Do you think you see your body the way it really is?

Before we begin, a little disclaimer: the following post is based on our own experiences & feelings. This does not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals.

Have you ever found yourself too fat or too thin out of the blue? Have you ever been deeply challenged by your reflection in the mirror? Have you ever felt oh-so-certain that you have body flaws despite hearing the opposite from loved ones?

If so, welcome to the world of body dysmorphia.

Body-dysmorphia, a big scary word we think never applies to us.

Body what now? The official definition of body-dysmorphia is as follow:

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), or body dysmorphia, is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others.

-NHS

Now, if you are like me, you hear “disorder” and you think “well that's not me, I'm not sick or whatever". The minute we slap medical terms on it, it becomes surreal and scary, but let us rephrase that definition:

Body-dysmorphia is when you don't see your body the way it actually is despite being convinced it is a certain way.

The most common example, and the one I personally deal with, is seeing yourself bigger than you actually are.

There are different levels of BDD. For some of us, myself included, we can still live our lives properly. For others, it becomes an obsession that can lead to eating disorders, social isolation and so on.

So, how does body-dysmorphia actually show?

BDD usually shows itself when we become teenagers. Our bodies change fairly quickly, plus, we are leaving our childhood where we pretty much didn't give a crap about our appearance and suddenly, it seems to define us.

Our brain is having a hard time processing this and we are left pointing out everything we think is wrong with us. Except for many of us, it doesn't stop there and we carry it until our adulthood.

Here are of the common ways BDD shows its ugly head:

• Checking yourself in the mirror, repeatedly, focusing on your “flaws”;

• Feeling certain that said flaws make you ugly or even deformed;

• Being convinced that you lost/put on weight based on no concrete proofs whatsoever;

• Trying to “fix” said flaws by over exercising, and often adjusting diet;

• Strongly believing that your flaws are only what other people see;

• Attempting to hide perceived flaws with styling, makeup or clothes;

• Constantly comparing your appearance with others;

• Frequently seeking reassurance about your appearance from others;

• Avoiding social gatherings;

• Feeling completely down for the whole day or more because of your appearance…

The list goes on and on. I don't know about you, but I can safely say that I have experienced over half this list.

What happens to me when the body-dysmorphia monster is knocking on my door and how I deal with it:

I am in my 30’s and I still involuntarily carry the BD monster in my back pocket. I don’t think it will ever go away. BUT, thanks to my experience and my work, I manage to considerably shorten its stays. My BD monster is weight related: I feel like I am bigger than usual especially around my waist.

Usually, it happens when I am off my eating and exercising routine for a week. If I didn’t prioritize my workouts sessions, and ate like crap, I can guarantee you that I am going to think I put on weight and it is going to make me feel guilty and shitty.

My remedy? Giving myself a severe reality check.

Sometimes, you need to give your head a shake.

1) I gather objective facts about why I would be feeling this way.

Like I said, it could be because I didn’t stick to my routine but it can also be because I am about to start my period and I feel bloated or I haven’t slept well for a while and/or I’m stressed. This really helps to remind myself that the vision I have of my body is very likely inaccurate because my mind doesn’t have the good fuel I usually give it.

2) I remind myself that it is physically impossible to have drastic body change in one week.

You’re not going to put on or lose 10 pounds in a week. Biologically, weight changes take a lot longer to show. Your body is smart and if you take a negative turn on your eating habits, it won’t show for a little while.

3) I remind myself that my body is doing its thing during the day and that it is normal if it looks different.

This one is for those who, like me, wish for a constant flat stomach. It’s a myth. Our bodies digest, they bloat, they eliminate. I’m actually pretty damn lucky it does all of that for me. Side note: our lower abdomen as a little cushion because it is protecting our uterus. When you see it like this, typing “how to lose lower belly fat” on Google makes a lot less sense.

4) I remind myself that I have felt this way in the past and have been very wrong.

The first time I realized I had a BD monster was when I looked at photos of my teenaged years, when I felt incredibly fat and I obviously wasn’t. It is usually enough to tell myself that there is a good chance I could be doing the exact same thing right now.

5) I let go of the guilt

Scheduling more workouts and diet change is very common for me as an attempt to “right my wrongs”. When I catch myself doing this, I sit my ass down and remember that, hey, I don’t work out to lose weight, I work out because it makes me feel good. And yeah, maybe I went a bit overboard food wise, but I needed it at the time and it also came with good memories with my loved ones.

So fuck it.
Yes, F U C K I T.
I did nothing wrong, there is nothing to fix, all I need to go back to what feels good and I will. and so will you.

I truly hope that reading this will help you feel less alone and give you some tools to kick your Body-Dysmorphia monster in the balls. We have written additional tips here, in case you need some. .

Here are some helpful books if you are looking to do some digging and heal yourself: The Broken Mirror by Katharine Phillips & Shattered Image by Brian Cuban.

If you feel overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to ask for help and find a therapist to guide you through it all. You don’t have to do this alone

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I edited my photos and I regret it

If you follow us on Instagram, you saw that Fanny and I shared some of our earliest work as photographers. What was meant to be an endearing, loving and funny post brought out an interesting realization for me: I am not able to tell on which photos I edited my body. And I deeply regret it.

The quick fix of photo editing

I started fiddling with editing softwares when I was about 15, back in 2007. At first, it was just to create little emo montages to put on my blog (yes I'm this old).

Then, I found some tutorials to alter reality and change proportions. And of course, my deeply insecure teenaged self didn't wait 2 minutes before applying it to my face and my body. Like many teenagers, my weight was the main source of my insecurities. So I went to town, shrinking my waist, my cheekbones, my legs and removing anything I thought was a flaw.

