When I was growing up, I loved fashion magazines…

But it always felt like the magazines hated me.

Could I possibly ever look like that?

Like those girls on the covers, the fashion spreads, the makeup features?

I would stare at them, and then stare at myself in the mirror.

If they are the standard of what society perceives as beautiful — 

Then, I must be ugly. 

I didn’t fit the mold, and from the looks of me growing up, it didn’t seem like I ever would. 

Unless I had surgery. 

Or, unless I got lucky in another incarnation.

My body…

My body was something I struggled to accept. 

I was tall — taller than other girls and most of the boys.

I was curvy. I had a soft belly, love handles on my back, and a comparatively flat butt.

I liked my long legs, I liked my face.

I learned to accentuate my legs while contouring the rest of my body favorably with A-line dresses, and I learned to pose for photographs in a way that concealed my double chin.

In the mirror, I would catch a reflection of myself that I could accept, and hold that image in my mind’s eye, so that I could think of my appearance favorably throughout the rest of the day.

I would often hear…

“You could be a model with your height!…”

Immediately, I thought about the magazines that taunted me with beauty standards that I did not fit.

“… if only you were THIN”. 

Yes! 

If only… 

My friends, they shared with me — 

“I hate my thighs. I wish I had your legs.” 

“I hate that I’m short. I wish I was taller, like you!”

“You have nice lips. Mine are so thin!”

“I love your green eyes. Mine are just boring brown!”

I hated these conversations.

I HATED THAT WE HATED OURSELVES.

I couldn’t put it into words, but exchanges like that with other young girls made me depressed. 

Were we all just doomed?

Who decided that these girls, gracing the fashion magazines — that they were IT?

And why did we accept that so easily, so submissively, with such willingness to despise our own image in favor of what was sold to us by men who made a multi-trillion dollar industry off our insecurities?

There was something else, though.

An alternative that served as a boundless source of inspiration for me, a world where women’s bodies with all their curves inspired some of the world’s greatest works of art. 

Museums. 

That’s where I found them.

Museums and art books. 

Statues.

Paintings.

Drawings & sketches. 

Naked bodies. 

Real female bodies. 

I was lucky to grow up in an environment where my education and cultural enrichment were taken very seriously. 

I was exposed to art when I was still a young girl, and it gave me hope…

Though I never saw appearance like mine represented in fashion magazines, I saw bodies of women that were similar to my own represented in timeless masterpieces.

Then, at 23, I ended up on a board of directors of a local opera production (rather accidentally), and met a woman, a locally renowned artist.

She told me:

“You would make a great art model.”

Art model? 

As in, posing for paintings?

2 years have passed before I brought it back up to Barbara, the artist.

“Are you saying that you will pose for us?”

Pose for whom?

“There are several groups of artists, we would love to have you pose for portraits. Get ready to sit still!”

To be continued….