Adrienne Belair (she/her)

It’s a common occurrence for me to look at myself in the mirror and wish away so many pieces of myself. I’ve learned to be embarrass by the way my belly folds when I sit or the scars on my breast, blemishes, anything that might stand as a marker for imperfection.

I watch myself feeding my body hatred instead of love and it makes me sad. My body holds my being, and then allows me to pour that very being out into the world. All my body does is give me love, it allows me a canvas, it allows me pleasure and it allows me experience.

It is so easy for my body to show me it loves me but it is so difficult for me to reciprocate that love.

When I sat down to take these pictures I was inspired by other pictures I’d seen. Pictures of others bodies, full of appreciation and love and the beauty of a body just being a body in exactly the way it is.

I set up my camera with hopes to awaken and capture that same sense of love. I stripped down until the only thing I was wearing was the day I had just experienced.

Taking photos was uncomfortable, not because the room was cold or I was seeing my naked self staring back at me on my camera. It was physically uncomfortable because I was so tense. I was not allowing my body to relax because that would reveal those “imperfections”.

I was denying myself and my body the opportunity to flow and fold as it wanted too, battling its natural state.

I took a breath.

I relaxed.

I gave my body permission to be what it needed to be and do what it wanted to do, to show me love and make myself comfortable. And I gave myself permission to TRY and love it back.

The picture with the folds and the rolls and the scars where more beautiful and interesting then the pictures where I was stiffly posing and uncomfortably trying to hide those same “imperfections.”

It was the first time in my life I was overjoyed with my body and the things I always wished away, because all those little things where what made those pictures beautiful and dynamic and truthful and me.

-Adrienne