Me and my body – a love and hate story

Ever since I could remember I was challenged with my body image. I felt like I couldn’t wear a bathing suit and let people see my body and me myself – I couldn’t look at the mirror.
One of my close friends saw my new catalog (which has photos of me posing with my designs) and suggested to hire REAL models so my brand will look more professional.
It felt like a good punch in my stomach for a moment but I told him that I want REAL women like me to wear my products and if they will think it looks good on me they’ll think it will look good on them too!
We can’t compare ourselves to models with a beauty team supporting them with the most flattering angle and a whole lot of photoshop retouch to close it up. They don’t even look like themselves…
Of course he wanted to help me progress and didn’t have a clue he was touching an open wound…
But it took me back to my teenage years when I was so obsessed with criticising and hating my body. It actually began after I saw in a teenage magazine, a 10 pages advertisement for a big underwear company (20 years later I had worked there as a designer).
I loved the underwear (I guess the designer in me rose up) and I wanted to look like that gorgeous model. I started exercising a lot and eating less and less.
I remember the pain I felt looking at my body in the mirror and how uncomfortable I felt at the beach with my best friends. Of course when I look at the photos I don’t understand how did I waste my time like that and I also weighed about 55 kilos…
This hatred later on led me to eating disorders which led to bulimia and anorexia and it took me a lot of time to recover.
So here I am, the REAL me, no makeup, my chest is after 4 rounds of breastfeeding (not much left for me 🤣), my belly after 4 pregnancies (actually 6, 2 didn’t come through), and with a scar from the very first one (and I didn’t even have a Caesarian…) it doesn’t want to be flat again… my skin is blinding white and have sprinkles of freckles on top and I had twice as much hair 😳
With all that said and I’m wearing my most exposed item, a triangles top and Brazilian bottom bikini set and learning to heal and recover and LOVE my body ❤️🙌