Your body does not owe you beauty.
Your body's job is to literally keep you alive, allowing you to move throughout the world in whatever manner you choose. It's not meant to be flawless, it's not meant to stay in the same form it was when you were in your "prime" (whatever the fuck that means), you are not entitled to a body of societal beauty standards...because that is not your body's job.
Imagine yourself at work. Wherever that is for you: it could be at an office, playing with kids, on a construction site, taking care of the elderly, or being creative, whatever. Now, let's assume that you are amazing at the tasks laid out for you by said profession. You show up when you are asked, you diligently perform the tasks no matter how much crap your boss throws your way, you try to go above and beyond in every possible form for your job. Now, imagine while you are doing such an amazing and consistent job when your boss comes up to you every day and says "You are ugly. Why can't you look prettier? Why aren't you stronger? You are gross and jiggly. You are disgusting. I wish you would go away. I wish you were someone else."
I can imagine you wouldn't appreciate it. I mean, on top of all the other stuff you are doing your best at, now you have to look a certain way and you are constantly being critiqued every day?? That would suck immensely and, I would hope, many of us would quit.
Well, you should thank your lucky fucking stars that your body doesn't quit regardless of the terrible things you say and do to it.
It shows up every damn day to do it's best and work as hard as it can to keep you alive and breathing. It's trying incredibly hard to do the tasks laid out before it, but it's still not good enough? Come on.
Your body does not need to be reminded that it's not good enough, when in fact it must be good enough if you are reading this. I am not saying you have to be in love with your body, but you certainly have to be appreciative of the fact that it is literally the only reason you are alive in this very instant. Despite the constant hate, anger, frustration, pinching, poking, squeezing, lifting, sighing, and verbal & physical abuse, your body shows up every day to do it's job to the best of it's ability.
We talk a lot about telling yourself that your body is beautiful. But it doesn't have to be in order for it to be valuable. Why do we have to associate our appreciation for our body immediately with beauty? Maybe we need to take a step back and really think about why we have to deduce everything about ourselves to being "beautiful" as if once we recognize our beauty THEN we become valuable. Maybe we never recognize that we are "beautiful", does this make us less valuable?? Fuck no. We have to realize that ourSELVES can be so much more than just "beautiful".
So, stop expecting your body to fall into a societal standard of beauty that changes every 10 years, because that is not it's fucking job.Your body deserves a break from the verbal and physical abuseYour body deserves recognition of it's talents and abilities at keeping you alive
I need to confess something. 2017 has not had a great start for me and in hindsight I know it could be worse, but I think I need to let y'all know what's been going on. I have been feeling slightly anxious and overwhelmed the last 2 months and maybe it's in part to the current political climate and the constant barrage of He Who Shall Not Be Named on social media, but I think another part is that I got away a bit from what I was trying to accomplish. This year I decided to change my pricing because I was told by various photography colleagues that my value and worth and all that good stuff, plus overhead costs were "worth so much more", but in listening to other people, I got away from what my actual goal is. I always try to remember that overall my ultimate goal is to affect as many women as possible and with that, I found that the way I adjusted my pricing was moving me further away from my overall mission. Do I still think I am worth a high value? Certainly. But money isn't the end game for me. Sure, I require enough to keep my studio and providing you babes with epic customer service, continual education, and experience and all that jazz, but for me, my value is in meeting every single woman I am able to affect and empower. While a lot of people believe in the methodology of "work smarter, not harder" I honestly don't think that is what is right for me....and I think this has been a big challenge that has made me feel so uneasy the last little bit. I haven't been shooting as consistently and I have been feeling....empty. I haven't been meeting as many women because my higher price point made me less available and I finally realized that it is in meeting women as often as I used to, that I am ultimately fulfilled and being used to my fullest potential. That being said, at the end of the day I AM a business, but only in the sense that I need to make a living to keep working towards my mission of empowering as many women and photographers as I possibly can. Is it humbling for me to write this post? You betcha, but I think it's necessary because I had to explain the sporadic pricing menu changes that have been going on the last few months while I struggled with trying to be "the right kind of business person" and realized just like everything else I do, I am not average or "normal" and I have to do what is right for me...and ultimately for you! After all, part of being body positive and all that good stuff is about being authentic!
