I Ate McDonalds Before My Shoot

Erin Marie a.k.a. Glam Goddess has taken over our blog yet again! Check out below to see what she has to say about her most recent session!
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“Are you a part of our amazing, private, women only group on Facebook? If you’re not, you should be. If you are, then you are familiar with the few contests that LRP has been having. These contests usually involve submitting a photo of a piece of lingerie that you would wear for your boudoir experience and a few words about why you want your own boudoir experience. Man, not only do you ladies deliver with some great lingerie pieces but wow do you really open up on an emotional and raw level. As women, how often do we feel like we are all alone in the struggles of body image, self worth, eating disorders, relationships, physical or emotional abuse, ect.? These struggles can be so isolating. But we all need to know that we are not alone. Each and every one of your stories has inspired me. You are all lady warriors and there is so much power in your stories. You’ve inspired me to become more at peace with my story and given me the strength to speak freely about my own. More importantly, you all have reminded me how much I love the sisterhood that women share.

Sad truth: when I was pregnant and found out I was having a daughter, I cried. I cried because I was scared for her. I was scared because I wasn’t sure I would be able to be a strong enough woman for her to look up to. I was scared because I knew some of the battles she would face and I knew the pain associated with those battles. Personally, like so many other women, I have struggled with accepting my body. I often extreme dieted and struggled with eating disorders. I would spend hours in front of a mirror picking myself apart and finding ways to cover up a  body that I thought was imperfect. When I was in high school, I would skip school and events because I felt like I looked too fat. I felt unworthy. It consumed me. Slowly, I matured out of my negative habits and began recognizing my worth thanks to the amazing man who is now my husband, the support of my loving family and friends, and being able to work with and meet  so many inspiring, strong women through my makeup artistry business .  However, years of telling yourself that you are imperfect does significant damage on your confidence. A LOT of damage control needed to be done and is still being done.

A few weeks before we were scheduled to leave for NYC, I was sitting on the couch with my daughter and a story came on the news about how they polled multiple high schools and discovered that 87% of young girls dislike something about their body. I repeat, EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT! For those of you who don’t want to do the math, that means only 13% of young women wake up in the morning happy with themselves. WHAT THE WHAT?! Who in the world is telling these girls that they aren’t good enough?! Oh yeah…we are. We are sabotaging ourselves as women by believing that who we are is imperfect and it’s reflected onto our daughters, nieces, sisters, friends, ect. In that moment, I looked at my daughter and decided that the F word was officially banded from my house (the F word as in “fat” not the other F word, I mean c’mon guys, I’m not a complete animal). I could not live with myself knowing that I passed the pain of my own insecurities on to my daughter. I want my daughter to witness me embracing my body, not shaming it. I want her to see me eating salads because it’s healthy for my body not for sake of dieting to look skinnier. I’ll admit it. I had considered  extreme dieting so my thighs wouldn’t have to parade around in all of their giggly glory through NYC. But fuck that (told ya that word is too hard to quit). I was not going to starve myself for the sake of looking skinnier in photos so that other people would find them more pleasing. It suddenly became way more important to me that my daughter see these photos someday and say “Wow, my mom looks so confident” than me embracing unhealthy habits in order to feel “perfect”. So I didn’t diet. As a matter of fact, on our drive down to the city, approximately 2 hours before shooting these images, we all stuffed our faces with McDonalds without one single regret.

….and two bonus images from our secret shoot for submission to a cover contest for Philosophie Boudoir Magazine, where we were voted Top 5 for the shot with the leather jacket!