I Turned My Body Into Art To Challenge My Shame & Dysmorphia
It was terrifying……….and so freeing.
I started working on a project to help me finally accept my body but in an ideal world, even love it someday.
I took a photo of my body that scared me last night for the first time ever. You can see all of my body. It isn’t sexual in nature at all, I would even say the pose is very demure and covered because it was to encompass what I was feeling with my body at the time. I brought that photo into an app and drew a sketch of the outline, including featuring stretch marks. I got to the end of my sketch and looked at that and kept feeling myself saying “that’s my body?” In a positive way.
It looked like art. It was magical to look at what I knew is ME. Based on the part of me that I felt the most overwhelming shame from. My body. My body became art.
The next thing I am planning to do is turn it into a painting. I may use my projector to trace the sketch I did of my body onto a large canvas. I want it to be the largest painting that I ever did.
I want the size of my body to be a feature, not something holding me back. I felt so empowered. It was a wild idea I had one night. I wanted to try to do to test myself as an artist and force myself to confront my body issues and the shame around my body’s existence head-on. I don’t know if I will share the painting when it is done or if I will keep it just for me or if I will get rid of it the second it is done.
I feel so empowered and unashamed in the knowledge that I can turn my own body into art. I can not stress enough how much I wish every single person could do this, or whatever their personal equivalent of this may be, to feel what it feels like to feel that switch from seeing a photo of your body that causes you distress to seeing true art there.
I hope someday I can transfer that to be the reaction I feel when I see my physical body, not just the art I made featuring my body.
