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self portrait tuesday with explanation

This months spt topic is described below

February Challenge “all of me”

“all of me” embrace your mistakes, love the ugly bits.
I want this to be a challenging month – we have had it easy over christmas and the holidays but now it is time to look deep inside ourselves and embrace and face our whole selves. I don’t want to see any perfect images, any pretty studio like images, no perfect hair or makeup, get rid of the masks you use to face the world.
I was inspired for this challenge by reading a recent Keri Smith post.

“For my whole life I have had difficulty looking at photos of myself. It was as if that person could never be enough for me, I did not want to see any of my flaws (or the things I percieved as imperfect).”

“How to love that image flaws and all. Yeah it looks like I have a double chin and a huge nose, and I don’t know why I ever thought that skirt looked good on me. fuck it. that is all of me. Yes I can love me when the situation is favourable and flattering, and everything is just so, but can I love me when things are messy?” Keri Smith from Wish jar journal
Technical tips:

  • use old photos of yourself that you hate but could never throw away – that dreadful high school photo with braces and a bad perm and horrible acne.
  • take new photos – showing those bits you always try to hide – the hairy nostrels, the stretch marks, the cracked feet, the greasy hair, the saggy bits.
  • take photos of yourself on a bad day, don’t smile, be in a mad mood, look grim, look angry, look sad, cry and be fragile – embrace your emotions as part of your self.
  • set up something if you like – sit in a pile of dirty laundry, be surrounded by clutter and mess, show the stains on the walls and the crumpled sheets – don’t clean up.
  • dress up in your worst outfit – that too tight, lime green midriff top that you bought in a rash moment hoping to lose weight, those old, cut off faded jeans with a hole in the arse and showing too much celulite covered thigh that you always wear when cleaning the house.
  • be free to show the dark side, the ugly side, the raw and dirty and clumsy side, the grim the grimy and saggy side.