life, liberty, and the pursuit of thinness...

I am an eighteen year old girl. I live in a house with five other eighteen year old girls. I dance ballet. I have talked to girls from all over the world, from 8 to 48. I have heard almost every single one say, "I'm too fat," "I've gained so much weight," "I hate my thighs/hips/butt." I have not heard a single girl in any of these populations say, "Yes, I like my body."

Except for one tiny demographic: the BYU art models. All of us are unremarkable when it comes to appearance. We pose proudly in our average, bikini-clad bodies for figure drawing classes. It is impossible to draw a body clothed if you don't understand what the basic structure of it is unclothed. So, in order to give the students an accurate image of a woman's body, the models employed had to be an accurate representation of an average human body. That's where we came in.

I would not say I am particularly comfortable in my own skin, yet I regularly posed for a class of students--students of my body--in nothing but a bikini, for three straight hours. During breaks and after the class, I could see the charcoal drawings that had been done of me. Each artist was skilled and trained and had done his best to create an accurate likeness. But the interesting thing about looking at this art was that it was free of judgment. Each artist had simply drawn my body. Things I thought of as "flaws" didn't look like flaws in the art, even though they were still there. The artists had simply drawn exactly what they saw, not looking at me through the warped glasses that are society's definition of attraction, but as students seeking to understand the beautifully complicated series of lines and shapes before them.

I have never heard a model say she's fat, or ugly, or point out to me something she thought of as a flaw. We have all come to see ourselves not as the skewed image in the mirror, but as bodies that are beautiful just because they are bodies. The way those students of our bodies saw us became the way we saw ourselves.

So the next time someone says "I'm too fat," or "I wish I looked more like her" or "I wish I had your [insert aspect of image]", say, "You know what? I think you have the perfect body. I think I have the perfect body too, and her and her. We all have perfect bodies. They are just different." Because you know what? That is the truth.

If you don't believe me, just ask a figure drawing student.

Love,
Lizzy ;)