Out, damned spot!

Points for you if you recognize the quote. This is the final set from the shoot with photographer Travis McKeithan.

***Trigger Warning for blood and self injury***

Many of you may not know that I struggled with self injury for over a decade. I haven't relapsed for about two years now, but it's still something I deal with on a regular basis. If you or someone you love deals with self injury, please check out the website TWLOHA (to write love on her arms). It has fantastic resources including a blog, online store, resources to find help, and more. SI is a serious issue that effects people regardless of age, gender, race, income level, or any other characteristic.

No, it's not real blood, it's completely fake. This is one of my favorite sets.. maybe I'm a gore girl at heart, or maybe I just really enjoyed doing something completely different! Enjoy!

By the way, fake blood tastes absolutely disgusting.

This last photo was the inspiration for the title. ;)

Happy Love Your Body Day

Today is NOW foundation's Love Your Body Day. A day to fight back against media representations of women and men, to fight back against body hate of all kinds, and to even, or maybe especially, fight negative thoughts from yourself. The way we see women depicted is often streamlined to fit a very narrow type of beauty ideal that typically includes being super thin, having perfect hair, teeth, and eyes, being white or fair skinned, cis, able bodied, being tall, and having the perfect breasts, ass, hips, etc. It's an unfair, degrading, and harmful scam to make you buy products and sell yourself like they sell these women as if they were objects. And men, more and more, are having a hard time too. We're seeing a rise in eating disorders among young boys for example. Though women are two and a half times more likely to develop an eating disorder, about one million men in the US suffer from some form.

The point is that none of us are immune to body hate. So take a moment out of today to stop trash talking your body and other bodies. No matter what kinds of bodies they are- thin, curvy, gangly, chubby, fat, dis/abled, cis, trans, male, female- all bodies are good bodies. Push aside your self doubts and all of the things you hate about your body and take a second to just appreciate it and all that it does for you. Take a second to just Love Your Body. And please don't forget to visit the NOW foundation's website!

Flowers for Heather

These photos are still from my shoot with Travis McKeithan.. I told you they'd have to be in sets! Do you see how distinct each set is? And wait until you see the last set, which is my favorite. If you go back to my last post, you'll read how difficult it is for me to post nude photos, especially since I've gotten some pretty cruel trolling from the previous nude sets I posted by Dan Smith. So please enjoy and realize that it's no piece of cake bringing you this kind of body positivity.

This is still harder than it looks

I know, doing a nude shoot should be easier the second time around, right? Well, it's not the shoot that's the problem. In fact, Travis McKeithan was easy and a pleasure to work with. The trouble is posting those photos online to be judged, critiqued, and yes, trolled. It takes a huge amount of courage to pose nude and and even larger amount of courage to let people see those photos. Although I had these photos up on flickr for several days before posting them here, I still find myself nervous.

To look directly at your un airbrushed naked body through someone else's eyes is both fascinating and terrifying. More so, it led me to the conclusion that there's simply not enough fat people art. And I don't mean size 12 fat, I mean rolls and cellulite fat. I mean fat like me and fatter than me  and I mean so far beyond the thin beauty ideal that you can't even pretend it's socially acceptable. I'm not curvy, I'm not plump, I'm mot a pinup model with an hourglass figure and a tiny waist. I'm fat and I want to see more fat people. So here we go, a deep breath, and some beautiful (makeup free, all natural) photographs from Travis.

Beauty is on the inside...and the outside too

I read a lot of body acceptance advice on r/bodyacceptance and r/fatosphere. "Confidence is most important", "it's what's on the inside that counts", "beauty is about personality". All this in response to people who think they're too ugly, too fat, too thin, too whatever, to get a partner.

I say fuck that. My partner may find my insides beautiful, but they sure as hell better find my outsides pretty great as well. I hate this idea that people will love you in spite of something. Or find you attractive because they're "looking past" something. What's wrong with dating someone who thinks I'm sexy as hell? Not just someone who is looking past my hideousness for the sake of my shining personality.

I mean, confidence is great. So is being a good person, being kind to puppies, feeding the homeless, having talents, and clicking on a mental level. But I'm just saying that if you're going for it, got for it all. Find someone who likes you for all those things and your smokin' bod, even if not everyone thinks it's as smokin' as they do.This goes along with the "you're not fat, you're beautiful" thing. I am fat damnit, and I'm beautiful too. Why does it have to be either/or? Why not both?

This all popped into my head because I got a song from Hairspray stuck in my head as I woke up this morning. The lyrics go:

Everybody warns that he won't like what he'll see but I know that he'll look inside of me

And this bugged me. Because he takes one look at her shaking ass through the detention door window and you can tell he's hooked. Not because he looked inside of her, but because he thinks she's got a fucking rockin' bod with hot moves.  And I refuse to be with someone who doesn't think exactly the same of me.

States of Undress

I had a fantastic shoot with Travis McKeithan who asked me to show up sans makeup. That's right, no makeup whatsoever. I've only done one shoot  previously with no makeup, but I felt totally comfortable. Travis took so many great photos that I'll be posting them in sets. There will be two more. Are you excited? I know I am! More so, I have another great shoot planned with Travis in the near future. So let's get to it!

We started out with a couple of lounging shots fully clothed. I particularly like this one. 

I know this is a weird thing to feel self conscious about, but sometimes I feel like my eyes are too light colored. Sometimes they have almost no color at all (the color is technically called gray and sometimes it seems like they prefer to be almost cloud like). I feel like the eyes help define a face. 

Now we moved to the bathtub in a white cami. I particularly like this shot. The angle, the positioning, and the pose are just all fab. Those are also some of my favorite earrings. 

Now we changed to a sheer white robe that I thew in last minute. Good thing I did because we used it the most during this portion of the shoot. 

And this was my favorite photo from the set. Getting my hair wet. 

Speedlights at Night

These photos are from September, I just got all of them in and I'm super glad that I traveled to see a couple of fun photographers to work with- Susan and Lee Bryan. We got some fun, goofy shots and I hope you'll enjoy them.