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My name is T. My relationship with sexiness and feeling attractive is complicated and not something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about until the last few years. I grew up in a smallish town in the south and was raised in a very conservative denomination. The combination of that meant that there wasn’t a lot of room or encouragement to put any thought into what I found attractive or sexy about myself. Until maybe the last year or so, I wasn’t even convinced that other people found me attractive.
Having said all that, I’ve finally been actively putting some thought into what I like about myself and what I find attractive about myself. Sexiness isn’t a thing I had really directed at myself and so I didn’t even know what that looked like when applied to myself until a friend had rephrased it in what makes you feel good and what do you do that you think makes you look attractive. While I don’t think of myself as particularly masculine, a large percentage of the things I enjoy have a dapper gentleman aesthetic. Particularly, a lot of the things that I enjoy doing for myself are slower, more mindful, and occasionally finicky. The ritual of smoking a pipe or shaving with a straight razor makes me slow down and enjoy the moment. The same can be said for dressing in a suit, I love an excuse to get dapper and I know I can pull off a vest or tuxedo well.
Until recently, I didn’t really associate any of these things with being attractive or sexy. It took a lot of convincing from people close to me for me to realize that other people also found these things attractive and for me to start putting intentional thought into what it was that I liked and thought was physically attractive about myself. To that end, I was convinced to do this photo shoot by so many of those friends telling me that just doing those things would in fact be sexy. And having actually done this shoot now, I’m very appreciative for the positive reinforcement in this direction.