Breaking Free From Oppression – By Autumn Boyet Stinton – March 2017

 Life…funny how it works.  No matter how old you are or how smart you think you might be, there are always lessons to be learned and room for growth.  Now in my 40’s, I’ve started to notice that I really don’t know jack-crap about anything and as I feel myself mellowing out a little bit, I also feel that lessons are being given to me again to work through so I can adapt them to a new stage of my life.  That very thing happened to me recently and I was a little stunned to find I was a little blindsided by the incident.  But before I delve into the story, here is a little refresher on a sensitive topic.  Hear me out.  There is a point to all this, I promise. 

 Oppression n. - Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control.  The state of being subject to unjust treatment or control.

 Making up nearly half of humanity as we know it, women, still today, face oppression.  The reasons for this oppression have and will long be debated. Whether it is a result of testosterone spurred biology making the male species quest after power and authority, or religious doctrine claiming women to be innately sinful, skilled only at leading men astray, history has detailed example after example of women facing not only oppression, but brutal subjugation, persecution and abuse.      

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!