Happy birthday

So, as well as being Valentine’s Day and the One Billion Rising day of action, today is Project Naked’s first birthday. A year ago, we decided to start this project as a way to hear the real stories of women’s relationships with their bodies, and that Project Naked is still going today is thanks to the dozens of women who’ve been generous enough to share their personal stories with us and with the world.

We wanted to give voice to how women really feel about their bodies without it being filtered through a media which – whatever “love yourself” rhetoric it uses – degrades and demeans women and tries to create a negative narrative surrounding body image. The responses we’ve had have been overwhelming and humbling, and we feel extremely privileged to have shared women’s stories of joy and of struggle. Every woman who contacts us has a different story to tell about how their life, their experiences, and the society they live in has shaped the way they feel. It still feels like an absolute honour every time a woman gets in touch with us to share her story, and we hope that reading them has inspired you; angered you; comforted you about the lives we live as women.

This past year has been amazing and we hope it will only get bigger and better in the future. Every woman and every body has a story to tell; you might think yours doesn’t matter but they all do, and we want to hear them. If you like this project, please share it with your friends, tweet about it, and consider submitting your story. Project Naked exists and is built through the words of the women who contribute, and we publish every story we receive. Check out Where do I start?! for some ideas and get in touch at projectnaked@gmail.com.

And once again the most enormous thank you to everyone who has contributed or shared the blog in the past year. We’ll leave you with this awesome map of all the countries where people have viewed Project Naked since it began.

World map

Posted on by taithannah 1

“I now refuse to diet. I am a fat woman. I weigh 315lb and am 5ft 7in. Ask me my weight, I’ll tell you. I love myself the way I am and have no desire to lose weight. There is no thin woman trapped inside of me; I am chunky to the core.”

I remember the first time I realised that something was “wrong” with me. I was three and at preschool and one of the boys called me fatty fatty boomsticks. I was plump but not huge.

By the time I started school, I was viewing myself as a second class citizen because of my weight and school did not help this. I was teased unmercifully and my weight just kept increasing. I started to see my body weight as the key problem in my life. If I could just fix it, everything would be better. At 9 I stopped eating anything but tomato and cucumber for six weeks. I didn’t lose much and it didn’t stop the teasing.

By high school, I was miserable in my own skin and suicidal. I weighed about 82kg (180lb) and 5ft 2in. The doctor put me on a diet but because I had been starving myself, I actually gained 5kg (11lb). He accused me of cheating. People were horrible to me. The bullying got so bad that, years later, a number of people told me that when we were in high school they used to be glad they simply weren’t me.

At 15, my blood pressure became dangerously elevated and I was told to diet or die. I lost 40kg (88lb) through sheer persistence and hard work. For the first time I actually liked myself but I realised that how you feel about yourself is in your head not a function of fat on your behind. They weight came back, as it always did and forever will but my confidence stayed higher than it was before.

The next problem was that my weight was affecting my fertility. I weighed about 300lb at the time. I tried for eight years to get pregnant but no dice. I knew I needed to lose more weight than I could on my own so I had a lap-banding. It was a devil’s bargain. I was miserable, in pain and vomiting but with extreme exercise, the weight just fell off. I lost 70kg (154lb) in seven months. My ego got huge and I did not like the person I had become. I later realised the ego was a covering the fact I was deep down unhappy. I could not relax or enjoy being thin because if I did the weight might come back. Fortunately I got pregnant but regained nearly half the weight during the pregnancy.

As my son grew, so did my weight. The lap-band only slowed the regain and there was so much pressure to lose weight that I kept trying, losing and regaining, developing increasingly disordered eating habits and severe arthritis in my knees from pushing myself to exercise so hard. I was starting to see that this was destructive for me and truthfully, I felt like I was a traitor to myself each time I celebrated a loss.

In my thirties, I decided to embrace my weight. I started to use the word fat for myself and be really upfront about my size. I decided to be kinder to myself and stop believing the things society tells me I should think about myself. I was still dieting though.

The final straw came when I was about 37. It is very hard to find a doctor that supports my position of self-governance regarding my weight. My GP at the time blackmailed me into having my lap-band tightened (against the surgeon’s better judgement), so tight that I could only take liquids. My liver function started to decline as a result. This is where I called a halt. I realised this pressure was no longer about making me healthier but about making me try to conform to societal ideas of beauty. Over my life time I have lost about 510lb and regained it. If dieting was going to work long term, after 25 years, it would have done so.

