Guest Post by Luna (aka Maripat Oberg)
My beautiful, gifted artist friend Denise Mihalik* has always intrigued me with her self-portrait photos. She inspires me on so many levels, but what touches my spirit most is the honesty she seems to capture with her camera's eye. She has courage and confidence when she takes those pictures of herself. She is so beautiful, and she finds beauty where ever on her body she focuses the lens.
For someone who has always struggled with body image this has seemed like something impossible, something that I could never do. But, I did something really big one day not so long ago...I took a picture of my left breast, my naked left breast. Sweet Goddess!! I felt a bit awkward and somewhat naughty lying naked across my bed taking the picture, upstairs in my bedroom while Tom {Luna's husband} was away from home.
Not knowing how to work the timer on the digital camera, it was hard to get the angle right and I nearly gave up. The first pics I snapped looked ugly to me. But as I took a few more, I got more relaxed and comfortable with snapping photos.
Later when I'd deleted the totally out of focus pictures taken by a hand so shaky from fear of what the camera would show, or when the camera slipped and I got anywhere and anything but my breast, I uploaded the half dozen pics to the computer to decide if any were any "good ones" and to actually look at myself through that camera's lens and not just through my own eyes.
What I discovered was that there was one shot that I thought looked "okay". Actually after I looked at it, and tried to look at it again as it was/is and not through the filter of distorted body image and what I think a perfect breast should look like. I realized that like many other women I had convinced myself that if I was looking for beauty or "sexy" I should see the mythical firm perky breast of a a 20-something woman, a C cup with pert nipples; not the DD sagging breast of an overweight, 54 year old woman who nursed two babies.
When I pushed aside the unrealistic image of perfect beauty, and opened my eyes to see what the lens saw, what I saw was the beauty in my imperfection. There is beauty in this breast of mine. I'd never REALLY looked at my breast honestly before. It is beautiful, rounded, soft, nurturing, womanly, inviting.
I won't be sharing the picture publicly "as is" but I know that there will be some "my left breast" art using this image sometime in the future. It was an incredible journey that afternoon. I felt as if I had come through some kind of portal into the sunlight for the first time after having hid in the shadows from myself for too long. Now I wait with anticipation......where to from here....?
© 2006 Luna/a.k.a. Maripat Oberg. Thank you for sharing this, beautiful Luna!
*Editor's note: Check out our Square-Peg-People Interview with Denise Mihalik interview, as well as our interview with Luna - aka Maripat Oberg.
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