You spend your day empowering your clients, telling them to love themselves and you show them the beauty that goes far beyond their body! You yell “YASSSSS, QUEEEEEN!” and “Girl, you are a babe!” and work exceptionally hard to make sure your online community is aware of how babely and bad ass they are, regardless of how their body looks.
But then….
You head home or log off the computer. You catch a glimpse of yourself in your rearview mirror or in a window as you walk by and you think “I am disgusting.” Now, this body shame is quickly followed up with a second thought “What kind of shitty body positive boudoir photographer am I, if I preach self love but just had that thought?? I am terrible.” Now, on only do you think you are disgusting, but we’ve added terrible onto the pile of negative bullshit you tell yourself. This is “evidence” for you to prove that you really AREN’T that good of a photographer and you are most definitely a terrible advocate for the body love movement. (Add those onto the pile of negative thoughts.) Then someone shares a fatphobic meme in your private Facebook group with the caption “Can’t wait to get my bikini body back!” and you know that it’s kind of shameful, but what do you know? I mean after all, you’ve just told yourself you are disgusting and you are terrible at body image, so maybe you just don’t comment at all, because who wants to hear from a hack of a body positive photographer and instead respond with “LOL same”. And the cycle continues.
Does this sound a little too familiar??
If this resonates with you, you definitely are not alone! I hear it time and time again, boudoir photographers questioning their worthiness as a leader of empowerment for their clients all because they themselves have negative thoughts about their bodies. But here’s the thing: we ALL have negative thoughts about our bodies. You, like me, are probably over 25 and therefore have AT LEAST 25 years of negative self talk to undo and it’s not going to happen overnight. I wanted to break down 3 things that have helped me on my own body image journey and therefore, have helped me step up as a body image activist and boudoir specialist.
Understanding that body positivity/body neutrality isn’t a final destination
For a long time I used to say “When I become body positive, then I will…..” but that is literally the exact same thing that our clients do when they say “When I lose 10lbs, then I will…”. You are using your lack of destination as a procrastination method. As long as you are always striving for this invisible location, you never really have to accept responsibility right? I mean, if there’s one thing this quarantine/self isolation has taught us - it’s not that “When I have more time, I will…” because now we have buttloads of time, but still aren’t doing the things. It’s not “Now that I am body positive, I will know all the body positive actions to take.” but rather “I will choose to take body positive actions and this will lead me to living a more body positive life.” By waiting to “become” body positive, we will always have an excuse NOT to take action and do the work. Our brain doesn’t like to be uncomfortable, and while you would think that saying negative shit to yourself is uncomfortable, it actually isn’t. Because you’ve spent the better part of your life telling yourself (or having other people tell you…or a combination of both) that you aren’t good enough, your brain knows what that feels like, it can create self fulfilling prophecies that can then be used for future “evidence” when you want to tell yourself why you can’t do something. But success, on the other hand, is the unknown - AND OUR BRAINS HATE THE UNKNOWN. What does being being completely body liberated look like for you?? What does a world of little to no negative self talk look like?? Your brain probably cannot fathom it, so it says “Stay here where it’s comfortable” and then resorts to little lies to keep you there. But remember, just because it’s comfortable doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
So, how does this translate to being a better boudoir photographer? Well, as soon as you stop waiting for yourself to become body positive and instead, every day take 1 body positive action (read Body Respect, listen to the She’s All Fat podcast, wear the crop top, do the photoshoot, journal, practice gratitude, do a self portrait, etc.) you will then be practicing a body positive/body neutral lifestyle. Understand that you will never GET there, but rather, you must CREATE there every day: in your thoughts, your actions, and your words.
2. Check Your Privilege At The Door
To truly be inclusive, it means checking your ego and your privilege at the door. What I mean by this, is that you (and I!) don’t know everything. For example, I can speak to the experience of living in a fat, able-bodied, white cis-gendered body, but I CANNOT - AND MORE IMPORTANTLY SHOULD NOT - speak to the experience of living in a black, queer, male or disabled body. As such, when I have clients come in who do not have the same lived experience as me, I make sure to not chime in to their body image concerns with “Oh yah, I totally get it.” because I don’t. How could I?
