(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 to feel worthy of feeling beautiful, a dream that being authentically you was looked down upon but looking like a rendition of somebody else was golden. We are at last re-learning how to see ourselves and others as beautiful without altering, removing or changing the pixels of our precious skin or waistlines or without the need of risky surgeries. We are learning to love the skin we are in.

I have been photographing women since 1997. The most common topic during a photo shoot is talking about what we don't like about ourselves. "Oh Jade you can just remove this pimple when you edit my photos" or "Don't light me so that you see my cellulite" or "You can smooth out my rolls with photoshop, right?" I can't help but wonder what the world would be like if we instead said with sweet and tender love and sincerity, "Please make sure you light my wrinkles so that you can really see them, I earned these beauties" or "Focus on my pores, they are a precious part of me" or "You better get a good shot of my varicose veins, they are my inheritance from my gorgeous and phenomenal grandmother."

(Beautiful Rasheka posing for my Wise Women Over 50)

Words are powerful. May we use them with love. Towards ourselves and towards one another. Magic happens when we love ourselves, when we honor every single molecule of our being. Trust me on this one. Next time you see a photo of yourself, hopefully one where you can see something irreplaceably beautiful and unique, you can begin your practice of loving yourself, just as you are in this moment. Our life will leave us before we know it, so why don't we in-joy our preciousness right now.

(Beautiful Jamie posing for my Wise Women Over 50)