I'm sat on Facebook as a ploy of something to do before dinner (isn't my life just thrilling), but I watch something that stirs me, usually I fly through Facebook unamused and bored as its 80% videos these days but 2 acquaintances had shared this video that said: "Every woman should watch this". Now I'm not usually dragged into this sort of thing, but I stopped, I watched it, have a look yourself:
It reminded me of when I would trawl through magazines for inspiration at university. I remember thinking how every damn model was perfect and how after every photoshoot I did I was suppose to edit these beautiful women into unobtainable visions of beauty. Now, I never went as far as others, they were still 'flawed' shall we say but with smoother skin and less moles perhaps but after sometime I stopped. In my third year I looked at distortion and I said to hell with fake images, I acomplished distortion in camera and threaded into my project that I was no longer distorting beauty, that through distortion I would not be photoshopping these girls to be smoother, longer, skinner, beautiful-er in the eyes of magazines. As after all doing fashion photography, the idea would be that my editorials would be for magazines. I would still colour correct and even skin tone, being that some of my shoots I might not have gotten the lighting correct, but I wanted to convey that natural beauty is no distortion. I was criticised in my final review with some experts from the field that my model had a crease in her skin, natural of course, from where she was at an angle turning her body to me. It was explained that in this field this would be picked up and removed as it wasn't in keeping with style of fashion photography. Which is a joke, I tried to explain that was the point at the time, but to be honest, being told my a professional that a line wasn't acceptable just made me think forget it.
So this video has made me think again, I've been keeping up with Iskra Lawrence and the #everyBODYisbeautiful and many Aerie campaigns. It is becoming more normal to be different, to have flaws, to not be the size of a model. Every time I look in the mirror I have to remind myself that its a journey and to love myself, look at parts and be proud. Its taken me a long time to get to this stage, and I'm still not perfect at it, but I'm better. And its beautiful to watch this evolve, I can thank Instagram for my better body confidence, social media at its greatest. Not magazines or advertising, yet. This is my thought, Oskar has laid it out so simply, a magazine that either doesn't rely on advertising - oh wait thats a silm chance - or a magazine that only has positive advertising, to make brands change. A magazine thats full of body love, self worth and positivity for being unique, to celebrate all these things, not tear them down. There will always be haters, but if there could be some sort of magazine that strives apart, that wants to be different, that wants to empower women not shame and squash them into a ball, then maybe it will keep helping the ball of change rolling.
Just a thought.
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