So, you can check out the 
Well, shit....It's December. When the heck did that happen??? It feels like we were just finishing up our New Years Eve shoot that finished off 2015...phew! The holiday season is interesting because as much as it is filled with "joy", diet culture has also told us to be full of "guilt" over what we eat & drink and that is no way to live a body positive lifestyle, let me tell you!! This whole "I hate myself because I ate a piece of pie" bullshit that starts in Thanksgiving and pretty much carries over until you purchase a too expensive gym membership that you will use quite a bit for two weeks, but then fall back into old habits, is getting pretty old if you ask me. Now, I am not bashing those who want to maintain a balance with their body, but it shouldn't be such a love/hate/guilt/shame relationship that many of us have....it should be a "I ate and drank quite a bit last night. My body deserves better because I don't want to get sick this holiday season, so I will take it easy until the next party comes along." This sounds like a healthier conversation than the one where we are crying about our weight into sticky toffee pudding. Maybe it's just me.....but if it's not, I wanted to throw together a body positive advent calendar to kind of keep those negative conversations at bay and help you truly have a joyful holiday season and give thanks for the kick ass body you do have, whatever point in your journey you are at!
I urge you to do some of, if not all of these things to keep you in a positive mindset when it comes to our body relationships. Like everything else around the holidays, traditions are incredibly common, but one tradition I hope to change is the one where we shame ourselves into feeling like a bag of shit because we ate 3 Turtles! I hope you laugh, cry, hug, kiss, and appreciate the time you have this holiday season and my team and I wish you the very best! I am off to a sunny destination for the first week of December, but I will be back after that and I hope to see many of you bad ass babes feeling strong, beautiful, and empowered! Happy December!
You see, Dearest AE, while I absolutely love the gorgeous Ashley Graham and all of the other beautiful models you portray in your advertising, I can't help but feel slightly disappointed. As Canada's largest (and possibly only!!) plus size establishment (aside from Penningtons, which you also own) you have the opportunity to do something epic, groundbreaking, and revolutionary. You have the opportunity to provide your clientele with the one thing we ache for the most.....images of women like us, wearing your clothes. Nothing against the babes you showcase as they may fall into the "plus size" category (according to your blog post: http://blog.additionelle.com/2014/07/09/plus-size/), but I bet if I had a look at your main demographic, it would NOT feature a size 14/16 woman. I would bet that your average clientele falls between a size 20 and 24 and does not have that flawless hourglass figure that you tout in your fashion editorials.
Now, don't take this personally, because I love that you provide options for us plussies, where there wasn't any previously, but I think we can make a big difference here. You see, I have taken the liberty to provide you with beautiful imagery showcasing YOUR customers wearing YOUR garments and looking absolutely sexy and fabulous...and more realistic to how your customers look when they put on your lingerie. Seeing as it's 2016, I think we can all agree that it's time to stop marketing focused on getting women to want to be someone else and instead provide them with marketing that speaks to who they already ARE and how great they would look wearing your clothes!!
Now, I know this might sound forward and maybe even a little brash, and you are probably thinking, what the heck does this one girl know about fashion and marketing and OUR business...well, I AM your business. You see, I am an avid customer (I have the receipts to prove it) and I am pretty sure if I feel this way, so do a lot of your other customers (at least that's what I gather from the comments on the social media sites, saying they want to see more "bellies" etc.) And I am sure I can hear your marketing director scoffing at this letter, saying things like "nobody would buy clothes if they were on "REAL" bodies", but just think how we feel when we try your pieces on our REAL bodies and realize that we look NOTHING like Ashley Graham when we put on lingerie?? It would be rather radical (and amazing!!) of you to provide us with a more accurate representation of OUR body types. And yes, I know Penningtons has been featuring the gorgeous Tess Munster, but can we get more of that action in the lingerie department of AE?
Seeing as you essentially have the monopoly on plus size fashion in Canada at the moment, I realize you don't OWE me anything, but I think you have a chance to do something amazing and I promise that you will see a spectacular return on your investments (which, at the end of the day, is the idea, right?)
Oh, and PS. if you could get ring lights on your mirrors in the fitting room, I GUARANTEE an increase in sales. Downward lighting from pot-lights is flattering on no one.
XOXO,Your Customer Who Is Built Less Like An Hour Glass and More Like a Brick
(All of these babes are wearing lingerie purchased at Addition-Elle....as you can see, we all look fab as hell)
I have been thinking about this for sometime and after having a shower thought, I finally decided to write a post about it. Bear with me because this is deep(ish) material and a little bit of Tough Love with Teri Time. Everything I am saying below, I am saying with love. I promise.
I am a firm believer in the fact that the BODY has nothing to do with body image and how do I know this? Because I had women write to me to tell me their stories about when they felt "inadequate" and started to second guess their bodies and guess what....they were all DIFFERENT sizes and shapes! Some were too thin, too fat, too short, too hairy, too much of anything one way and not enough the other way. The dumb thing about this, is that most of these women's stories started when they were as young as 5 or 6 and as a result of an ADULT telling/teasing them about their BODY.
The problem with body image is that it is all psychological. You don't hate your BODY because there is fat in your thighs, you hate your BODY because someone, somewhere made you feel that you were inferior as a result of this. So you thought, if I "fix" this physical issue, then I will become less inferior. We fixate on our bodies because it's easier to try to become someone else than maybe accepting the fact that we are beautiful individuals.
