Sorry (I'm Not Sorry)

Abstract

Scrolling through social media I see models living a lavish dream life and wish it could be me but I don't have the body for that outfit, sweetheart. Rather than accept this I turned to photography as a way to insert myself into the fantasies I saw coming to life on my news feed, billboards, and print ads. There is so much that control that I have over how my body is perceived through the lens. I've spent literal years learning what angles make my face look the slimmest, how not to let my arms hang naturally so the fat isn't pushed to the front. However, now I'm employing saturated colored light, camera angles, and set materiality to allow my body to be my body without many changes. Learning to glorify what I've been born with rather than finding ways to disguise or cheat it. Appropriating the narratives of my everyday scroll into my work aims to normalize my body in those spheres. By forcing my non-normative body into these familiar and highly consumed and accepted images as the central focus, I'm asking the viewer and myself to question who is and isn't allowed to be seen.