A Movement Of Women Rising Up
To Transform Body Image
In Mass Media Through
Untouched Photographs,
Essays, Audio, And Video!
A Beautiful Body Project is an upcoming series of book volumes & an online media platform dedicated to women & body image, dedicated to sharing stories about motherhood, aging, cancer, still-births, miscarriages, weigh-gain, weight-loss, dysmorphia, and beyond.
It all began when photographer and dancer Jade Beall posted this photo above of a friend of hers that she took in her studio Tucson, AZ. She had already posted photos of her post-birth body to show the world what she was going through after her son Sequoia came into this world. And through all of this she realized that there were hundreds and thousands of women who also wanted to share their life stories about their bodies! The emails started flooding in and she realized she had to build this project, that it was her calling.
A Beautiful Body project is movement of women coming together to tell their stories and celebrate their ever-changing bodies so that future generations of women can live free from self-suffering.
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| Portrait of Jade Beall with son Sequoia. |
A few weeks back in a Mojo Monday post called My Body Is Magic I mentioned this project and shared a video about it. This week I found myself inspired yet again by Jade Beall and her co-creator and husband Alok Appadurai with two poems they shared on Facebook and on the web site for the project.
Here is the first poem by Jade that will also be featured in my upcoming Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine article entitled The Embodiment of I AM in September.
You can wear makeup
or nothing at all
or nothing at all
You can wear heels
or walk barefoot
You can drive a BMW
or take the bus to the store
You can have plastic surgery
or leave your body alone
It all means the same to me:
We are all variations of truthful beauty
I honor you as you choose to be
while I pray for freedom from unnecessary suffering
and I pray for the wisdom of listening to one’s truth
Our paths are unique while uniting as one
One Love!
And there is an urgency for compassion for one another
that begs us to
honor
and listen
and treasure
those around us
While we live our lives
As authentically as the DNA that is being danced
by the beat of our one heart.
-Jade
Here is the fierce and inspiring poem by Alok Appadurai.
Industries are born on the backs of Women hating themselves.
It's an emotional slavery that milks these women, dollar by dollar,
Like chained dairy cows, Oozing vicious droplets of self-hate
That rot the roots of a woman's inner beauty...
It's an emotional slavery that milks these women, dollar by dollar,
Like chained dairy cows, Oozing vicious droplets of self-hate
That rot the roots of a woman's inner beauty...
You see, executive bonuses don't swell when women feel naturally beautiful
Just as they are.
You can't push lipstick, eye shadow, foundation, and blush
Like crack cocaine or heroin,
On a woman who sees her true worth, you dig?
Millions are milked from the financial breasts of women
Simply by convincing them
A Grand Canyon exists between them and being beautiful.
Just as they are.
You can't push lipstick, eye shadow, foundation, and blush
Like crack cocaine or heroin,
On a woman who sees her true worth, you dig?
Millions are milked from the financial breasts of women
Simply by convincing them
A Grand Canyon exists between them and being beautiful.
Magazines and movies are complicit in this lie that warps all of our minds
into a silent submission prostrating to the Lords Of Media
Who enrich themselves on the suffering of a woman,
Who enrich themselves on the suffering of a woman,
as she whips herself leaving emotional scars that don't have to last a lifetime
but all too often do.
Diet pills, Spanx, and photoshop are foot soldiers in the war on women's self-esteem,
Diet pills, Spanx, and photoshop are foot soldiers in the war on women's self-esteem,
hell-bent on their own Crusade to convert unsuspecting teens, or worse, preteens,
into self-critical consumers of false hopes offered by surgeons, photographers, and others
who want to hide, reshape, retouch, or fix what actually isn't wrong with you.
Millions are milked from the bank accounts of women who have been brainwashed to believe they aren't good enough.
Millions are milked from the bank accounts of women who have been brainwashed to believe they aren't good enough.
Industries thrive when she looks in the mirror and hates herself just a little more with each day, each wrinkle, each magazine consumed.
Embodied self-esteem breaks the chains of dependence on products that merely momentarily massage our bandaged egos,
Embodied self-esteem breaks the chains of dependence on products that merely momentarily massage our bandaged egos,
Cutting the umbilical chord of self-suffering that has been feeding their bodies and their brains
with toxic imagery of fake tits and other ideals that are nothing more than comparative trampolines:
Your mind soars on the amphetimes of a shopping spree
yet crashes when the superficial effects wear off.
Ask yourself this:
Ask yourself this:
Who would buy what is being sold if women actually believed they were beautiful for who they are,
not what they look like?
Industries would crumble. Bonuses would deflate.
Executives would scramble, Board rooms would be abuzz.
What would they do if women stopped buying the lie that they are flawed, that they aren't enough?
And the best part of the corporate magic trick to maximize profits built on women hating themselves:
And the best part of the corporate magic trick to maximize profits built on women hating themselves:
women do a bangup job making other women hate themselves too,
and have become the front line warriors destroying other women's fragile sense of self.
You can blame everyone and their mother
You can blame everyone and their mother
or you can believe: It's time.
It's time to close your eyes, ears, and wallets to the pimps of self-loathing
It's time to close your eyes, ears, and wallets to the pimps of self-loathing
who want you hooked on their drugs that manufacture dysmorphia in your brain.
Self-esteem doesn't come in a bottle. You were born beautiful.
There is only one way forward. Women rising up &
There is only one way forward. Women rising up &
Empowering each other to leap into the unknown chasm
of life's greatest love affair with one's own self.
-Alok Appadurai is a writer, co-Founder of "A Beautiful Body Project" & "Fed By Threads", an advocate for animals & the environment, and a proud father to baby Sequoia. |
| Alok, Jade and Sequoia |
Founder Jade Beall has been a photographer, a massage therapist, and an inspiring dance teacher for women for over a decade. Her work is touching thousands of lives around the world.
More about Jade in her own words:
"A quiet yet profound love for photography took me by surprise my senior year of high school (1996, yeah, a while back) because of an incredible teacher at Tucson High, Mr. Halfmann. Today, I gather inspiration from poets and local photographers alike, finally finding my true passion for what I call Medicinal Photography for Women a few years ago in 2009. Medicinal Photography means to serve as an empowering tool to facilitate healing for women to feel beautiful and irreplaceable, just as they are, without need of digital alterations.
I have taught weekly dance classes for self-empowerment with live drumming for over a decade, I run a made in America sustainable clothing line that feeds Americans in need with my husband. I in-joy listening to people and looking into their eyes and seeing THEM, the real, beautiful them.
Becoming a mother in February of 2012 brought forth this Beautiful Body Project. Through this journey that motherhood in all her glory and raggedness has generously gifted me came a new-found desire to connect to other women on a much deeper and more meaningful level. This inter-connectedness, this unity with other mothers and other women has been one of the most precious gifts of all (besides my gorgeous and perfect son, of course)."
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Please visit and explore the web site for A Beautiful Body Project.
You will be inspired and moved by the stories and the images.
You will be inspired and moved by the stories and the images.
Do you feel inspired by this project?
Does it have any impact on how you view yourself?
What are your thoughts about accepting and loving your body ~ imperfections and all?
What are your thoughts about accepting and loving your body ~ imperfections and all?
