Excerpt taken from: Joy Davidson, Fearless Sex: A Babe’s Guide to Overcoming Your Romantic Obsessions and Getting the Sex Life You Deserve. [pgs. 138-141]

“I don’t think there is a woman living in America or any other modern society who in some way, at some time, hasn’t felt in bondage to beauty.

A $33-billion-per-year cosmetics industry and a thriving plastic surgery empire pander to our anxiety about our looks and our perpetual attempts to enhance them. The reality TV show, Extreme Makeovers, fascinating as it is, magnifies the power of false image. Every makeover—whether subtle or extreme—is more than a stretch to be the best that we can be. It’s an effort to clear another furlong in the potentially lethal beauty derby.

Deep down, each woman feared that she would not be “seen” if her outside wasn’t alluring. Each feared that her inside could never be enough to warrant being desired.

The pity of our endless search for beauty is that beauty is neither love, nor passion nor power. To feel deeply aroused and overtake with our passion we need to be engaged wholly in the moment. This is impossible if we’re paralyzed by fears about looks and rejection.

In one study, [she doesn’t cite in her bibliography where this study comes from] forty-one percent of 26,000 women admitted that feeling unhappy with their bodies was the primary reason for being unable to freely express their sexuality. Feeling reluctant to position themselves for intercourse in ways that are unflattering, some women avoid the place they love most for fear of being exposed with breasts bouncing or belly flopping. The taut tummies and silicone-solid breasts of young models in adult videos are like flashing neon signs declairing to the average woman that if she doesn’t look as slim and superb she shouldn’t be seen.

[I thought this was VERY interesting and true.]

The word “hunger” has many connotations. Beauty’s pairing with slimness in today’s world carried dismal undertones. Slimness implies (and actually demands) being controlled and disciplined. The lean woman is on who rigorously defied surrendering to her cravings. She trains herself to negate feeling desires to spare herself the torture of denying their fulfillment.

We live in a world where to be desired we must suffocate our own desires.

Just for the record, let’s review some alarming statistics [although, again, she does not cite where she found these statistics]. Eighty percent of women are dissatisfied with their bodies. Five to ten million adolescent girls and adult women struggle with eating disorders in the United States alone. Almost half of all American women are on a diet any day of the week.”