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This is a excerpt from the Just Boobs Project book. These are real women, their thoughts and feelings, their breasts.
I’m trying to figure out why it is that I don’t love the way I look. I admire people who have that, “I am who I am and I’m just gorgeous” thing. My breasts have never been the right size, they’ve never been the right feel, they’ve never been what I think they need to be.
I think something happened in my life that has programed me to feel this negative energy. My dad was always very strict with my mom about loosing weight. She always had to bee a certain size. She would rebel against that and get really heavy and my dad would ignore her and not speak to her. That must be part of some of my internal fears. I remember my mom walking around naked all the time when she was getting ready, it was never a big deal for her. I remember my sister saying, “I never want my boobs to look like that”. I don’t know if that was something that stuck with me, but, my boobs do look like that now. Whether it was my dad or it was events in my life, something happened that I just can’t quite put my finger on.
As an adult, I know that I need to love myself the way that I am now. And I do appreciate my body for what it’s done for me, and the way it has served my babies. But I can’t seem to figure out how to get rid of that negative internal voice. It comes and it goes. Especially if I’m really busy and not taking care of myself, or when I’m too outwardly focused. It would be a miracle if I could get rid of this negative dialogue. How do you get rid of it? It’s not like you can just hit erase. You are constantly bombarded by society and what they are thinking. Even if you try to escape that, it’s still everywhere. And It already got in there, so I can’t get it out. That’s the struggle. How do you turn it off?
I went to one of Koren’s “Celebrate Women” photo shoots and had nudes taken. It was hard to look at myself in the pictures because I wasn’t where I wanted to be. At first I was nit-picky, but eventually I saw myself the way that you should see yourself, as artwork. There were some where I was laying on my side and I was very curvaceous. I could see that line of heaviness, or whatever, and I liked it. I was OK with that, and I love those photos. I think people who have a negative reaction to doing things like that are crazy because, the best thing you can do when you have a negative self image is to really expose yourself. I needed to see myself through someone else’s eyes instead of what I see in the mirror.
I did an exercise once where they said you really need to write down what your biggest struggles are. Then you need to write down the positive statement that would kill those negative thoughts. Then you read through those notes over and over until it’s gone. I think those pictures were a visual way of doing that exercise. And because I did those pictures, I have something positive to tell myself whenever I do find myself feeling like I can’t fix the internal dialogue. I’m trying to heal by participating in life. By believing my husband when he tells me I’m beautiful, and enjoying it. It’s OK if you have to fake it until you make it.
