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FBW: Everyone Is Beautiful By Jenny The Bloggess
FBW stands for Featured Blogger of the Week. Each week we will feature one of our calendar ladies or gentleman. Mondays will be a post written by the FBW and Wednesdays will be an interview of the FBW. If you want to know how you can be a part of the Blogger Body Calendar project, please click here.Earlier this week my friend & author (Katherine Center) asked my friend & photographer (Chookooloonks) to take pictures of her painting the last paragraph of her latest novel (Everyone Is Beautiful) on me while my friend & girl-I-wanna-be-when-I-grow-up (Laura Mayes) kept me distracted enough to not want to run away when I stripped down to my bathing suit. I expected to be able to write something funny about how terrible it was and to have Katherine give up completely but I never expected how therapeutic it would be to have someone write beautiful words over your scars, or cellulite, or parts you keep hidden from the rest of the world. And Chookoolooks (aka Karen Walrond) captured it so perfectly but we were all a little surprised at the response her photographs received from both men and women. She admitted that the day had seemed like a fairy tale to us but wondered why people reacted so strongly to the photographs, but I think I know. There’s something very golden about the honest emotions of the words, and the flawed body that becomes art through the lens of a friend. I think it just reminds us all of the truth…that everyone *is* beautiful. It’s a gift for any woman who has doubted herself, and a knowing nod to any man who has “found” beauty in a girl who never saw it there herself.
(I took these pictures. Check out Karen's for the less gritty versions.)
Go. Look. Explore. Watch the video. Then go tell someone how beautiful they are. Because for the first time in a long time I almost believe it myself.
Everyone is Beautiful was originally published in June 2009. Jenny is Ms. December. She writes for Good Mom/Bad Mom on the Houston Chronicle, but needed an uncensored space to say the f-word and talk about ninjas so the “other” blog, The Bloggess, was born. She also write a satirical sex column, a horrible advice column and she twitters a lot.
Author: Alex @LateEnough
Alex Iwashyna blogs at LateEnough.com mostly about life, parenting, marriage, politics, culture, religion and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. Expect blog appearances by aliens, alienation, fire and rude Southern people who offend her Yankee sensibilities. Find her on her blog, Facebook or the Twitter.6 Comments to “FBW: Everyone Is Beautiful By Jenny The Bloggess”
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I love that pic! Some day I am going to have Hubby take a pic of me like that.
This is a beautiful photo of Jenny! Love.
From one Jenny to another, I just want to remind you to truly OWN YOUR GLITTER. You are beautiful. Inside out. It’s the scars, it’s the flaws, it’s the YOU that make it all uniquely shine. No one else can ever be you. xox
[...] Everyone is beautiful. [...]
Oh, I am breathless and almost in tears. I have a space I redecorated to be beautiful, even though I couldn’t really afford it. I did this with hope in my heart, in a “If you build it, they will come” kind of way. There is a large, blank wall I have been waiting to finish, because I didn’t know what it needed but I knew I’d recognize it when I saw it. And now I know. I am a manicurist with no clients and I love the photos on Chookoolooks’ photostream. May I please use some of them in my shop? They are perfect. They are exactly what I want to convey to everyone who chooses to enter this space I have created. This is the embodiment of everything I believe about true beauty. I see what I do as the possibility of helping someone feel good about themselves, much in the same way your red dress did. I would be so grateful if I could have your permission to copy or buy a few of the photos. I don’t know, maybe I need to contact the photographer? Would you help me? Thank you so much, even if the answer is “no.”