When I was over weight I would OFTEN cut out bodies of models in magazines and put my head on them. It was so fascinating to see what it could be like to have that “perfect” body.
The three bodies below where taken from a magazine story, around the year 2001, about different body types. I made these magnets, then, of my head sewn on three of the different women’s bodies. This was when I was researching gastric bypass surgery. I normally plastered my head all over the VERY thin models shown in magazines.
I think that I choose the three below at the time because I wanted to compare and contrast. Which one of these women did I want to be? Did it really matter? How would people treat me? I would still be MYSELF in any of these bodies … right?
Years later, Dove launched the ad “campaign for real beauty”. The new Dove advertisements used all “real women”. (.. different shapes, heights, sizes, race, etc). This was years after I had lost 96 pounds… so at that point I was thin. I remember thinking that it was a definite breaking point to see such an ad in a magazine. Showing everyone that was gaga for the, at the time, norms of the fashion industry and the thought of what a woman as a model in the media should look like was amazing to see.
M Y || H E A D || O N || O T H E R || W O M E N ‘ S || B O D I E S
My biggest fear prior to surgery was that once I made such a drastic change to my “image” that I would lose who I really was. I never wanted to say goodbye to my true self. And it turned out that I didn’t have to! :)
RELIEF.