I see this a lot with thinner photographers - they question how they can share a body positive message to fat bodies or speak to the fat experience. Understand that you can’t - EVEN IF YOU ONCE EXISTED IN A FAT BODY AND NOW NO LONGER DO, PLEASE DO NOT. What you can do, however, is acknowledge that “While I can’t understand exactly what that must be like, I do know we have a lot of clients that also shared those concerns.” At which point I will then showcase a client album/gallery/etc. (that has given permission via a model release) who has a similar experience. Then I will follow up with “In my experience of creating with a variety of diverse bodies over the last 5 years, I have yet to have someone come in the door that loves everything about themselves physically. It is my job, and the job of my team, to ensure that we help you understand that your body is the least interesting thing about you and it is simply along for the ride as you have an amazing time feeling sexy and empowered! I want to help you correlate the idea that you can do something scary and fun and amazing WITH this body you have - not despite it.”
3. Get Educated
The third thing that made a huge difference in my confidence with being a body image activist and feeling confident in my abilities to help myself, and thus my clients, to how to shift previous held beliefs/thought processes. I started by reading everything I could get my hands on that argued everything I believed to be true. I still do this, even with ideas that I KNOW are right for me, I still read the other side of it to get a fully rounded perspective to decide for myself what resonates with me. I have attended body image workshops that were primarily meant for nutritionists and therapists, I took online courses that were designed for teachers, I ingested as much material as I could on the subject surrounding body image, body positivity, self love, self image, body neutrality, body liberation and I still continue this learning today. I read books by black authors, trans authors, fat authors, queer authors, disabled authors. I listen to podcasts on self development and neuroplasticity. I watch shows and movies that are positively affirming for most bodies (Embrace documentary and A Perfect 14 are a good place to start).
But I didn’t simply just read this information. I processed it and I practiced it. Not all of it and not all at once. I would pick out the little techniques and tools that resonated with me and implement them into my daily life. I would hear quotes from the authors replacing the negative soundtrack in my mind and suddenly I had coping mechanisms to back talk the negative self talk. It didn’t happen overnight and I continue these acts daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Once I practice it a few times, acknowledge the results, then I began to share with the people around me and in my boudoir Facebook group.
BONUS: UNDERSTANDING I HAVE A CHOICE
It can be really easy to just resign ourselves to the stories we’ve told ourselves thus far, but your mind does create your reality. And if no one was there to make you think otherwise, you would just go through life according to someone else’s stories based on THEIR experiences. When we are born we have a blank roadmap. As we grow up we are influenced by society and the humans and our map begins to fill in. However, while our map may start out in a direction we choose, it very swiftly can take us in another direction based on the people around us and the way our brain processes information. As evolved humans, however, we tend to forget that we have a choice. I remember reading The Work by Byron Katie and in it she talks about the idea that thoughts are neutral, but we attach feelings to them based on our previous experiences/life stories told to us by others. We have learned from a young age that the symptoms of speaking in front of large crowds (aka stage fright - a title that doesn’t serve a positive purpose if you ask me) include an upset tummy, dry mouth, sweaty palms, etc. Essentially our brain has processed that “Speaking in front of people is bad”, however, certain professional speakers around the globe have retrained their brain to understand that those exact same symptoms happen when they are excited, when they go on stage to help people, when they live their purpose, etc. They literally retrained their brain by CHOOSING to see those symptoms as a positive and not to buy into the hype around stage fright.
And think about it, I choose to see the beauty and awesomeness in my clients every single day and the photos that I show them! I hope they see even just a fraction of the gloriousness that I see. So, why do I forget that I have the same choice for me? Just as we choose to see the beauty in others, we also have the skills to choose to see the beauty in us - we just weren’t taught how. SO, it’s up to us to accept or reject the stories that we’ve been given and maybe rewrite the stories we’ve been told. Just like the speakers shifting from stage FRIGHT to stage ALRIGHT, perhaps you can choose to see, at the very least, what your body does for you instead of what it isn’t. Your initial thought is the conditioned thought, the one society taught you is the truth, but if you spend a few seconds and question it, you may realize that there is a deeper, more powerful truth, one that aligns to your goal of liberating yourself from body image.
To sum it all up: Yes, it is possible to be a body positive boudoir photographer even if you yourself are not 100% in love with your body. As long as you are showing up and trying your best to take body neutral/body positive steps then you are doing just fine. You don’t need to have the answers, you don’t need to be the body positive sherpa, you just need to be transparent about your own experiences with your clients and be vulnerable enough to let them walk through the fire with you.
