It’s tragic to say, but I don’t know anyone who hasn’t struggled with some aspect of body shame at some point in their life.
Whether it’s trying to fit into the ever-shifting beauty standards for young people or grappling with the realities of aging, we live in a culture that makes it nearly impossible to feel good about the bodies we live in.
Body shame, and how it can be healed in community, is the topic of this week’s Gathering Gold episode, as well as a foundational component of my Sacred Sexuality course, which starts on January 31st, 2026. What follows are excerpts from the episode.
A Culture that Makes it Impossible to Love our Bodies
Victoria: All of us at some point, to some degree, experience body shame. This is true for people of all genders, every type of person. But there is a particular kind of expression for girls and women, where these very exacting beauty standards take up so much space in our lives from such a young age.
There’s an article in The Guardian by Zoe Williams that I read as I was preparing for today. She says,
Girls and young women don’t struggle with their body image and mental health because they’re fragile or weak. It’s an absolutely rational response to a world that hysterically ceaselessly bombards them with contradictory demands.
I’ll link to that article in our show notes. She doesn’t really have any answers. She’s just naming this suffering, and also talking a little bit more about the intensity of it for girls and young women in an age of social media, which for many reasons intensifies body shame.
Sheryl: I can’t even imagine being raised with social media because there was plenty of pressure without that for me growing up. I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV much as a child, and still somehow it got in.
Sharing our Stories Heals Shame
Sheryl: In our pre-show prep notes, we were sharing some of our early experiences of body shame.
I was just reflecting on how I hated almost every part of my body at some point in my growing up years. And it was just whack-a-mole; it would move to the next part that was wrong, just wrong.
I think some of it was because even though I didn’t have a lot of media, I had the additional layer of growing up in Los Angeles, which is a very media-heavy and image-heavy culture. You’re surrounded by billboards.
There’s an expectation in the air of having a perfect body, whatever that moving goalpost of “perfect body” was at the time, and that’s part of the absolute mind-F of the system: the ideal is always changing. In one of the emails in the course I talk about the changing ideal body and show images of the 50s with Marilyn Monroe and her voluptuous, curvier body, moving into the 60s of the twiggy body and the 70s expectations. It’s always shifting. There’s the big ass era and the tiny ass era. It’s insane, because our bodies are just our bodies. Right?
Then in middle school, it went into overdrive for me. Everything was wrong. My nose was wrong. I had the wrong eye color.
I wanted green eyes. I had brown eyes.
I wanted a blonde hair. I have brown hair.
I wanted a straight hair. I have curly hair.
In my mind, everything was wrong. And it’s heartbreaking, because, of course, nothing was wrong. I was just a girl. Everything was fine. I just didn’t fit into some kind of mold that I had assumed was the model of beauty.
Victoria: That sentence, everything was wrong, just kind of reverberated within me. Because I remember those feelings, too. Like, I had straight hair and I wanted curly hair.
It’s so messed up.
In fifth grade body shame started to creep in terms of my appearance when I realized that girls were starting to shave their legs. We were still in elementary school, and I didn’t want to let go of my childhood yet. Shaving my legs felt like a certain letting go of childhood. But I felt really self-conscious about it. I didn’t want to wear shorts or capris. Other girls were shaving their legs and had these smooth legs, and I had hair on my legs.
Sheryl: Reclaiming the body and the sexuality is, to me, one of our greatest acts of resistance, of really giving the middle finger to all of these constructs that have led us to this place where we think we have to be small and silent. And that when we step back in, and one of the inroads to stepping back in, one of the pathways, which is the whole first part of the course, is to talk about shame. Where did we learn to hate our bodies and to believe there’s something wrong with them?
Let’s write about it. Let’s write about it together. Let’s be in this together.
Let’s unpack. Let’s excavate. Let’s discover these roots of body shame, which of course leads directly to sexual shame.
Let’s Have a Different Conversation
Sheryl: In the course I invite having a different conversation from a different vantage point of being able to give that young self the space and the room not to complain but to name, and then to respond from a curious voice of: What is the truth about our bodies?
A bit later in the course I have an email called Body Love, which is quite a long email. I’m just going to read a couple of paragraphs.
“We cannot heal alone, and when we compete against each other, we perpetuate a dangerous and damaging ideology. We are not separate women on this journey toward wholeness. We are all in this together, each of us trying to reclaim what is rightfully ours. And we need each other in order to do this. I’m thinking about a client who attended a woman’s retreat and immediately bonded with the loving, compassionate women there.
“Imagine living on an island of women for a period of time without mirrors, without gyms, without competition, without magazines. Women who had learned to bathe themselves in the light of love and acceptance, and were doing the same for you. Imagine what it would feel like to be completely comfortable in your body and with your body. No matter how fat or thin, how perky or saggy, how many rolls or muscles. Imagine if it was all accepted, all welcomed, all celebrated as the unique body that has been given to you. In that environment, your shame would fall away in sheets, and you would stand tall in your glory.”
