(Cover Idea #5)

I received an email today from a beautiful woman voicing concern about the image she thought I might be using as my 'cover' image for my book The Bodies Of Mothers. The image she thought I was going to use is Cover Idea #3 in this list of images with the tattoos and gorgeous stripes from... Read More

(All photographs and story by N'tima Preusser)

Before I became pregnant, someone told me, "don't have a baby, babies ruin your body."

It has been over a year since Anabel began her life. This time last year she was a microscopic speck in my stomach, and we were announcing our pregnancy. Between then and now, I... Read More

(Cover of A Beautiful Body Project's The Bodies Of Mothers Due out Mid April 2014)

Happy Happy last day of 2013, Beautiful People. I am SO eternally grateful for this EPIC year of 2013. Since July, this project has grown far and wide and surpassed all of my wildest dreams because of YOU.... Read More

In my line of work I meet a lot of women and spend quite a good deal of time with them, often hoping for meaningful conversation or a little glimpse into who they truly are. I love to observe the little parts of them that make them their own person, unique pieces of their character that may only... Read More

Of course I was nervous. I stopped at a coffee shop right around the corner from the studio. The intensity I felt couldn't have had me talking any faster to the barista. I finally arrived. I walked into the room and felt like I had known her my whole life. The anxiety began to leave my body... Read More

There must have been an age at which I went from a child’s effortless acceptance of her body into an adolescent girl’s insecurity and awkwardness. There must have been an age at which I went from loving and accepting my female friends without a thought to comparing myself unfavorably to them, and in so doing, judging... Read More

(All photos and text by Liora K)

I am an unabashed sex-positive feminist. I fight hard for a woman’s right to choose, for easy access to birth control, and for comprehensive sex education. I work hard to educate about the very real ramifications of slut shaming, loving your body, and the benefits of boudoir photography... Read More

Please welcome Natasha Komoda, founder of Femmeography, who is now a Seattle-based Regional Photographer for A Beautiful Body Project for any women in the Seattle area who would like truthful photoshoots without digital augmentation. Read on to learn what inspires Natasha & why we selected her!

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two Fridays ago, on December 6th of the lovely year of 2013, I had an experience that profoundly changed how I think about myself for the better. It all happened at my crazy and heartfelt TEDx Talk about A Beautiful Body Project in front of over 500 people here in Tucson! (All photos in this post are by the talented Ali Megan... Read More

For women and girls around the world, and men too, I absolutely spoke my truth at the Tucson TEDx Talk about A Beautiful Body Project, body image, mass media, and the inspiring movement for body positivity that is spreading around the globe. If you had been sitting in the audience, I think you would have been proud,... Read More

After surviving breast cancer, I decided to celebrate my body by modeling for a life drawing class. The following poem is one I wrote about that experience.

It wasn't my original intention to photograph hundreds of breastfeeding women. But when you have brave and bare women with babies or toddlers who breastfeed, the children naturally, innocently and beautifully begin to, gasp! Breastfeed! So as our dear friend serendipity would have it, I found myself photographing those special connections more and more frequently, even though my initial passion... Read More

I hadn’t planned on becoming a model. At fifteen I was painfully shy with a mouthful of braces and disheveled hair. I’d just had a growth spurt and was adjusting to the sudden length of my body.

My bulimia was a more than just a habit. It was the anesthetic for the bricks and stones life hurled at me. It was a safeguard for when I felt out of control, unliked by peers, unworthy of love and redemption.

(Photo of the author Raven aka Sam)

Life is an odyssey--a meandering adventure fraught with change, with good fortune and disaster, with experiences that lead to fulfillment, wisdom, and sometimes bitterness. Within the larger journey are ten thousand smaller ones. My most recent mini-odyssey, the one that ended with the creation of this blog, started with... Read More

I was raised by a bunch of beautiful women who loved being naked. They practiced yoga naked, they bathed naked together in the stream behind our palapa, they seemed to just always be naked, which, of course, they were not. Their nakedness, however, gave me enormous amounts of anxiety and stress as a child. You see, we lived in a very small,... Read More

Paula and I had no idea how much her story and her photos would touch people in the blog we shared back in July. Today it has 4K "likes" and 43,535 page views and dozens and dozens of positive and thankful comments. I just noticed the other day that Paula's Facebook profile photo now are the words... Read More

I cannot get the image of 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick out of my mind, the young girl who committed suicide after relentless on-line bullying. I imagine her in that abandoned concrete plant in Lakeland, Florida, making her way up to the top of a ledge, intent on ending her life. Did a breeze toss her brown hair? Was she sweating in... Read More

Feeling beautiful for me is a practice.