It's easier to starve ourselves and tell ourselves that life will be better once we reach a certain weight or achieve a certain level of "societal perfection" than it is to process our feelings (ugh....gross....feeeeeelings.) Our weight, our skin, our hair are all superficial parts of our being, but we fixate so heavily on them that we suppress the other crap, the feeeeeeelings, below the surface. The problem with feeeeeelings, however, is that they are very much like a volcano. An insult here, a bit of a tease there, a traumatic event there and then before you know it, you are overwhelmed with emotion and exhausted, so you look to the thing you can control the easiest: your body. For instance, victims of sexual abuse will focus on covering up their BODY, cutting their BODY, and using their BODY as a shield from the rest of the world by gaining weight to make themselves "less attractive" to the opposite sex (in their mind, not mine). The issue here is not that the BODY did something wrong, but it is the thing that can be controlled in a situation where a woman feels she has lost control. Therefore, the BODY becomes the focus and the thing associated with a highly negative experience, leading to an unhealthy body image.
In other circumstances, there may have been an unfortunate childhood of being bullied for being TOO much of anything or perhaps a verbally abusive relationship where you have been made to feel less than desirable and decided that "if I change, than maybe so and so will like me more." The thing is, if you change for someone else, you won't recognize yourself anymore (physically or otherwise). So, again, we focus on our BODY. We get thinner, build a bigger, rounder butt, grow long, glossy hair, wear fake eyelashes, etc. all while despising the natural parts of ourselves that are, in fact, GOOD ENOUGH and perfect enough for us, right??
At the end of the day, everyone is looking for one thing: HAPPINESS (and it's not because PENIS can be heard when you say it....but that probably made you smile.) We want to feel good about our bodies and we want to feel loved by people and we want to feel desired and we want to find our purpose and we want to be successful and all of these things will apparently make us happy. But nobody wants to put in the damned work. If you worked as hard at loving your body as you do hating it, you wouldn't have a bad body image (or at least AS bad), but it does take work and it does take work that is hard. You need to confront the reasons of why your BODY is such a concern and you may have to revisit times and situations that are unpleasant and if you need to, you may need to talk to a professional. And yes, bullies, abusers, and mean people suck (like, big time) but YOU are not responsible for them....YOU can only be responsible for YOU and your reaction. Those people didn't tease you because you were too fat (despite what their words may have said)....they teased you because they were probably being teased or abused and did not have the coping skills to handle it, so they transitioned their anger, insecurities and hate onto you. But that's not on you. That's on them. Does it suck and is it unfair?? Yes, but if you step back and realize where their anger and abuse is coming from, then it makes it a bit easier to brush it off and move on. (It does not, I REPEAT, it does NOT excuse it!!)
Now, call me controversial, but I truly believe that we love to hate our bodies. 100%. It gives us something to focus on, work towards, and an unattainable goal to achieve so voila...there's your purpose. Ask anyone who had a goal and once they achieved it, they were like "Perfect. I'm perfect. I'm good now." You won't find anyone like that because there will always be something that can be different, "better", prettier, stronger, etc. So, we love to hate our bodies because it gives us a purpose....and it's VERY easy. And it's easy to blame all the things: media, other people, the world, etc. but at the end of the day you, literally, are the only one responsible for everything that comes out of your mouth and into your mind when you look at your gorgeous bod. Society is made up of people JUST. LIKE. YOU. Everyone feels out of place and insecure, so why do we blame the blanket term "society" when WE ARE SOCIETY. And media? You buy the shit they sell so they keep sending it back to us. Fun fact, brains have an easier time hanging onto negative shit than positive stuff which makes it easier to sell us on the fear that we might be outcast due to our weight, our hair growth, our skin, etc. Blame whatever you want but you make a choice every single day to love or hate your body and because it's always easier to be negative and say hurtful things. You are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and words. Catch yourself saying negative things. Swing them around and phrase them positively. Yes, it's okay to have a bad day, but don't dwell there. Move on and focus on the good, people.
Our bodies are nothing more than just our vessels, my loves. We can hate them all we want, but they will be the only one we get in this lifetime. I would hope that you would run away from an abusive relationship if you could (it might not be easy, but it would certainly be worth it) and this is the same thing with your self-love relationship. If you were in a relationship with someone who constantly put you down and made you feel inferior, think about how it made you feel.....I'm guessing: exhausted, tired, frustrated, sad, depressed, angry, hurt, disappointed, and empty. Now imagine if you HAD to stay with that person for the rest of your life. Think about the compound effect that type of relationship would have on you. This is you having a negative relationship with your body, when in fact, it is not even about the BODY. In the name of all things Valentine, give yourself the best gift and practice some SELF-love by yelling lovely things at that fabulous and dynamite bod of yours.