Then I go on to talk about our typically negative feelings about genitals, and how it wasn’t always this way. I talk about the goddess cultures in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago that worshiped the female anatomy. And really, how far we have come from that.
**
We hope you listen to the entire episode! I’d love to hear your thoughts here about body shame, and especially the link to sexuality.
The 10th round of Sacred Sexuality: A 40-day course to heal body shame and ignite desire starts on January 31st, 2026, and I look forward to connecting with you there.
Yes, I can remember as a tween comparing myself to the girls on Nickelodeon – seeing them as the beauty standard and feeling so unattractive in comparison. It may sound trivial or like something that can be brushed off but it was a deep pain…Thank you for naming this and sharing your stores in this episode; it is full of healing energy.
It’s not trivial at all, Jackie. It’s exactly how this deep body shame and pain is formed. Thank you for sharing.
Hi, Sheryl. I’m wondering whether this course is right for me. I’ve been experiencing intrusive thoughts around my sexuality and sexual orientation, and I’m starting to notice more and more how, on one hand, these thoughts seem to be trying to protect me from the vulnerability and risk of love and loss, and to prevent me from having to face the uncertainty of life. On the other hand, I’m noticing that these thoughts may be pointing to a deeper need to connect with my femininity (and the trauma I carry around it), as well as with aliveness, creativity, and sexuality in general.
Do you think this course could help me meet those places and potentially reduce or loosen the power of my intrusive thoughts? I’m trying my best not to be attached to this specific outcome. And if it’s true that sexuality exists on a spectrum, do you think this course could help me explore aspects of my sexuality that don’t necessarily involve my partner, but in a respectful way that remains loyal to our monogamous relationship? Not because I want to deny or restrict myself, but because the sacred space of our monogamy is deeply important to me. I love my partner very much, and at this point in my life, I feel a strong desire for sexuality to remain something that is held only between us. This feels especially challenging in a time when we are constantly exposed to ideas suggesting that monogamy cannot truly function in healthy ways. It makes me feel very sad and confused, and I truly hope it is not the case. (And by the way, I’m not implying that anything other than monogamy is not loving – I’m simply saying that monogamy is something I hope can work for us).
For example, if I am mostly straight and my preference is to be in a relationship with a man, but I can feel turned on by fantasies of women being sexual together, could this course help me meet those aspects, find healthy and respectful ways to relate to them, and experience a sense of fulfillment there – without acting on the fantasies, without cheating on my partner, and without taking advantage of other people’s sexual energy?
At the same time, I’m still working with low self-trust and am slowly, step by step, moving through the Break Free From Relationship Anxiety Course. I still have a lot of work around facing uncertainty, grief, and other painful places, so I’m also considering whether it might be better for me to take the Trust Yourself course first. I’m drawn to taking the Sacred sexuality course now because it’s offered live, and I feel that connecting with the community could be very supportive.
What would you suggest? And do you plan to run a live version of Trust Yourself at any point this year?
Thank you in advance.
Thank you for your comment and for sharing your struggle around sexual orientation. It’s a theme that has always appeared strongly in my work, but it seems especially strong now in our current culture. To answer this question:
“For example, if I am mostly straight and my preference is to be in a relationship with a man, but I can feel turned on by fantasies of women being sexual together, could this course help me meet those aspects, find healthy and respectful ways to relate to them, and experience a sense of fulfillment there – without acting on the fantasies, without cheating on my partner, and without taking advantage of other people’s sexual energy?”
The short answer is yes: the course will help you find more comfort and acceptance around the full spectrum of your sexuality, to accept that all fantasies are normal, that you can be turned on by women being sexual together and still choose to be a loving, monogamous relationship with a man, and that the more you accept the myriad ways that your desire and sexuality is expressed, the more your heart will open to your current relationship.
I’m not planning on running Trust Yourself this year, so I hope to see you on this course!
Thanks for sharing, Sheryl. I was sharing with friends recently how, when I was about 15 I had a relationship with another boy my age and I remember not worrying about pubic hair or how I looked, even in broad daylight or up close. Then when I was 18, another boyfriend said he didn’t like women with any pubic hair whatsoever and I entered a horrible phase of worrying about that, of trying to remove it all, and of course the pain that comes with that. I am 32 and I missed the whole social media/porn access at a young age thing, and so when I was that 15-year-old, I was in a space of not realising there was another way other than having pubic hair and looking how I did. It was interesting to me to see how I was slowly indoctrinated into the shame of body hair and of what I looked like up close. I am now in a space still of some shame but much less and on the long journey of reclaiming my sexuality. Reading and hearing other people’s stories is so powerful in the healing. Naked swimming in natural bodies of water also highly recommended!
Thank you for sharing this, George. How beautiful that you experienced that loving and accepting template at such an early age. And then, yes, falling prey to the expectations of zero body hair is so painful on EVERY level, from the physical to the psychological. Together we can heal and reclaim what is rightfully ours!
❤️