It's not like I wake up every single day singing songs of how beautiful I am to myself (though that would be pretty rad).

I mean, I have 30 years of undoing this chaotic tangle of self-loathing (I kind of remember being 4 years old hating my big knobby feet, my limp hair and the... Read More

My sun sign is Cancer and sometimes I have to bribe myself out of my house with promises of smoothies and iced Americanos. I know so many beautiful people and yet I have few close friends. This woman is one of my closest friends. I introduce to you, lovers of life who visit this blog, my beloved sister-friend Theresa. Mother of... Read More

I just read a new novel, Freud’s Mistress, by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman. The story is based on speculation that has intrigued historians and biographers for more than 70 years that Sigmund Freud had an affair with his wife’s brilliant and beautiful sister, Mina Bernays, who lived with the Freud family in Vienna for more than 40 years. Freud’s wife... Read More

It’s ugly, unmanageable, not versatile, too time consuming, course, dry…..Curly, Kinky, Coily, Natural Afro Hair: I am not My Hair…

MY PATH BACK TO NATURAL HAIR: I relaxed my hair at age 16; this is the name for chemically treating it to straighten out the natural curls and coils of an afro...

Industries are born on the backs of Women hating themselves.
It's an emotional slavery that milks these women, dollar by dollar,
Like chained dairy cows, Oozing vicious droplets of self-hate
That rot the roots of a woman's inner beauty...

Among my earliest memories is one of my mother’s body hugely pregnant with my twin brothers. I was three and a half, seated on the green bathroom rug with my favorite wooden blocks etched with farm animal shapes: a yellow cow, blue pig and red lamb. My mother had placed me there while she showered. I looked up... Read More

In November 2011, a woman in my community, Lucia Maya, called me a few weeks before I was due to give birth to see if I would photograph her young daughter who was undergoing chemotherapy. I was so honored to shoot Elizabeth Blue yet struggled to summon my tired and heavy pregnant body... Read More

I photographed a woman named Paula recently for A Beautiful Body Book Project and not one day had passed before I received this heart-wrenching email from her.

I asked
my
5 year old
daughter
Are you beautiful?

“You are, Mama!”

“Mom, you aren’t a size two, you aren’t light-skinned, and you’re beautiful. I won’t tell you that you have to do this (A Beautiful Body Project) if you feel you can’t, but I would love it if you did. Just promise me they’ll include your psoriasis. It’s... Read More

Once Upon A Time are words of initiation we learn at a very young age. The four words, which initiate us into the world of story, are among our first invitations to open our imaginations and let words and images carry us to faraway lands, imaginary spaces, to new landscapes of promise and potential. Through... Read More

Tiffany 45, Mother of One.

Tiffany’s Story: I tried thirteen times to become pregnant, only three was I blessed enough to say I am pregnant. Those three times I became pregnant I miscarried. Does it really matter how I became a mommie? Sure I underwent fertility treatments, taking the pills, giving myself shots, inserting hormones up my vagina, the ultra sounds, the... Read More

This body has dreamt many dreams… From the beginning it has been tickled, torn, pummeled, pleasured. As a young person it was used as a means in which to repent for my mothers sins, for every strait jacket that my ancestors were bound in, I too bound myself.. An agony... Read More

1:40 In the morning and this little girl and I Are up together while she dances out her Story to the rhythm of my heart. In this scared Shared space, where only I can keep her safe She tells me secrets only we can share. I’ll Carry her high, up under my heart,... Read More

A dear friend of mine who has had two children and points with her child to her c-section lines!

Three Years ago today, my son’s grandmother slipped into spirit world after a long battle with breast cancer. I never knew Carol. She became what the Universe is made of before her son and I met, before her grandson was born. I have heard hundreds of stories from my beloved Alok about... Read More

She stood barefoot with a fresh pedicure showing blood-red toenails on the white paper backdrop in my downtown, air-conditioned Tucson studio. She lifted her loose blouse over her head with shaky hands, tears welling in her honey colored eyes. She was petrified. Not only had she never shown a stranger her most vulnerable secrets that her clothing effortlessly hides,... Read More