To all you women with bodies

The other day I popped into my inbox, probably to avoid everything else I needed to be working on, and felt slightly annoyed to see YET ANOTHER advertising email from Victoria's Secret. Don't get me wrong, I love the products. But what I do not love is having one extra email to delete. I clicked on it to scroll to the bottom and hit unsubscribe for the THOUSANDTH time when my mood quickly changed from annoyed to super excited. This image was at the very top.

VS is finally getting on board with featuring women that have a variety of body types.  And I AM HERE FOR IT. 👏

A few years ago I was having a conversation with another girl about how we didn't like that every single model seemed to be tall, slender, and toned. It seemed unrealistic and a bit distorted. During that conversation, I remember her making the comment, "I wish they would just picture real women." And I felt my stomach sort of turn into knots.

Real women ARE tall and slender and toned. They are also curvy. They are also overweight and sometimes short. They have skin that's scarred and spotted and wrinkly. They have eyes that are blue or brown or green or hazel or black or any other combination of colors. They have teeth that are white or yellow or some shade in between.

Even when we just limit ourselves to a the aspect of physicality, real women are SO many different things. I feel deeply passionate about working toward correcting these societal expecations that women are supposed to look a certain way in order to be considered beautiful. And I also find fault with the idea that tall, slender, or fit women are any less real than the others. To combat these misperceptions I recently started something I call project #bodylove, which is where I post untouched photos on myself on my Facebook account. So far I've shared pictures of cellulite on my thighs and acne on my chin. My goal isn't to label parts of my body as good/bad or to judge myself, but to put REAL, unfiltered images of my body into peoples' feed.

I know how satisfying it can be to take 15 pictures of yourself and post the best one, complete with the perfect filter and lighting. And I'm not necessarily saying that's wrong. But I absolutely think we need more authentic pictures, where our eyes are squinted a little too tight or we have a goofy smile or a roll of skin hanging over our jeans. Because REAL beauty is not about "perfection," it's about being seen for who you really are, which is so SO much deeper than our skin. I will never truly know most of the women I see pictures of because what they look like on the outside is a mere FRACTION of their complex and magnificent human wholeness. But for starters, I think that if we work toward experiencing a greater variety in the women that are photographed and celebrated, then just mabye that will get us one small step closer to the real deal.