The Body Love Project
“Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing with me”
First I’ll tell you about the Body Love Project. This is a project that I ran to get women to go outside of their comfort zones and explore what it could feel like to love their bodies. The clients who participated were asked to share some of their photos from their boudoir photoshoot and share about their self love and body love journey. Brianna was the first client that took part in the body love project.
In all honesty I began this body love project and my boudoir photography business because I have had a really hard time loving myself in my body. We try to escape the pressures society puts on women about how to look, how to feel, how to carry ourselves, what things to buy, what things to wear and how to make up our faces. Even though we try to avoid it and tell ourselves that we want different things and that those expectations aren’t real, they STILL get internalized and we feel them and believe them even if it’s just unconsciously or subconsciously. It can be hard to separate those internalized aspects of misogyny and our own real thoughts. Every woman and every girl has a story about their “not enough-ness”. I wasn’t skinny enough to wear that dress or that swimsuit, not beautiful enough to be asked to that dance, not feminine enough to fit in with that group, and on and on. We are taught to never feel like we’re enough. We are always supposed to be striving to be better, more accomplished, more beautiful, skinnier, healthier. Healthier is good :) Women fight and work towards feeling secure in their own skin and their own body and so doing a Boudoir photoshoot about body love is exactly the opposite of what we’re taught in our culture.
A boudoir session with Gold Coast Chicago Boudoir is meant to be empowering. The body love project is meant to capture you exactly as you are to my lens so you can see your own beauty and strength through someone else’s eyes. When Brianna booked this body love session she was kind of nervous. She shared that she didn’t quite feel like herself over the past couple of years and have been going through a really hard time. She wanted to do this photoshoot as a way to regain her self-confidence and I really admired her beauty and her strength. She is a mother. She is a scientist. She is smart and funny. She is easy to be around and so much fun to talk to.
You can see in the videos below that when she saw her final photos she couldn’t quite believe that they were of her. And to me, that moment when my clients sit in all of their own power and strength and beauty and the beauty of their bodies, that’s what this is all about. My hope is that you leave feeling more secure, confident and better about being yourself and being in your skin.
