Mel and Andrea, together since the seventies

I have been learning a lot lately. It's true that I grew up in a small Mexican village accessible to the rest of the world only by boat for much of my childhood and although I have been living in the big city of Tucson Arizona for the last 8 years,... Read More

When I put out a call via social media that I was looking for brave Toronto-based women willing to tell them body stories for this powerful project, Meri was the first person to raise her hand and book her portrait session.

It was the first year of being a teenager and going to middle school. When I was in middle school you had to wear a gym strip, which was a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for gym class that everyone had to wear.

I wasn't always confident in my body image. My body works differently than an able body. I have a mild form of cerebral palsy and use a walker.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the “Go Confidently” Plastic Surgery billboard ads that suddenly popped up all over the highway and near highway entrances around the Grand Rapids, Michigan area? So I couldn't help but make my own billboard images!

(All Photos of Amelie by Saartje van Lommelen)

Meet Beautiful Amelie. Amelie is from Haasrode, Belgium. Amelie is 21 years old and her precious daughter Anisia is 21 months old.

Amelie's Story:

I was 18 years when I met my ex. We were 3 months together when he said he wanted children. First I said no because we really... Read More

Coming into the photography studio I felt nervous about exposing myself, putting my body out for public scrutiny flaws and all. For me though, it wasn’t just about baring my soft, stretched post-partum body, but more about exposing my body’s failures and inadequacies.

All Photographs of The Lovely Reina by Jade Beall

Reina:
Starting to write…hmm. now that I have some time at 11:30pm I don’t have anything to say. What have I been doing the last year? Avoiding a lot that’s for damn sure. The last year has been intense. I started dating a man…that I now live with. I’m still... Read More

My body and me travelled through rough times, including ups and downs. When I was a child I suffered from backpain. I felt trapped in my body. It didn't let me do what I wanted to. Still it is a everyday battle. It was the base of my low selfesteem.

(More Photos Below)

I met Loren through her beautiful mother Chris. I met Chris when she came to receive a massage from me because I had been massaging her beautiful mother, Nora. Loren was still in high school when she started receiving body work from me. I had very little experience working on teenagers and I was so... Read More

Dear Varicose Veins,

I love you. It's true that I feared you my entire childhood as I watched my grandmother and my mother and my sister despise you and hide you. I carefully watched the powerful women who raised me talk badly about you and wither away from their birthright of beauty, all because of you. You made me mad!... Read More

I have really been inJOYing photographing the beautiful Wise Women volunteering their exquisiteness over the last few months for my new project. The shoots are joyous and easy, the women who show up are confidant and at ease with their irreplaceable beauty and their divine wisdom. Some are still working on loving themselves in entirety and yet are fully aware... Read More

"I would like to share our story how my daughter with Down's Syndrome inspired me to overcome feeling insecure about my body," Julia M started.

I recently photographed this beautiful woman pregnant with her second child. I could tell she was a little nervous when she walked into my studio, just like most of the women who walk into my space. I can only imagine what women must be thinking when they first meet me, I think probably something like, "Is she going to make... Read More

"I had had no idea what a flesh-eating disease was before my injury." Brandy began to explain.

(Beautiful Gerry, posing for my Wise Women Over 50)

It's really exciting: practically all of my favorite media platforms on the internet are sharing powerful stories about the harmful practice of altering skin and hair and bodies with photoshop. It's like we are finally waking up from a terrible dream, a dream where one had to be airbrushed... Read More

We live in a culture where the female form is glorified. Society constantly defines and then redefines its aesthetic value. Curves are appealing and then they’re not. Boyish figures are sexy, and then they’re not.

“I hated myself and home life as a teen, I tried so hard to fit in but I was different," Mandie said, and went on to explain:

“Body after baby!” “Celebrity bounces back two months after birth!” These are the headlines we read everyday in the media. It takes 9 months to grow a baby, it takes 9 months to lose it. Or so they say...

(photo by founder of ABBP Jade Beall)

When I was a little girl my two dreams were to be a ballerina and a cardiovascular surgeon, but Motherhood was nowhere to be found on that list. I ended up becoming a student and teacher of yoga: I have learned to move my body with grace and ease, and I share my... Read More

I have known Emyrald (on right) for years. She is my sister. I just recently met Kim, and I adore her. They are both yoga teachers, women of love and empowerment and sisterhood. They are beautiful and they too are still practicing/learning how to love themselves, un-photoshopped as most of us are practicing...

It's one thing to photograph other women, but to experience being on the other side of the lens was a journey for own self that I did not expect. At. All.

Sometimes I wish I was bigger and I would weigh a little more.

One year changed my life forever, filled with new truths, pain, sorry, joy, motherhood, loss, confusion, doctors, and still she sees the light beyond.

When I was 21, I got a tattoo on my tummy. But Ten years and four children later, it was totally stretched out and broken.

"A register of transformations and marks of motherhood, in the body and in the soul"

This project started in Brazil, a country with one of the world's highest rates of cesarean deliveries: up to 80 to 90 percent of women in private hospitals in the country give birth via cesarean section. In some hospitals that number climbs to... Read More

At 70, Carol is one of my inspirations! I have been practicing Ashtanga Yoga for some time now. If you know anything about Ashtanga Yoga you know that it is one of the most physically intense practices of Yoga in the whole Universe and you MUST be dedicated to your practice. That is to say, you must... Read More

When Stacy and her husband found out baby number three was actually going to be twin babies three and four, they prepared. They bought two car seats, doubled the amount of swaddles and outfits they had, explored using clothe diapers, would a car seat + stroller combo be appropriate, and more! But one thing was clear: Stacy would breastfeed... Read More