Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Celebrating Diversity! (But are we still seeing the same traditional beauty underneath it all?)

Elizaveta Bulokhova shows us again that no matter what our disabilities or scars are, we can still celebrate ourselves in Model poses in front of the camera for the first time since losing 95% of her jaw to cancer - along with the baby son she was told to terminate before undergoing chemo.


After learning that she had osteosarcoma in her jawbone when she was 24 and pregnant, the model went through with the pregnancy that she was advised against. She had 95% of her jaw removed, gave birth to a healthy baby and has now posed for the first time since the surgery in a collection of stunning imagery, which does not try to hide her scars, but instead—embraces them.

We keep seeing more and more of these body positive messages—love ourselves as we are. And this is truly empowering.

I would add one hesitation at pure feelings of joy: in almost all of these celebrations of diversity, whether it be disability or size or gender-identification, the one steadfast similarity amongst many of these celebratory photo shoots is that the women photographed somehow still fall into a traditional definition of beauty in some way.

Oftentimes the women are models or former models and have either a classically beautiful face or all their curves in just the right places and amount.

Where are the photo shoots of non-traditionally beautiful women in the modern media? Women who maybe didn’t start out drop-dead gorgeous, but still have a right to celebrate…

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