jillianpowersphoto:I Woke Up Like This 009 By: Jillian PowersClick Here to See More***************
jillianpowersphoto: I Woke Up Like This 009 By: Jillian PowersClick Here to See More*************************TRIGGER WARNING*************************** This interview contains in depth conversation on the effects rape has on someone’s self-esteem. I’ve always hated my body, as much as this project may convince you otherwise…I’m not very nice to myself…but I’m trying. I’ve always felt this innate need to help others. To keep them from feeling the way that I do. I rationalize it for others, but not for myself. This is something I’ve only recently discovered, thanks to this project. I need to set an example for my audience, my girls, my friends. I want to be someone people take inspiration from, not the body shaming person I have been to myself. Aliya has always been my inspiration for how to be this person. She consistently shows confidence that I’m baffled by. Given her past, which she’ll outline below…she works so hard to be happy in her skin. You’d never be able to tell though, especially not in these images. I love you girl, you’re one of my best friends and my inspiration. Always.-Jillian How would you rate your self-esteem? I would say it depends on the day. Like, sometimes I feel like a nine and sometimes I feel like a two.What factors into that rating? My period has a lot to do with it. Whenever I’m upset, or feel like my life isn’t going well, I start thinking about how gross my body is. It’s connected to anything that goes wrong in my life. I think that it occurs for most women that when you are upset or things aren’t going well in your life you also go to a place of low self-esteem because our self-esteem and our self-worth is so tied up in how we look. I think it may be worse for me than it is for other women… Why? I think because the biggest problem I’ve had with my body would be…um..after being like sexually assaulted at any age…and I don’t like the word sexually assaulted…like when you’re raped…I feel like your body becomes this instrument of torture against yourself. I think no matter how you look, no matter what you felt before, now your body is this thing that’s evil and ugly and mean. It’s not yours, it’s this thing that was used against you and it becomes really hard to see your body as your own. I think I went for a really long time where even if I felt attractive, I didn’t think of it so much as my own I still didn’t love my body. I’ve grown as a person, dealing with what happened, I’ve come to a feeling of self-autonomy over it. And I think that’s what helps make me feel beautiful. What’s your favorite part about your body?It used to be my legs but now it might be my butt. I feel bad about saying that because it’s only because my boyfriend loves it. Him loving it so much makes me feel better about it. Why do you feel bad about that? Just cause I was saying before that I want to feel autonomous about my body. I want to feel powerful in my own body. And having someone effect the way I feel about it so much upsets me. When I was dating someone, they used to tell me how unattractive I was. Or never compliment me. And that used to really effect because I was just getting to a place where I felt okay with myself, powerful, autonomous and beautiful. When you’re put down so often you eventually believe it. Part of being in charge of my body is being in charge of my self-esteem. So even though my boyfriend is making me feel happier and better and like my body even more, I still want to be in control. I don’t see anything wrong with letting other people help you feel good about yourself. But it sucks when it’s a guy doing though, because as a feminist it’s like, “I want to do this on my own! I need to be happy with my body on my own!” I feel like feminism has put a lot of pressure on my body and me. I feel like this feminist ideal of who you’re supposed to be as a woman is super unhelpful. I feel like feminism is consistently letting me down and it may be the mainstream white feminism that’s letting me down but after I was attacked…feminism acts like that’s the worst thing that can happen to you in the world. I’m not saying that it has to be this way for anyone, but I don’t want to be put into a victim box because I feel like once you’re there that’s where you have to stay.It’s very hard to get over that experience and putting people in that box perpetuates that mindset instead of empowering them to break free from it. Yeah! And I feel like a lot of women who didn’t understand what was happening, but had read some books about feminism, treated me a certain way and talked to me a certain way that I didn’t like. And then throughout the process of healing, I went through a period where I was super promiscuous. Where I didn’t feel good about myself and the things I was doing. And it so ironic how some women becomes this