To post lingerie shots on my social media..

[Junglejane8]

Right here me out here..
Long term lacking in body confidence. Have never felt very beautiful or feminine. I've been working on my self-esteem recently and a friend who is a photographer treated me to a burlesque shoot. She said it would be a very empowering thing to do, and it was. I actually felt sexy and beautiful and powerful.
The pictures have come through and I'm so happy with them. I want to post them on my social media but am worried that it will come off as vain, desperate, attention seeking etc.
There is lots of crap on social media but then I think of some of the women I follow who post lingerie / swimwear images and I don't judge them at all. I think they are beautiful and confident. I want to do that too.
Or is it vacuous and shameful?

I stopped reading the thread halfway because I disagreed with most of the posts! For reference, I'm of the younger generation though (under 25), I'd imagine from experience that that makes a difference but I would say ABSOLUTELY post them. Why the hell not?! Show off if you feel confident and don't feel bad for it. I've personally never seen anyone's content similar to this and EVER thought it's 'attention seeking' in a negative way, I LOVE seeing women feel confident enough in themselves to post this sort of content and I admire them for it! I also cannot see how this could be offputting to anyone professionally, but again, different generation to a lot on here.

Some of the comments on here scream misogynistic and insecure.

And in terms of it 'screaming attention seeking', if we go down to the roots of it, isn't the reason anyone posts anything on social media for attention?

@LaDamaDeElche no I do actually appreciate that a lot of posters have given perfectly reasonable objections. And that's fair enough. I don't take issue with that at all and see why on balance a lot of people would choose to do what I'm doing. And I respect that. But everyone assuming they understand my own intentions and motivations and feelings better than I do, and then bullying me when I decide to make a decision that isn't consistent with theirs. Them lot are coming off as trolls.

@kught yes! Thank you! I'm mid twenties so maybe it is a generation thing. Have had lots on here assuming I'm having a midlife crisis 😂

I think more than a generational thing it’s a matter of more experienced women having more experience of how the world actually works, what really builds self esteem and how many younger women are so blind to the male gaze in a porn saturated online world they cannot see the wood for the trees.

@kught Some of the comments on here scream misogynistic and insecure.
And in terms of it 'screaming attention seeking', if we go down to the roots of it, isn't the reason anyone posts anything on social media for attention?

I agree. Plus what's wrong with attention seeking anyway? Modesty is too overrated in this country (I'm not from here by the way).If you don't like someones lingerie pictures on SM don't look at them, find yourself some cat pictures to look at.

Tbh if you're going to wear beautiful lingerie, you might as well show it off anyway. I wear see through tops for this very reason and have received nothing but compliments on them.

I'm really interested in what you do for a living OP.... it's important to consider the impact on your current or future career.

I thought you were probably young, like my colleague I described previously . I think young women are far more vulnerable to other people's judgement, both positive and negative, and are far more likely to seek validation from others, and are also, for obvious reasons, less likely to understand that you might come to really regret things in later life.

I know that I did a lot of things in my teens and twenties, some of them involving dodgy pics and videos, that I came to regret massively in later years. Thank fuck none of them have surfaced as they could destroy me professionally. I also no longer consider a man getting a hard-on to be a compliment, as i understand better now that men are perfectly capable of combining sexual arousal with complete contempt, ridicule and hatred for the object of their desire.

I hope you are able to take the result of the accumulated years of experience of the women on this website and take it in the spirit in which it is intended. If you were my daughter (she's a teenager) I would want other women to try to encourage her to seek validation and self-esteem in ways that don't involve exposing herself to strangers (and not-strangers) online.

Exactly. The naivety is incredible. I guess they have to make the mistakes and learn it for themselves.

Boudoir shot = empowering. Said no actual empowered person ever.

