Be Yourself, Be Beautiful! - Rivkah Zigman - Portrait - Eugene Oregon
Very often, we get clients who are worried about their body and/or how their skin might look compared to people on social media. This absolutely breaks my heart. Our society has convinced us that you have to look a certain way to be beautiful, and also that beauty that is determined solely by how one looks.
Until I started getting calls from clients who told me that they have always hated how they look, but wanted to feel beautiful, I had no idea how much of an impact this societal “standard” is having on people. The funny thing is, when I meet with our clients, I never would have guessed that they have such a negative view of themselves. Sure, we all look different. However, we are all unique, and each of us have completely different experiences that create our unique attractiveness.
We are all so different from each other, and somehow that can be really hard for us to embrace, especially when it comes to our appearance. When I really think about it, I too feel more comfortable being somewhat closer to that “standard” someone set up. I had a sudden realization about this when I was talking to a client, and as a photographer, I began wanting to capture the uniqueness of everyone’s beauty. It is not how we look that determines how beautiful we are, and it is my job to make sure your unique beauty comes through in the images that we capture.
We are hoping our studio will be a place where you can feel safe to be yourself, and a place where we can create truly special photos that really show your unique beauty without necessarily conforming to a particular beauty standard if that’s not what fits for you.
Rivkah came to our studio as a client a few months back. Even at her young age, she has had more experiences than I will probably have in a lifetime. She also experienced and unfair rejection based on looks in the past. She talks about it casually now, but I can’t imagine what it’s like to have that kind of rejection at a young age just because of body type. Instead of going down a negative spiral, she decided to embrace it and joined a group that accepted her for who she is, and that elevated her to be who she is today. Please enjoy her interview, and if you are older like me, I’m sure you’ll be even more impressed with how brave she is to discuss this topic at only 19 (we all remember what it was like when we were just barely college-age).
We all are truly beautiful when we can really embrace who we are. We can all improve but don’t hate yourself because you might not fit someone else’s “standard.” Love yourself as you are. That makes you a beautiful person!
Without further due, here is Rivkah. One of the people I was inspired by the most in my life. Enjoy!
