I had a pleasure photographing two of our best friends and people who have been so supportive of our business from day one! (We just cannot thank everyone enough who trusted us from the beginning.) If you didn’t know, Lisa does family photography (completely separate from portrait but under the same name), and we have been photographing Tracy and Haley’s family every year from our first year in business. We love them!

We are launching a campaign very soon, and they were gracious enough to be a pilot. While I truly think Tracy is so beautiful, and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life, she told me she has had issues with her image, and generally shies away from having her photos taken. Her comments really made me think about how we are all bombarded with the idea that we are not good looking enough - both women and men.

I started my career as a fashion photographer (well, wanting to be!lol), and then became a commercial photographer, and now I do both commercial and portrait photography. I am 100% guilty of creating images that met an impossible beauty standard earlier in my career. As my career progressed and I moved more toward the portrait side of photography, I became a firm believer in portrait photography as a documentation of who we are today. Of course I tend to shoot in certain style that fits my aesthetic, however, it is now more important to me to capture my subject’s personality and unique beauty than to make everybody fit one standard.

Tracy gave me a statement of her view of beauty after the shoot. While she said it will take a long time for her to change her views of herself, the images we created together gave her a first step. Tracy, we are so grateful for our friendship and your willingness to be in front of my lens even when you were very uncomfortable (this is something we learned after the shoot!). Below is her comment about our current standard of beauty that I got her permission to share.

Tracy’s message:

I think our current standard of beauty is incredibly harmful. I think countless people could speak to how detrimental industries like fashion and film have been to the average person and how the standards of beauty within them have negatively impacted them. Because those standards have become societal standards. I feel like we’ve seen a huge movement more recently towards accepting and embracing faces and bodies that don’t conform to conventional standards of beauty, but there’s still a very long way to go.

I’ve always been overweight and have always been made to feel, one way or another, that I wasn’t beautiful because if it. I truly believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s difficult to believe anyone could think you’re beautiful when one is constantly flooded with messaging that states the opposite. Messaging that originates from the unrealistic standards of a nebulous, intangible source but that is embraced and parroted daily by the everyday population.

I have lovely and wonderful friends that tell me I am beautiful. I do not believe them. I do not feel beautiful. I do not feel healthy. I do not feel worthy. Intellectually, I know these things are untrue but after 41 years of being flooded with comments, both direct and indirect, from friends, acquaintances, doctors, nurses, fitness coaches, romantic interests, etc, I have little esteem for myself. It’s something I’m continually working on will likely always need to work on and something I will strive to expertly mask for the sake of my own daughter. I can’t ever let her know of my struggle because I can’t ever have her feeling this way about her own body. I am her first teacher in such matters and I need to be a good example.

Having my photo taken is something I generally shy away from. I don’t like seeing by body on film, I don’t like noticing how much bigger it is than those in the photos with me. This photo shoot was truly uncomfortable for me and in some ways, exacerbated my body issues more than I thought it would. When I see the photos, I see the things I don’t like about myself. But I’ve also never in my life had photos like this taken and I feel like maybe I can start to see some of the beauty others have expressed they see. Certain angles, certain features. I think it’ll taken more than one photoshoot to undo decades of self flagellation, but seeing these photos helps to soften my opinion of myself a bit. And for that, I’ll be forever grateful to you, Kenji.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia last year and the pain and exhaustion I experience only reinforce my own negativity. I don’t feel strong in addition to not feeling beautiful or healthy. It’s difficult. Sometimes I’ll remind myself that my body created, grew, carried, and birthed two amazing children without the assistance of medication, but those experiences also changed y body further. The flabby parts for flabbier. The varicose veins got worse. And as one random comment stated on a recent social media port regarding models of various sizes wearing swimsuits, “no one wants to see a woman with bulging varicose veins on her legs wear a skirt.” Ah, noted. I mean, I already knew this. Which is why I don’t wear skirts. But it’s always good to get that point reinforced, isn’t it? Sarcasm, of course.

I don’t need the world to tell me I’m beautiful but I need the world to stop telling me all the reasons I’m not.

Earlier in this series (Be yourself, Be beautiful), Florence told me in her interview that “we come in so many packages, and it’s like looking at flowers in a garden, and they should never look the same. They should all have their own sense of beauty.” I’m hoping that our photos and the experience you have with us help you start your journey to loving yourself as you are. We would love to be a part of that journey with you!