Breaking Free From Oppression – By Autumn Boyet Stinton – March 2017
As a woman, I revel in the freedoms that I know today. But, I will admit that I take them for
granted. I learned about women in
history that bore the brunt of sacrifice for what I now take for granted. And to be honest, in my everyday life, I fail
at really appreciating what I have. I
don’t live with oppression and therefore I tend to wander through my days
feeling equal. I feel safe, privileged
and powerful. I feel like I’ve got my
shit together for the most part.
Or at least, I thought I did…
The lesson I was gob-smacked with was set in motion this past December when
I did a boudoir photo shoot with Darci.
Like many women, I felt the angst of putting myself out there. I battled the butterflies and my own lacking body
image. Yes, I stood in front of my
bathroom mirror bending, scrunching, pulling, pushing and rolling my eyes in
disgust at my wiggle, jiggle and blub. I
couldn’t imagine that the session was going to go well. I mean, come on! We’ve all heard it said that a camera adds 10
pounds…and I’ve got waaaay more than 10 to get rid of. Needless to say, I was certain that the
results were going to be laughable at best.
I was doing a stellar job of oppressing myself at that point.
However, despite my own negative self-talk, the session was
amazing. Darci made me feel comfortable
in my own skin. I walked out of the
studio feeling great. It took all of
about 4 hours for more self-doubt to creep back in. I had convinced myself the pictures were
going to be awful and that I wasn’t going to like any of them. By the time I went back to my viewing
appointment, I was, yet again, sweating bullets and cursing my
big-ol-butt! But, an amazing thing
happened… I sat mesmerized as images of
myself flashed on the screen. I couldn’t
believe it was me I was looking at. I
was so moved and so shocked that I had oppressed myself to the point that I had
forgot to see in myself what Darci’s camera lens had captured. The pictures were beautiful. The pictures were a glimpse into something
more than just what was on the surface.
They somehow captured a me I had pushed into a corner; the core of me; different
shades and levels of my true being. It
was exciting, scary and liberating all at the same time. Needless to say, I ended up getting the big
package. I intended it to be a gift for
my husband, but it turned out to be more of a gift to myself than I could have
ever imagined.
I poured over the images when they arrived. I looked and sorted, and then looked
again. I felt empowered and secure and
as if I had shed a blanket of oppression that I hadn’t even realized I had
draped over myself. But there I was …no
blanket covering me up! BAM! – on
display and I felt ok about it!
I was proud of myself and found that it didn’t really bother me to
share my photos with people. I got the
app with my package and shockingly, I was willing to share the photos with
people and readily encouraged other women to have their own photos taken. Hey, if I could do it, with all my lovely
lady lumps and bumps, all the beautiful women I knew could do it! And what I wanted to share most with every
woman I saw was the amazing feeling that I had regained. The self-confidence, the embracing of my own
unique beauty, the sense of freedom from unrealistic commercial ideals – I
wanted everyone to feel it, because it was amazing.
That in-and-of itself would have been a pretty substantial lesson. But as we all know, life likes to throw those
curve balls at us when we least expect it.
A new lesson I was unaware of was lurking. Like an animal stalking it’s prey, a new form
of oppression caught me off guard and pounced all over my happy.
It all started at our local neighborhood bar. My husband received a text from an unknown
number that had a screen shot of a phone home page with me sprawled out on it
with a note that said, “Do you like my screen-saver?” As you might imagine,
that was the atom bomb that shattered my world.
Who was this?!? How did they get
that?!? How could I be so careless?!?
What was I thinking?!? I suddenly felt embarrassed, ashamed and violated and those
feelings didn’t go away.
If I’m totally honesty, I will tell you that I spent a couple weeks
spiraling in that negativity. I found
myself avoiding clothing that emphasized my curves at all. I wore slouchy pajamas and tried to just
blend in to the walls.
And then, one night just before I drifted off to sleep, my husband
quietly said, “I don’t need photos to know you are beautiful. I see your beautiful blue eyes and your
beautiful blonde hair, but most importantly I see your beautiful soul.”
Like salve to my wounded soul, those words started my healing. Those words made me remember that my pictures
weren’t dirty or pornographic. My
pictures were about embracing a side of myself that I had lost in the everyday
shuffle of life. My pictures captured a
part of me that I had been oppressed, and by being ashamed of them, I was
allowing myself to be oppressed further by an outside source. By falling victim to the ugliness someone
else was plagued by, it wasn’t them alone who was disrespecting me…I was
disrespecting myself! I was allowing
another form of oppression to swallow me up in its darkness.
And so, I learned another valuable life lesson. While we may face oppression from outside
sources, it is the oppression that we place on ourselves that can do the most
damage.
So what is this blog post all about?
It is about resolving to release myself from not only the binds of
oppression that I will undoubtedly face from the outside world, but more
importantly, and what I encourage you to consider, I am determined to break free
from and encourage other women to break free from the oppression that we bring
upon ourselves!
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