Lately I’ve been thinking about confidence — the kind of confidence I admire in other women but have never been able to claim for myself. The soft, sexy, unbothered kind. The lingerie-in-the-sunlight kind. The “this is my body, my art, my choice” confidence. The kind I wish I could borrow for a single weekend just to see how it feels on my skin.
Because when I picture this version of myself — the girl who feels sexy — I can almost imagine her.
But when I look in the mirror, I don’t see her.
I don’t see “sexy.”
I see “the fat girl.”
The one I learned to critique in hallways and dressing rooms.
The one who became the villain of my own body story.
The one who always felt too big, too much, too wrong.
The one I still talk about like she’s some flaw I’m supposed to apologize for.
And every time I imagine stepping into confidence — real confidence, the glowing, flirt-with-the-camera, take-up-space kind — that girl in the mirror is the reason I talk myself out of it.
I keep circling around this idea, this mythical version of myself — the girl who does pinup photos, who plays with the feminine and theatrical, who maybe even sells a few pictures or lingerie bundles online, who turns softness and sparkle into a tiny velvet-candlelit corner of the internet. The girl who feels sexy without the little voice chiming in, “Who do you think you are?”
But the part that stops me cold isn’t the internet.
It isn’t strangers.
It isn’t even judgment.
It’s my body.
It’s the fact that I hate it most days.
It’s the fact that I’ve had an eating disorder twice — maybe three times — and maybe I still do in ways I pretend not to notice. It feels impossible to imagine myself taking a photo without immediately scanning for every flaw, every curve that feels too heavy, every angle I’ve been taught to hide.
Confidence still feels like a language I can’t speak.
And what’s wild is that part of me believes people would laugh if I tried. That someone would look at my pictures and think, “Really? You?” As if being sexy is something reserved for women who look a certain way. As if I’m delusional for even wanting it.
I worry someone I know in real life would see it and suddenly I’d be that girl — the fat girl trying to be sexy, the one people whisper about. Like it would erase all the other parts of me:
the girl who journals with coffee,
the girl who loves bookstores,
the girl who wants to write novels and live like a soft, sentimental Delilah monologue,
the girl who loves ’90s Martha Stewart because she made domestic life feel like magic.
Somehow the “sexy version” of me feels like the opposite of all that… even though, logically, I don’t think it is.
But here’s the truth I can’t pretend away:
I don’t know how to not be myself.
I don’t know how to shut off the insecure little narrator in my head long enough to let the sexy girl breathe. I fantasize about being confident and seductive, but I know if it became real — if it became a routine — I’d get overwhelmed, overstimulated, anxious. I can barely post on here; the idea of forcing myself to be cute and confident, and see me would turn into another metric to fail at.
And yet there’s another voice too — the practical one — the one that knows the internet is enormous and chaotic and overfull. People scroll past everything. No one is sitting around waiting to catch me doing something embarrassing. I’m not a celebrity. I’m not even a blip. Most people would never even notice.
Which almost makes it feel safer.
Almost.
But even then… I feel like doing something like this would make me a terrible person. Or like it means I don’t know who SomePunnyBunny is anymore — the cozy brand, the warm corner of the internet I wanted to create. Something about the lingerie girl inside of me feels like she doesn’t belong.
Like I’m cheating on myself with a self I’m afraid to admit I want to be.
But maybe I don’t actually know who “she” is — who I am — yet.
Maybe both versions of me exist.
Maybe the fat girl and the sexy girl aren’t opposites.
Maybe I’m the girl who journals and the girl who glitters,
the girl who cries in dressing rooms and the girl who slips into lingerie just to see how the lace falls,
the Martha Stewart candlelit cozy and the Marilyn Monroe bathroom-mirror flirt.
Maybe I’m not a terrible person.
Maybe I’m not delusional for wanting to feel beautiful.
Maybe I’m just someone trying to figure out how to love her own body after years of treating it like a problem.
And maybe the fact that this is still hypothetical says something too.
Maybe the showgirl I’m afraid to be is still possible.
Maybe she’s already here — just waiting for me to look in the mirror and see someone other than the girl I’ve spent my whole life blaming.
Maybe confidence starts with imagining her.
Maybe sexy starts with wanting her.
Maybe wanting is enough, for now.
