True story: I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and said, "Ugh! I'm such a pudgeball!"
Why would I ever start my day attacking my body? It's pretty heartbreaking to think the way I greeted myself was with a cutting insult. But even more troubling is that this kind of comment was not out of the ordinary for me — and you've probably done something similar. How many times have you stood in front of a mirror, and pointed out your flaws or talked about how you "hate" this, that, or the other thing about you?
"We.Women" is a new project by Lithuanian photographer Neringa Rekašiūtė that aims to change the way women view themselves and stop the assaults we lead on ourselves every day. It also seeks to highlight just how harmful the constant media bombardment of unrealistic images of women has been.
"Our media is full of images, attempting to construct what a perfect woman should look like," Rekasiute says. "Sexualization and standardization of a female body in the media have direct negative consequences in the society. Objectivization of body encourages the society to focus on physical appearance of women instead of embracing their personality and inner feelings. As a consequence, about half of women are dissatisfied with their bodies, which leads to a number of psychological and health problems."
In October, Rekašiūtė and her team asked 12 women to "open up [and] tell their story and be photographed only in their underwear." She continued, "Each woman shared her profound story and showed us lots of deep scars... We hope by growing this project and sharing the images and stories, we can inspire women to accept and love their bodies as they are: with all their inner and outer scars."
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