I now refuse to diet. I am a fat woman. I weigh 315lb and am 5ft 7in. Ask me my weight, I’ll tell you. I love myself the way I am and have no desire to lose weight. There is no thin woman trapped inside of me; I am chunky to the core. I do not diet but instead treat my body with dignity by giving it healthy food and as much exercise as my disabilities allow. I dress boldly, shave my head and am covered in tattoos. People stare; I stare right back. It is a struggle to get doctors to respect my wish regarding my own body but I believe it is a basic human right to control what happens to my own body and because I love myself, I persist in the fight.

The thing I learnt through all this, is that your self-esteem is not about your body but your mind and your thinking. Constantly worrying about your weight is a pretty depressing way to live and allowing others to influence how you think about yourself is effectively turning over your power to them. Change your mind.

Posted on by taithannah 0

“Just because I often look at my reflection though doesn’t mean I like what I see.”

Feels quite strange to sit down and type up how I feel about my body. I think it is on the whole it being seen as narcissistic or vain to talk about one’s appearance.

I can’t really remember how I felt about myself as a child so any issues I do have is clearly something that came later in life. I do remember however being told off for looking at myself in the mirror, something (even as a 23-year-old women) my mum still calls me on. She has often commented that I have an ‘obsession with my appearance’. I always seemed to think it was natural to know what you looked like at any point of the day.

Just because I often look at my reflection though doesn’t mean I like what I see. I often change my hair colour as it’s the only thing about myself I can change instantly. I wear make-up nearly every day to cover up what I don’t like. I think I have more body hair than what’s normal for a woman but it can be removed instantly or covered up. What I can’t change instantly or cover up is my weight or my in-step.

I’ve always been a bit heavier than the other women around me. But when you have near enough bow-legs exercising causes me a fair bit of pain and it’s getting worse the more weight I pile on.

Losing weight though scares me. I’m scared that if I lost weight and had a lot of men suddenly interested in me that the only thing they wanted was my body and not that I’m a good person to be around.

I start physio soon for my legs; hopefully the pain becomes less and I can exercise more and maybe get the body I want.

Posted on by taithannah 0

“I can finally proclaim: I am entirely happy with my body”

*Trigger warning for disordered eating*

It was at 17 that I finally realised I had been abusing my body. I was in my Geography class in sixth form, when suddenly I became very dizzy, grew very pale and felt incredibly nauseous. But there was nothing in my stomach for me to actually throw up.

Like any normal teenage girl, I was unhappy with my appearance and had been most of high school. I liked very little about myself. Despite being reasonably skinny, I never had washboard abs – a fact that I hated. At 5”10 I was freakishly tall, towering over most of my classmates, including the boys. I had massive feet, and despised my toes so I could never wear sandals. My skin would break out in spots that I couldn’t cover up with makeup. My boobs were about the size of ping-pong balls. My teeth were constantly in one brace or another. In fact, the only part of myself that I liked was my ginger hair, despite this being the thing I was most tormented about by my peers. I felt weirdly protective of my ginger hair; it was something I was never ashamed of.

However, it wasn’t until sixth form that I really started to criticise myself. One day I stepped onto my scales and the figure hit 9st 3lbs. I was mortified. I had spent most of my high school life floating about the 8st 7lbs mark, and yet somehow I had eaten enough food to put me over 9st. I tried to convince myself that was ok, that for my height 9st 3lbs was actually pretty good. I continued with my day-to-day life. But I started weighing myself more and more. Every week I would recalculate my BMI, to make sure I didn’t fall any nearer to the ‘normal weight’ section of the scale. I fooled myself into thinking I was naturally really skinny, so having a BMI of 18 (technically underweight) was healthy.

For me, it wasn’t a conscious decision to stop eating. I never stopped eating altogether; I had at least one meal a day. But I would often miss out breakfast, convincing myself I didn’t have enough time to eat on a morning, nor to prepare myself lunch. I’d manage, I’d be late for class otherwise. I would grab an apple and that would be my lunch. My evening meal would be enough at the end of the day.

