When I was a freshman first coming to college, I was 130 pounds. That may sound like a pretty average weight for an 18-year-old woman of average height, but I was all skin and bones. I barely ate, skipping breakfast and lunch on school days. (Disclaimer: Many things contributed to my lack of diet, but I did not have an eating disorder. I loved to eat; I just never had an appetite.) Of course, when I got to college, that “Freshman 15” hit me. And then it turned into the “Freshman 20,” then the “Freshman 40.”
I have gained a total of 60 pounds since I came to college – something I’m not afraid to admit – and it shows. Where my ribs used to show, I now have rolls. Where my stomach used to be flat, it now spills over my jeans. Where my jaw used to be sharp enough to cut, I now have a double chin. Where my collarbones used to show and my thighs used to have a gap and my arms used to be as thin as spaghetti noodles, I now have fat.
There are many things that contributed to my weight gain: newfound stress, trying different medications, and finally eating at regular intervals throughout the day. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having fat on your body; however, as many people have experienced after they gained a lot of weight, it drastically affected my self-esteem.
Now, this might not seem relevant at first, but I am an adamant user of TikTok. What I get recommended on my For You page is lesbian humor, cat videos and art videos. A new trend going around in the artistic community on TikTok is filming yourself painting your own nudes in a way to show love to their own bodies.
Why not?
I love to paint, and I love seeing how these people turn their bodies into beautiful, fantastical works of art, so I got out my box of art supplies and got to work.
Sketching out my own body proved to be a challenge right out of the gate. Even sitting on front of my full-length mirror, I couldn’t see some parts of my body, such as where my torso ended and how long my legs were. I couldn’t quite get the proportions right, so I had to call in a little bit of help: My fiancée.
Having my fiancée instruct me on what was too thin, too fat, too short, too long, etc. really made me realize what a warped perspective I have of my own body. I know they always say that if you saw a clone of yourself, you wouldn’t recognize yourself, but I thought that only applied to your face rather than your whole body. My stomach was smaller than I had originally thought, my butt bigger, my torso longer – there were just quite a few things about my own body that I got wrong.
I made the painting a monochrome of different shades of pink because that’s my favorite color and I chose a bit of a risqué pose just to make myself feel a bit sexier than I’m used to. I made the background completely black and the underwear black so that the pink would stand out like neon against it. In the end, I was actually pretty happy with the results:
This whole experience honestly gave me a better appreciation for my own body. I had to study my own body in order to get the position right – and yes, I did have to sit on my knees in front of my mirror until my ankles hurt to get the proportions and anatomy right. But looking at my own body isn’t something that I often do or something that I enjoy doing, so having to sit there and look at it for an extended period of time kind of… normalized it. Instead of looking at social media or television where almost everybody has a perfect, slim body, I was looking at my own and it became normal. And then turning it into this beautiful, colorful work of art that I really liked made it seem like just that: art. For the first time, I saw my own body as a work of art, literally and figuratively.
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