How to love your summer body

Summer can be one of the hardest times of year for anyone with a body (So, like, everyone)! Today, I want to offer you a little encouragement, and my perspective on loving your summer body as a Boudoir photographer ❤️

First off, I want to share one of my most deeply-held beliefs: 

EVERY body is amazing and worthy of being documented, celebrated, and pampered. 

It’s not about changing your body so that you can feel good in it. It’s about celebrating it as it is. It’s about allowing it to be whatever it is right now without judgment. 

(I’ll be sharing more about this on a personal note in a future blog post, when I share about my OWN Boudoir experience and facing my own body image challenges/beliefs!)

When it comes to doing your own Boudoir Session, it’s about choosing to be ready to see yourself differently than you have been. Being open to new possibilities.

It’s always so important to me that every client has their Boudoir experience because they WANT to. I’m never here to force any part of the experience on you.

That means, it’s ALSO completely ok if it doesn’t feel like the right time yet.

AND—Changing your body isn’t the thing that makes it the right time. That isn’t the point. 

What I’ve found is that the real issue isn’t the external things (although it feels that way), it’s the mindset. 

It’s choosing to see ourselves differently. Choosing to do something outside our comfort zone, choosing to be seen beyond just the body we’re in.

For so many of us, we can be confident in many areas of life—our jobs, being a mom, cooking—But we don’t feel confident in who we are.

What shifts that for the better is doing the new thing, the scary thing, that you really want to do. Whether it’s having a Boudoir experience, wearing a bikini at the beach when you normally would have stayed home, not wearing the cover up over your breakouts, cutting your hair, going to a movie by yourself…

Once we try the new, scary thing and realize it wasn’t as scary as we thought, then this gives us building blocks to help us be kinder to ourselves. Breaking the cycle of trying to change ourselves first before we can meet life as our fullest selves. Breaking down the barriers of what we believe we’re capable of.

It’s not that your feelings about your body or self-confidence are invalid—I will always say that it’s COMPLETELY ok to feel exactly how you feel. You’re never alone in how you feel.

AND—Maybe you’re also more amazing than you’ve realized! 😉

Sometimes I catch myself having my own body image stuff, like judging pimples on my face, feeling down because I’ve gained weight, or if I’m having a bad hair day. 

Whenever this happens, I ask myself, “Ok, but will my client today care that my face is breaking out? Am I less good of a photographer or less good of a partner because of this breakout?”

You can bet that the answer is NOPE!

Here’s the big secret to all this: Our thoughts are sometimes just not true.

And when it comes to body image, it’s not about perfectionism, or getting to a place where you feel like you love yourself ALL the time. It’s more about learning to identify those critical thoughts, challenging them, and realizing that you’re more than your body, your insecurities, and your anxieties.

My clients often do Boudoir Sessions with me because they don’t want to feel crappy about themselves anymore. I frequently hear, “I want to see myself the way my friends and my partner do. They tell me I’m beautiful all the time, and I want to really see it and believe it.” 

Boudoir Sessions aren’t a place where you show up and are told how to be beautiful. It’s an experience that gives you a solution for your self-criticism. 

When we do those new, scary things, whether it’s putting the bikini on, or doing the Boudoir Session, we feel stronger afterwards and have a deeper appreciation for what we DO have rather than focusing on what we don’t have.

Don’t wait to say YES to yourself and your desires until you lose the 5 pounds, get the job promotion, have the perfect partner…

If we wait to be perfect, we hold ourselves back. Guaranteed.

So the point is: Put the bikini on! Or the trunks, or full body suit, or whatever you really want to wear if you had nothing holding you back.

Have fun. Do the thing. Be present. Have a good time. And enjoy your bikini body. Because just like all those internet memes say, “How do you get a bikini body? You put a bikini on your body.”

Reach out to me to book your own Boudoir Session: