Author: taithannah

“My body tells a story; not a story of a victim but one about a survivor.”

*Trigger warning for rape/sexual assault/self-harm/anorexia*

I’ve always been slightly proud of my body.

I’m gay, I have a very liberal attitude to sex and sexuality (I actually work in an erotic boutique!) and, while I’ve never thought my body was ideal, I know that I’m slim and I have nice boobs and a nice be-hind. I’m confident and comfortable in my own skin. It ain’t perfect, but it’s the only one I’ve got so I might as well love it.

I was sexually assaulted and then raped. My initial reaction was to not think about it. To bury it in the recesses of my mind and, essentially, run away, made sense.
I became anorexic and started self-harming. This was because these people, who had taken advantage of me, had so much control over me; even now, when I’ve not seen them for years, they control so much of my life.

I used to be bisexual – now I couldn’t consider having an intimate relationship with a man.

Sometimes, I’d be in a perfectly good mood, when BOOM, I’d start to cry, or to have a panic attack.

Starving or harming myself were forms of control: people who have hurt me controlled my sexuality, my emotions, whether I felt strong enough to out of bed in the morning. I had control over my weight and my physical pain.

I had all these scars over me, and I was dangerously thin. I hated my body. I looked in the mirror and loathed what I saw: a scrawny, scratched and scarred girl. Not the strong confident woman I knew and wanted to be.

Through counselling, support from friends, and learning to accept what happened to me, I got better. It took time and there were so many times I just wanted to give up, but I got better.

Through counselling, I learned not to put what happened behind me or to forget about it, but to confront it, accept it, and move on with it. I now see it as something which shaped me into the strong, confident, compassionate, caring person I am.
And that includes my body. I still use bio-oil to reduce the scars, and I’m no longer underweight, but I love my scars. My body tells a story; not a story of a victim but one about a survivor. Someone who was close to death, who cut herself and who punished her body and nearly gave up on everything and everyone, but didn’t.

My scars say: “remember that time, and be thankful for this time”. They say “you’re a strong, confident woman; you’re not that girl any more”. But most of all, they say “well done”.

Posted on by taithannah 1

“I suffer from high self-esteem.”

Hi, I’m 23, female and I suffer from high self-esteem. I love my body, I just cant help it.

I’m really very lucky – I have 20/20 vision, all my natural teeth, a fairly strong constitution, ten fingers and ten toes.

When women ask me, What do you hate most about your body? or If you could change anything, what would it be? I really have to think about it. After a lengthy pause I usually shrug and say, My feet are pretty big? Truth be told, if I could change anything it would probably be my body clock, so I could survive on 6 hours sleep and not be a moody bitch. Either that or change my digestion so I would take a dump at 7 every morning and not have to go when I’m on a bus or at a party.

But back to the body stuff: There are several things wrong with these kinds of situations. For starters, they happen waaaay too frequently for my liking (that they happen at all is truly horrifying). Secondly, that most women I know are locked and loaded with their answer. As soon as the question is asked its like a bomb goes off and body parts are suddenly flying across the room. I hate my thighs. My boobs are too small. My arse is so flat. When did hating your body become a hobby? And third, why does loving your body now equate to narcissism? This may be a cultural thing, I’m not sure – in Australia we have a national case of Tall Poppy Syndrome and if you value any of your natural assets, you are swiftly deemed “up yourself”.

In any case, when will women start giving themselves and each other a break? The girl who loves how she looks is not an egocentric maniac and the girl who hates how she looks is not digging for compliments. We are not a threat to each other! We live in a hostile, media-saturated environment and are constantly told we’re not good enough. We are so good at being down on ourselves and consuming (make up, clothes, anything to attain an unrealistic ideal) that we perpetuate the cycle and convince others to do the same. The system is rigged. We’re actually doing advertisers’ jobs for them!
Let’s not make it so easy for them. Let’s reframe the question… What do you love most about your body?

Posted on by taithannah 4

Project Naked is still alive!

We’ve been very quiet recently but Project Naked is still on our minds! We have some video ideas and we’re always accepting submissions from women everywhere, please have a look at the Where Do I Start? page for some ideas – no story is unimportant, if you think about the impact these stories have had on you think about how your story could impact on someone else.

We really want to get back on track with this and we need your help; Project Naked can’t exist without you! 🙂

Posted on by taithannah 0

“When I was growing up, I always felt a little heartbroken.”

*Trigger warning for self-harm*

When I was growing up, I always felt a little heartbroken.

I think it started at school, when I was the girl in the game of ‘spin the bottle’ that no one ever wanted to kiss. I still remember when one of my classmates (who I kinda fancied) asked everyone why they were punishing him when he got a dare of having to give me a peck on the cheek. I never played ‘spin the bottle’ again. After all, why would I make anyone subject themselves to the torture of touching repulsive me.

I was never picked to be at the front in the class photos and always got picked last in PE. Not that it really upsets me now. I never liked sports, playing basketball was like the 7th layer of hell…Yeah, I was an awkward teenager, with loads of acne and an inability to stand up for myself. And thanks to other kids/teenagers in school, I’ve learnt to be really, really cruel to myself.

At the age of 14 not only did I let other people mentally hurt me, I started physically hurting myself. For a few years, cutting was the only way to feel. I even used to carry a razor blade under the cover of my phone in case things got ‘too much’ at school. And all the time I was injuring myself, I felt like I deserved it. Each scar on my arm was for some special reason. My ‘ugly’ nose. My ‘ugly’ eyes. My ‘ugly’ hair. My ‘ugly’ legs. I even went to extremes of thinking that my toes were really hideous because, I thought, I had abnormally small toe nails.

I must’ve been really out of luck, because when I got my first boyfriend (at that point it seemed like a miracle that anyone would ever use their time to spend with me), the nicest thing he ever said was, ‘You’re not the ugliest girlfriend I ever had’.

See? I hope now you understand why I was so heartbroken all the time.

Thankfully, it wasn’t all shit. By the time I was 16, I became the cool depressed goth kid. And that landed me with the young Kurt Cobain-looking boyfriend. The one that all the girls wanted. It’s funny, because up to this day I still want to hold up my middle fingers at every girl who bullied me and shout “Fuck you, bitches, the hot guy thinks I’m hot!”.

In ideal world I should never have suffered what I suffered, or worst of all, thought it was my own fault. But this is not an ideal world and I’m making the best of it. I slowly started building my confidence again. I kissed a lot of boys. I kissed a lot of girls. Learnt that I’m not that ugly at all. Now I’m 22 and do nude life modelling to make extra cash. And sure, I still get my heartbroken days, when my lumps and bumps seem too lumpy and bumpy and my toenails just seem too small, but at least now I have the resilience to say ‘fuck it all’, put a pair of heels on and maybe flash somebody at the pub.

Posted on by taithannah 2

“You might not look like Cheryl Cole, but neither does she.”

Got a nice wee mention from Ivory Smoke who saw one of our stickers in a pub toilet.

Posted on by taithannah 0

Cake!

A while ago we made some fairy cakes that accidentally looked like breasts, so we renamed them Nipple Delights. We made some more last night and they’re delicious so we thought we’d share the recipe with you. They’re wee chocolate sponges with peanut butter icing and jam centres and Maltesers on the top.

    Ingredients

Cake
100g caster sugar
100g soft butter
2 beaten eggs
80g self-raising flour
20g cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1tsp of vanilla essence

Icing
25g soft butter
50g peanut butter
60g icing sugar
1tbsp of milk

jam
Maltesers

Method

1. Set the oven to 180C. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they’re fluffy. It’s quicker if you use an electric beater but a wooden spoon works just as well!

2. Add beaten eggs gradually, mixing as you go.

3. Mix the flour and cocoa powder together. Sieve half of it into the wet ingredients and fold in. Add the other half and do the same, mixing until smooth. Add the salt and vanilla essence and mix again.

4. Divide the mix evenly(ish!) into 12 fairy cake cases and bake for 18-20 minutes in the middle of the oven. The cakes are ready when a knife comes out clean and the tops spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

5. While you’re waiting for the cakes, beat together the butter and peanut butter until smooth. Sieve in the icing sugar and mix until it’s absorbed. Add the milk and beat until smooth.

6. When the cakes are completely cool, use a sharp knife to remove a small piece from the middle. Insert the knife at an angle and cut round in a circle so the piece you remove looks like a wee cone. Spoon a wee bit of jam into the hole (you only need a very wee bit, like half a teaspoon or less) and pop the sponge-cone back on top of it.

7. Ice over the top of the cakes with the peanut butter icing and add half a Malteser to the top.

8. Eat them!

Send us some pictures if you make your own!

Posted on by taithannah 0

Project Naked promo video

We made a wee Project Naked video.

Project Naked from Project Naked on Vimeo.

Music is Celebrity Skin by Hole.

Posted on by taithannah 2

“Somewhere in the past 10 years, I lost my body, but I’m determined to feel comfortable in my own skin again, and I really believe that I will.”

I grew up in a naked house. My Mum, Joyce, was happiest walking around our small flat with no clothes on – or, when my sisters and I would complain that she was ‘embarrassing us’ with her nakedness – a very thin, silk dressing gown that she would rarely bother to fasten. As I got a bit older, I realised that in fact, I too enjoyed that certain feeling of freedom that only seems to come from being completely naked. I used to sit naked with my mum on the seat by the bay window in our flat which looked out onto the street when the moon was high and the streets were quiet. We would listen to Eddie Reader, and my Mum would sometimes talk to me about how my body would change one day.
We talked a lot about puberty and relationships, I think more than most girls my age did with their mothers. At the time I couldn’t have told you why we spoke so often about such things, and I don’t think my mum could have either. I think I understand it now. My mum died when I was 13 years old.

To state the obvious, my life changed a lot after she died. I had to move into a new house with a new woman to look after me. The naked days were over, and I went through puberty and my teenage years without Joyce by my side, reminding me that everything I was experiencing was just what we had talked about when I was younger – nothing unexpected, nothing to be afraid of. I spent my teenage years full of angst about my body – it was fine, even beautiful by conventional standards at times, but I was obsessed with my appearance and terrified of judgement from others.
Today, I am much less concerned with how I look, but my body and i don’t have the same relationship that we once did. This disconnection between me and my body is manifested most strongly where sex and intimacy are concerned. I haven’t had very many sexual relationships, but those I have had have not been particularly pleasurable for me. I can’t help feeling that there’s something I’m missing in sex – when other people talk about the joy they have experienced through sexual experiences I feel jealous because for me, sex was always mostly about trying to enjoy myself with a man, failing, and then enduring sex for the sake of intimacy rather than it being something I really wanted (DON’T WORRY – I REALISE HOW MESSED UP THIS WAS!)

I have learned a lot about consent in the past couple of years, and realised that having sex when I didn’t feel like it for such a long time (most of a 3 year relationship) has left me feeling quite damaged, and definitely out of sync with my body and my desires. The first sexual experience I had with a man where we talked about what we wanted from sex together and maintained that communication the entire time we were being physically intimate was earlier this year, and it was incredible. We were only together for a brief period, but meeting him was really important because it has assured me that I can relate to sex in a positive way.

Somewhere in the past 10 years, I lost my body, but I’m determined to feel comfortable in my own skin again, and I really believe that I will.
Tonight, I sat by the window in my room, completely naked, watching the moon and listening to Eddie Reader.

by an anonymous woman

Posted on by taithannah 2