I realise now that I was essentially starving myself, but at the time I didn’t see it as that. I never once thought “I’m fat” or “I need to lose weight”, at least not directly anyway. Yet at the back of my mind I had somehow convinced myself that I should be eating less food; it was definitely a type of anorexia.

My wake-up call moment was the low-point I hit in the middle of class. I had to leave the room, get some fresh air and I forced down a sandwich. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that simple ham sandwich did for me that day. From then on I swore that I’d never go down that road again, and from then on I had grown to love my body more and more.

Now, in my third year at university, I can finally proclaim: I am entirely happy with my body. Sure, I still have down days. But I now eat properly, exercise every now and again (more to keep myself fit than for appearance) and sometimes I even leave the house without makeup on, without having done my hair, but with all my confidence intact. I’m a happy 10st 3lb (with a healthy BMI of 20.5!) and I’ve never felt better.

I was lucky. I never suffered severely and caught my eating disorder before it turned into anything serious. I got myself through it. My appearance hasn’t really changed too much since I was 17, but my attitude towards myself certainly has. I’m much more comfortable in my own skin now, finally, and that has made me into a much more confident individual today.

Posted on by taithannah 0

“I want to leave the house in the morning with nothing on my face but a smile and still feel as confident as if I had spent that 45mins on make-up when I was 15.”

I have been trying to think of how I feel about my naked body and I can come up with nothing new or interesting. I haven’t always had body confidence but this isn’t something I struggle with. But there is one part of my body I still can’t bring myself to strip off completely – my face.

At 12 years old my friend and I were absolutely fascinated with our French teacher. She was gorgeous and had perfected the art of liquid liner with a lash like flick to accentuate her eyes. She said it just took a steady hand, and after years of practice this is something I have become expert at. I am now something of an amateur make-up artist. I know the best ways to apply mascara, tricks with illuminator, and the smokey eye look. All this knowledge I have acquired by wearing make-up every day since I first tried to copy my French teacher with the only exceptions being bed-ridden sick days. But it has only been recently that I have discovered an art it will take another few years to perfect – the art of feeling good bare-faced.

Each morning I had a routine; shower, shave, wash hair, dry hair, straighten hair, get dressed, clean skin, put on foundation, put on powder, put on blush, apply eye-shadow, mascara, pencil eye-liner, liquid eye-liner, apply more mascara. I used to envy those who could get away with minimal make-up and still look flawless (although now I suspect they were actually wearing even more make-up – I didn’t much like wearing glasses). I would try to just put on my eye make-up, trying to convince myself I looked ok without foundation. But then the light would change and I saw the massive dark circles under my eyes and caved in. I once went to a counter at Boots and asked one of the assistants what I could do about those dark circles (at the age of 20). The woman just looked at me and told me there was nothing I could do about them, I had them because the skin under your eyes is thinner than the rest of your face – it is not some flaw of your complexion, it’s how your face is meant to look!

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I started to question why I thought I couldn’t leave the house without make-up on. What was I so scared of? So I gave it a try. I spent the day trying to fend off comments about how “tired” I was looking. So, of course, I shovelled the stuff back on the next day. The sad fact is your night’s sleep isn’t all that is questioned; women who choose to go bare-faced have their sexuality questioned – she must be a prude or a lesbian. We are led to believe that our ability to form relationships with men will be hindered because they won’t find us attractive. Female MPs feel they can’t be accepted within their profession until they look more “feminine” and a woman’s mental health is even questioned when her appearance starts to slip. It isn’t just a “pressure” that we experience when we get ready in the morning, it is a lack of reasonable alternatives.

Some women claim that make-up can make them feel empowered but where does this empowerment come from? Empowerment from a successful attempt at trying to conform to a narrow and impossible beauty ideal is not empowerment. I want to leave the house in the morning with nothing on my face but a smile and still feel as confident as if I had spent that 45mins on make-up when I was 15. And, slowly but surely, bit by bit, I am. I am starting to believe I am beautiful in the nude.

by fatalfemmenism

Posted on by taithannah 0

“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

Fotoshop by Adobe

We didn’t make this video we just think it’s hilarious!

Posted on by taithannah Video 0

“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