Reflecting on 'Taking Sexy Back'
By Rebecca Patterson, MSMFT
A new book on sexuality has hit the shelves and it truthfully feels like a game changer. In Taking Sexy Back, Dr. Alexandra Solomon challanges you to walk an important path and reclaim your Sexy as yours and discard it as an adjective assigned to you by others. Reclaiming your Sexy is something Dr. Solomon calls out as revolutionary - because as it is now the power of Sexy lies too strongly in the eye of the beholder. She’s right, and we need a revolution on how we socialize, culturalize, stigmatize female sexuality in particular.
What I Love About This Book:
Whole Self Sexy - This book guides you through the layered domains of life that inform how we show up for our Sexy. Dr. Solomon does us all a favor by not choosing one single lens and instead providing a range of glasses through which to evaluate how we currently feel and get us to how we want to feel about our Sexy
Inside Out Sexy - For many living most dominantly in the feminene, Sexy has served as a question waiting to be answered by another who deems you to possess it. This book flips that on its head and asks you to find your inner Sexy and choose how to show up for it in the world
Expanding Past Taboo and Titillating - As Dr. Solomon herself says, feminine sexuality often falls either in the category of taboo or titillating. By living in such extreme polls of social construction, female sexuality and sexual experiences often live in whispers mentioned in quiet places. The whispers and cultural norms that rule female sexuality are massive culprits in the wide spread pleasure gap that exists between heterosexual women and men.
Men as Allies - Men are not the enemy in this book!. We will not heal the pleasure gap that lives in hetero relationships without bringing men along for the ride. This book has a whole chapter for the man/men in your life - giving you the gift of handing him the book and saying “I need you to read this”
This Path is YOURS - Full disclosure, Dr. Solomon was my mentor in graduate school and the creation of this book has been one of the most significant experiences of my life! Not only because it was magical and eye-opening to watch her great mind create this book and help out along the way - but because the path this book takes you on happened for those who contributed to it as well. You will find radical permission to find your Sexy while also finding space for the sadness and disappointment that comes from seeing that the system has let you down. As Dr. Solomon would say, your Sexy is an unfolding story, one that will continue to change as you travel through the seasons of your life. Taking Sexy Back will give you that path, it’s up to you to walk it!