Did it make me feel better? For a split second, absolutely. I got the outside validation from my peers, I convinced myself it was better this way, which was enough for me. I was actually quite good at editing and nobody noticed. Plus, it was the early days, our eyes weren't used to spot this kind of editing.

What I didn't realize is that I was heavily feeding my insecurities.

2012 - No idea if I edited myself or not, deleted the original.

The danger of building an alternate you.

Slapping filters, changing your body: it is never just a one-off.

Once you start, it only gets worse. It is never enough. Think about it, you found an easy way to fix one "flaw", of course you are gonna find ways to fix another. And then you gonna dive in into parts of yourself you didn't have anything against, but it needs to match the rest of the edited you so… a vicious cycle begins.

I distinctly remember snapping a little auto-portrait when I was about 16 and editing everything so much that I ended up changing the size of my eyes. The. Size. Of. My. Eyes.

I remember looking at this and thinking "who the f*ck is this".

This was one of the first steps that rang a bell to me and said “Jules, you went too far". I never published this photo and I wasn't able to find it, chances are I deleted a few years ago because of that reason.

You would think that this would have led my path to self-acceptance, that I stopped editing and unicorns started dancing around me. HA!

Nope. I just transferred this virtual version of me to my real life.

2011 - Edited my waist - Beautiful proof of my body-dysmorphia as I found myself fat.

I wanted to be this virtual version I created in real life.

I got that editing was bad for me but not for the right reasons. I twisted this to "I can't edit myself anymore because it makes me feel bad, so I'm gonna change my body in real life". This was the peak of my body-dysmorphia journey and it lasted way until my mid-2os.

I was just "too fat", all the time. Losing weight didn't make a difference, i didn't see it.

It started impacting my every day life, making me not eat before taking photos, not letting people take pictures of me, controlling everything as much as I could, something that I still do to this day when I'm feeling unsafe. I am extremely lucky that I didn't develop obsessive eating disorders, I honestly have no idea how I dodged it with this way of thinking.

Walking away from this required a lot of different seeds to stop acting like an idiot.

Many of those amazing women we get to work with on the daily.

1) Letting others show me.

We are in 2011. I am photographing more and more women I find absolutely stunning while they don't technically check the beauty standard boxes blasted in front of us. They're confident, they're open about their insecurities and they don't let them dictate their lives. I see them shine during my shoots and I'm impressed.

they planted the first seeds in my brain that I could actually accept myself the way I was too.

Then I meet other women just as beautiful but not as confident and it blows my mind. I find myself believing in and encouraging THEM to shine. And I must be doing something right because it works and they believe me. Even more so, a fire starts within them and I'm loving it.

And one day, it clicks: if I see their beauty at first glance and they don't, is there a chance I'm doing the same for me? Just like that, I planted the next seed: the one that shows the lack of accuracy of negative self-talk and that I shouldn't let it take over.

2) Starting aerial silks and changing my perspective.

By this time, we are in 2013, I'm 21. I haven't edited my body in years, but instead, I simply hide it in every way I can. Out of sight, out of mind. But I'm about to plant another seed for myself without knowing: I start aerial silks.

What's the point, you may wonder?
It made me see that my body is a strong ass one, more than just an appearance.

It starts changing too, it gets fitter, things I didn't know was an option. I don't see it as much as a flawed thing anymore, it impresses me. I knew that I had to capture that in case it faded away, so I can have a keepsake. So I did. I still have this photo in my apartment and look at it often.

3) Opening Scandaleuse and stopping the hypocrisy.

I'm 25 now, I'm just starting to embrace myself the way I should. Fanny and I are brainstorming ideas about Scandaleuse. We both have this deep passion around highlighting women's beauty, especially when they don't see it.

Boudoir is the way we chose but it is still much easier to do it for others than myself. So before we even opened anything, something pushed me out of my comfort zone and I asked Fanny to shoot my first ever boudoir shoot to know what it would feel like.

Of course, I fell RIGHT BACK into my old habits: I asked to shoot at 7am to make sure I wasn't bloated, before I had eaten anything. I had a very hard time to let go and I even edited some photos (“it was just some unflattering shadows” (no it wasn't))

Photo from this shoot. Pretty sure I edited my stomach here.

Not only did it make me feel like absolute garbage to do this but this was also the first time Fanny told me I was wrong, in calm, almost sad, way.

You see, I had never anybody who actually told me that. I have had people dismissing my concerns with the flicker of a hand many times, but no one actually sat me down and tried to tell me that I might see myself in the wrong light, especially someone I deeply trusted. Fanny planted one of the biggest seeds I needed and I don't think she knows it. I'm so glad she did.

I realized I couldn't open a business about self-acceptance and kicking beauty standards in the balls if I wasn't willing to do it myself.

And if there is one thing that I can't accept, it is being a hypocrite.

It was even more important than my insecurities, it just wasn't an option. From this moment, I decided it was time to change. I never edited myself again after this.

So, is it healed?

Mostly, yes. But I don't believe it will ever go away fully. I still have moments when old habits come back and I'm tempted to edit something or cancel a shoot because I feel fat. But I force myself not to. I force myself to look at it all because going backwards would make me the biggest hypocrite, and like I said, this isn't an option.

And you know what? The “flaws” I see one day are rarely here the next. Because that's how it works with insecurities: they depend on many other factors that have nothing to do with your body. Understanding this as helped me DETACH from it all. I'm not feeling my best? It's okay, it will be back.

There you have it. This is probably the blog post that took me the most energy. Writing this all is leaving me with a deep sense of appreciation. I've come a long way and will need constant reminders, but it's okay. If you are on the same boat, I hope reading my story will help. And of course, if you feel like you're ready to get the ultimate kick in the butt with a boudoir shoot, we are here for you!

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