December 7, 2021: A Reframe On Photos

Triggers with photos has been a theme popping up for many of my clients in the past month.
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So I thought I'd bring a few tidbits here to share, as holiday season often includes photos.
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The truth is: photos were created so that we can document our human life. And my gosh is that an amazing thing to do. I'm a sucker for it. I print books at the end of every year. I love opening them and relieving the memories.
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But it took work for me to get to this point with photos.
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Because here's the thing: our culture has trained us to experience photos from the lens of self-objectification.
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And you know what's at the root of all body image problems? Self-objectification: when we reduce our magnificent human selves to objects to be viewed by others. Aka when we focus on how we look, and elevate our looks as the most important thing about us.
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So it's no wonder that for so many, photos are triggering. They can take you from an embodied experience to an objectifying one in an instant.
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Now, it doesn't have to be this way. But we must do the work to come back to our humanity. We must do the work to reframe our intentions for taking photos in the first place. We must do the work to challenge our internalized fatphobia.
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When we do this: we get to reclaim photos. Which, if you ask me, is a really beautiful gift.
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We not only give ourselves the gift of remembering memories for a lifetime; we also gift our future loved ones, the ones that don't even exist yet: the gift of a glimpse into our lives and legacy.