*Cringey

Desperate

Embarrassing

Tacky

Cheap

Weird

"No one will like them"

"Too much confidence"

Grim (yet bikini pics are fine, according to this poster)

I'm finding it off that someone who claims to have such poor self esteem is being so feisty in her responses to us actually.*

These are just from the first few pages, obviously I cba scouring the entire thread but seriously, what a load of nasty, misogynistic shit. I absolutely maintain that there is something wrong with your own self esteem if you're spewing crap like that online to a total stranger over some photos.

True, women we are our worst enemies. You would never get this sort of bashing vitriol from men on a forum regarding one of their own hanging up some professional pictures wearing his briefs on social media.

The patriarchy really did a number on us. phew...

What’s nasty or misogynistic about any of those phrases? You might not like them as comments, a couple might be verging on rude, but please specify what is nasty or misogynistic about any of them?

@kught I also think there's a huge generational divide here. People are imagining posting on FB amongst cat pics, whereas my late teen girls see pics of women and men posing and showing their bodies, including with flaws, weight issues and all, all the time, it's the stuff of their feeds and wouldn't feel weird to them. Also transformational videos of before/after are extremely popular as are feeling empowered videos. These are genres that the mums on mumsnet probably don't understand, and if they do, they tend to mock them and (probably correctly) read the through a feminist lens, but they don't realise that they won't be shocking or weird or seen as attention seeking because that's 99% of tiktok!

Yep, in persuading women to post naked pics of themselves to lead to empowerment, it sure did. Straight men posting pics online of themselves in their trunks and posing in a sexy would be ripped to shreds by other straight men and ridiculed in to oblivion.

@Eyerollcentral are you joking? Go on Insta or tictok and feeds are full, literally full of men with their tops off posing, lifting weights, talking about their bodies it's non-stop. Lots of different types of bodies but mainly buff ones. My dd follows a couple of Korean men that don't ever seem to wear shirts! I really don't think mumsnet is the place to ask about this. That's why the Mail and Mumsnet can't understand Sam Smith, but he kind of makes sense to the younger audience he's appealing to.

I meant because Sam Smith is going for a 'this is me, this is my body, get over it' type of vibe that is alien to the FBookers or non-social media users on here.

The vote stands at 9 out of 10 cats think it’s a bad idea.
OP, at least give it a couple of weeks to mull it over.
Regardless, good luck!

Ah, that's really sad that you are so young yet have such shitty confidence. I presumed you were at least a decade older because most younger people have more confidence in their bodies these days and would be posting bikini pics, gym pics etc not staged, soft lighting, fake type boudoir shots.

No. Sam Smith is just trying too hard and is inauthentic. We've seen it all before and done better. It's not pearl clutching. It's eye rolling.

Oh get a grip they are clearly intended to drag OP down and yes, misogynistic because they relate to a woman daring to want to show herself off. Get away with the faux naivety, it's not cute.

@Eyerollcentral Straight men posting pics online of themselves in their trunks and posing in a sexy would be ripped to shreds by other straight men and ridiculed in to oblivion.

Disagree. I've seen many male friends on SM posting sexy pictures of them after 6 month gym/diet/you name it in a bathing suit "objectifying" themselves and no one battling an eye lid. I've also seen no man going on an Internet forum asking a bunch of male strangers their opinion on "if they should post a sexy picture or not" on their social media.

In fitness shots or vids. Not boudoir shots. The men may and undoubtedly do think they look sexy and that’s why they are posting. However how many straight men do you see posing in boudoir style shots in their knickers? The only time I’ve ever seen it was a guy I knew who used to be an actual underwear model who posted throwback shots and guess what, he was relentlessly pilloried by his actual friends. Male posts of their bodies are not overtly sexualised in the way the OP describes, which is the whole point.

Men don't care. but for some reason we women, will rip each other for it. We are our own worst enemies.

Fitness shots or thirst traps masquerading as fitness shots. Not lying in their trunks on a bear skin rug smouldering at the camera.

@Doyoumind I don't see the Sam Smith appeal and I agree it's been done before, but does it feed into a body positivity narrative that young people get? His 14 million plus followers and the people buying up his album think so.