Welcome to Season 2 of Owning Space.
Content warning: This episode includes discussions of eating disorders, body image and disordered eating. Please listen with care.
To kick off the new season, I sit down with writer and broadcaster Emma-Louise Boynton to explore sex, shame, desire, pleasure and the messages so many women absorb about our bodies and sexuality.
We discuss the shame that can surround sex and desire, where it comes from and what can happen when we begin talking openly about the things we’ve been taught to keep quiet. We explore the social conditioning that shapes how women understand their sexuality, what we’re taught makes us desirable and how difficult it can be to separate what we actually want from what we’ve been told we should want.
Emma-Louise also speaks openly about her experience with an eating disorder and spending years feeling at war with her body. We talk about body image, intimacy and the relationship we have with ourselves behind closed doors, and how that relationship can affect the way we show up in the rest of our lives.
We also explore sexual double standards, the expectations still placed on women, and what it can mean to question those narratives and begin writing our own.
This is an open and honest conversation about unlearning shame, reconnecting with our bodies and making space for women to talk about sex, desire and pleasure without judgement.
Emma-Louise’s book, Pleasure: The Reclamation of My Body, is out now.
Find Emma-Louise on Instagram: @emmalouiseboynton
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Watch the full video version on YouTube.
