question is can I have a relationship with my body that allows me to experience it, rather than constantly evaluate it?

This is where bodily and sexual autonomy become particularly important.

Bodily autonomy is about having agency in your relationship with your body. It means having the right to decide what happens to your body, who has access to it, how it is touched, how it is cared for, and how it is expressed. Sexual autonomy is about consent, communicating needs and preferences and having these be respected, and about expressing gender and sexuality in ways that feel authentic. For some people, exercising this autonomy can be complicated by the relationship they have with their body and external factors.

For trans and gender-diverse folks, for example, sexuality can sometimes involve navigating the experience of living in a body that doesn’t feel congruent with their gender. Gender dysphoria can make particular forms of touch, nudity or sexual activity uncomfortable, distressing or simply feel disconnected from the person they know themselves to be. This can be exacerbated by messaging as we discussed before, but also by access. 

Autonomy doesn’t guarantee access.

We can say that people have the right to make decisions about their bodies, while simultaneously living in systems that make those decisions difficult, or sometimes impossible to enact. A person might know exactly what they need from their healthcare, but be unable to access it because of cost, long waiting lists, geographical location, restrictive eligibility criteria or a lack of appropriately trained providers. For some trans people, this might mean waiting years for gender-affirming surgery or being unable to afford it. For someone with a disability, it might mean encountering healthcare, sexual health services or sexual spaces that aren’t physically or sensory accessible. For someone living with body changes following illness, injury or surgery, it might mean struggling to access support that helps them reconnect with their sexuality.

This distinction matters because sexual health is not simply about whether someone is technically permitted to make a choice. It is also about whether they have the information, resources, healthcare, accessibility and social conditions necessary to exercise that choice.

What can we do?

Let’s start on an individual basis by practicing moving our attention away from “how does my body look?” and towards “what does my body experience?”. We can become curious about the messages we have absorbed about bodies and sexuality. We can question the idea that there is one type of body that is inherently more desirable, more sexual or more deserving of pleasure than another. We can look around at the people who are most oppressed by those messages and listen when people tell us what they need from their bodies and healthcare, rather than assuming we know what is best for them.

On a systemic level, making our sexual spaces and health care services more accessible can help to support every body to feel pleasure. We can talk openly about pleasure and desire without assuming that everyone experiences them in the same way. We can respect people’s boundaries, identities and choices, even if they don’t look like the choices we would make ourselves.

These small steps and considerations bring us closer to upholding the sexual rights of every single body. Yay, pleasure for all!