Something really exciting happened over the course of this past week. My good friend Jo notified me about a magazine who wanted women to comment on Body Dysmophic Disorder, how it's effected them and their lives, how they're dealing with it. Now it's not something I myself have been diagnosed with as of yet, I explain in the article that it's something I've been trying to get diagnosed with for roughtly a year. This article was pretty easy for me to write as I am so, so mad about it. And so I should be! We all should be! So many women are effected by body standards and Dove did a study in which they discovered only 2% of women found themselves beautiful in a sample of around 3,000. This is approximately 60 women, out of 3000. That's crazy!

Anyway, after a short email correspondence with the magazine, checking it was ok for me to write an article, despite having not been formally diagnosed, they said go for it and submit anyway. Which I did and it has been printed! The magazine, Illusions Magazine, is a magazine focused on female empowerment and this issue is full of women talking about how they have dealt with these issues. 

I took some images for this article too that went along side it and me and the model had a discussion. She wishes to remain anonymous but she told me about how effected she has been since being young, she talked about how she struggles to feel at home in her own skin and she told me about how she feels all her friends can't understand what she deals with because they fit the 'norms'. She's met with responses of "You're beautiful", " you're gorgeous" or more than often they discuss her personality. And while these are all lovely responses and it's amazing that her friends are so focused on building her up and not tearing her down, she is still left deflated because the problem lies with how she views herself. It's not an ache someone else can take away, they can help, but we have to find that strength in ourselves to ask for professional help and we have to learn how to love the skin bag we're in no matter how long it takes.

When taking the images to go alongside this article, I wanted to present them almost documentary style and in simple black and white, What I mainly focused on however, was how I could distort the identity of the model. Not just because she wished to remain anonymous, but because for what the disorder is. Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a distortion of the self image, you don't see yourself as other may and you mainly see the flaws that a society such as ours label, things like stretch marks and body rolls. I decided some of the images would zoom in on these things that we tell ourselves are unattractive because its a confrontation that dares you to normalise our bodies and challenge the way the female body is portrayed. I also decided to take some full body shots of the model, again wanting to remove any identitfying features. I did this by taking images in the bathroom. I had the model stand behind the glass screen in the shower. We'd already steamed up the bathroom by keeping the door shut and putting the temperature of the water as high as it would go. This successfully removed all defining features yet you can still see the body that doesnt fit societal norms. Being behind the glass is also symbolic of being trapped; trapped by societal standards and trapped by your own mind.

You can buy the issue here, below you can read my article and see the images, but I do 10/10 recommend you buy the issue, even just a digital copy, as there are so many stories that it's hard to feel like you're alone. Plus what a lovely way to support women!

Buy the article here