way after being raped. Someone wants our body so badly they can’t just ask for it or respect your right to say no…but then in the process of recovery…that loss of self-esteem stemming from that feeling of losing control of your own body…it makes use seek control through sex to prove to our selves that we have that power back. Exactly. I wanted to prove I was in control. So I felt like these women looked me down on. I feel like I can’t express my insecurities without being told I’m a bad feminist. What was middle school like for you? I didn’t look like anyone else in my middle school. Everyone else was really petite and really blonde. It was a bunch of perfect small Jewish girls. And then there’s me. My hips have been this fucking wide since the fifth grade. Obviously, kids made fun of me. I got a little bit of the “You’re chubby!” stuff. But the real problem was that to have a real womanly body at a young age is not a good thing. Men notice you. I think that it affected me because it made me feel like a loner. It made me feel like I was alone and wonder why I didn’t look like these girls. By the time I got to high school, it set the stage for me to go hangout with older men because my body would allow for it. So, because you couldn’t relate to kids your age because they ostracized your body shape, you sought out older guys to hangout with who did accept that as a normal body type? Yeah, I definitely went out looking for older people and older men, like a crowd that would accept the way I look. In the long run, it helped me become a stronger person. I feel like it turned me into a more independent and outgoing person earlier than most. I think that when you’re a fat girl, your personality has to be bigger than you are. Or else you’re the sad fat girl. And nothing is sadder than the fat sad girl. And that’s not like you’re saying, “I personally believe that”. You’re saying, that’s how society thinks. Yes. It’s like the kid that gets picked on and becomes funny so nobody would pick on him anymore. I become much more outgoing, intelligent, and gregarious. Even though I had a lot of pain on the inside, nobody would have known. And you used your intelligence as your distracting trait? Yes. I read a lot and I talked a lot about that stuff. I’d distract people by talking about just fucking non-sense. That was my way of being like, “I’m smarter than you. Back down. It’s so clear that I’m smarter than you. Like…you can’t make fun of me”So, “You can’t make fun of how fat I am because I’m so smart”Yeah, exactly. And then I lost the weight at the end of high school. I looked really good…but then that’s when I was raped. All the self-esteem work that had been done, it was reversed. It was like; I look great and look what it led to? And it led to me being brutalized. And obviously now I know it wasn’t about sex, it was about power. But when you’re in high school and you’re just looking for reasons as to why this horrible fucking thing happened…it was like okay well, I lost all this weight and I looked good and this guy that I was really good friends with attacked me…I definitely was like…my body is a factor. Well, it’s the main component to the assault so it’s natural to associate that with all the pain it caused you. Yeah, and I definitely turned myself into a sex object after that. I thought my worth was sex based, because being smart or outgoing didn’t stop that from happening. It was the lack of control of the situation and drove you to seek control in the most extreme way possible. Which means taking the reigns sexually. And sleeping around a lot. Haha. I mean, I’m not ashamed of this part of my life. I don’t want it to sound like that. It wasn’t a great time because the sex was really bad. I had like…two orgasms before I was raped. So obviously, I thought sex was the worst. Most of the sex I had was pretty fucking terrible. I only knew of bad fucking sex.And to clarify, this happened when you were seventeen and you are now twenty-three? I mean the past year I’ve gotten a lot better. Still today though, I’m trying to figure out how to love my body. Still, sometimes I can be like that. It’ll always a way I’m going to feel. It’s a lifelong battle and it’s about identifying it and knowing this isn’t real because a lot of days I wake up and I do feel in control. I do appreciate my body for its curviness a lot more. I grew into all the stuff I was ashamed of. How do you feel after the shoot? I feel great. It was way more fun than I thought it would be! The first couple shots, I was trying to suck it in. I was tenser. But honestly, doing the shoot made me feel like…you know when you’re lying in bed with your lover and you’re like smiling and touching each other and you’re just really happy? That’s how a felt in my body, by myself. It’s super meaningful for me to feel that way in my own body. It’s been a real journey to get here. -- source link