Huffington Magazine Issue 57 | Page 76

Exit birth. She explained to HuffPost over email: “As a teenager I suffered from feelings of deep unworthiness. I had acne and I was unable to look in a mirror for nearly three years, unless it was by candlelight. ... I gained 50 pounds with my pregnancy and that added to my personal history of oppressive selfloathing in a culture that praises mostly photoshopped images of women in media.” The project is volunteer-driven, and Beall does each photoshoot for free. She writes on Kickstarter that she plans to use some of the SECTION HUFFINGTON 07.14.13 Shaming mothers for not ‘bouncing back’ after childbirth can cause feelings of failure when being a mother is challenging enough and when a big number of us have already lived a life of feeling unbeautiful prior to giving birth.” extra money she has raised to help people travel to her studio in Tucson, Ariz. “We are facing an epidemic of women who feel unworthy of being called beautiful,” Beall told HuffPost, describing a world in which “nearly all of us struggle to feel beautiful in our own skin.”