So this week I had a naked photoshoot. I just had a baby and I’m at my heaviest but also my most confident. Because I decided to take responsibility for how I was starting to feel and change my mindset rather than my vessel.
Photos by www.alexandracameron.co.uk
I gave birth to my little weirdo Violet child eleven weeks ago and while my relationship with my new daughter grew stronger I could feel the relationship I had with my body getting more negative by each passing day. My body has (obviously) changed in order to bring Violet earth side. I genuinely enjoyed watching my body change to grow her but I, perhaps naively, didn’t consider how it would change back after she was born.
Commenting on other people’s bodies is something that society seems to think suddenly has a green light when you’re pregnant or a new mum. You wouldn’t consider commenting on someone’s size in any other situation (unless you’re a dickhead) but somehow its completely fine in this circumstance. A single week had passed where I had been enjoying my little nugget and I had already had a comment on my tummy being ‘still there’ and a pregnancy app I had flashed up a notification about ‘exercise after baby’. I had only just learned which way round a nappy went and I was expected to look the same as I did before. I do feel that by society’s horrendous standards I have been ‘lucky’ as people say. Oh you’ve ‘snapped back’. Your tummy is ’nearly gone’. I realise these comments are meant to be compliments but all they did were make me feel guilty for viewing my body in the way I did.
Things HAVE changed. Perhaps no one else would notice but I definitely did. Life threw a whole lot of separate shit at me in the first few weeks of motherhood and it was oh too easy to turn on myself and start zooming in on different parts of myself that were squishier than before or stretch marked and hating on them. At a low point I actually made a list in my phone called ‘Back to me’. It listed out things I wanted to change about myself.
Then, somehow, something clicked. I had my tattoo to celebrate my stretch marks and I gave myself a bit of a talking to. Confidence (on the right side of arrogance) is one of the most attractive traits in a person in my opinion. And I decided that right now, weeks after having a baby, I was going to be the most confident I have ever been in my life. Fuck you society.
I had followed the work of the lovely Alex Cameron for a long time and I had always looked at her beautiful ’confidence shoots’ and thought One Day I would contact her. Well why not today? I emailed her and booked it. And this week I went and motherfucking did it.
I have never felt so empowered in my life. I have never felt so confident in my life. I just had a baby and I genuinely, after a journey that was leading to self hatred, now don’t feel like I want to change anything. I’ve moved up a dress size but hey, I think I got hotter.
I just deleted the list called ‘Back to me’. I have never been more me than I am right now.
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