What Boudoir Taught Me About Women and Belonging
There is a moment in almost every boudoir session that has nothing to do with the camera.
It usually comes about twenty minutes in. The nerves have worn off, the playlist is going, and a woman catches sight of herself on the back of my camera and goes quiet. Sometimes she laughs. Sometimes she tears up. And almost always she says some version of the same thing: "I did not know I still looked like that." What she means, I think, is that she did not know she was still in there. Underneath the to-do lists and the caretaking and the years of putting herself last, she is still there.
Boudoir gets described as bold, or sexy, or a little scandalous, and sure, it can be all of that. But that is not why women book it. They book it because somewhere along the way they lost the thread of who they are, and they want, just for an afternoon, to be seen. Not as somebody's mom or somebody's wife or the person who keeps everything running. Just as themselves.
What I keep noticingIt is not a confidence problem. It is a loneliness one.
I have photographed enough women now to see the pattern behind the pattern. So many of the women who walk into my studio are doing beautifully on paper and quietly running on empty. They are capable and busy and loved, and they are also isolated in a way that is hard to admit out loud. Friendships got harder to maintain. The group chats went quiet. Comparison crept in, the kind we all absorb from our phones, where everyone else seems to have the thing we are missing.
Somewhere in adulthood, a lot of women stopped having a room to walk into where they are simply glad to be and glad to be with each other. That is what I feel in the studio. The photos matter, but the thing that actually changes a woman is being witnessed with warmth and no agenda. When another woman looks at her and says "you look incredible" and means it, something loosens.
We were never meant to do this alone. We were meant to be in a room together.
My whySo I started opening my doors.
That realization is the whole reason I began hosting these free gatherings. I did not want being seen to only happen in front of my camera, and I did not want it to require a booking or a budget. I wanted a low, easy doorway. Come as you are, no cost, no pitch, no catch. Bring nothing but yourself. Some nights we play, some nights we move, some nights we just pour a glass and talk. Every time, the point is the same. To build the kind of community that most of us have to go looking for, and to make it feel as easy as showing up.
I host them because I believe women deserve a place to belong that asks nothing of them. And honestly, because I need that room too. Selfishly, these nights fill me right back up.
Which brings me to why I am writing today. The next of these evenings is called Stretch & Relax, and it is a free night at the studio on Tuesday, September 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. I am bringing in Lulu, a Pilates reformer and movement instructor, to guide us through easy chair stretches, a few breathing techniques, and gentle movement to help you unwind and recharge. There will be wine, there will be light bites, and there will be a room full of women I am genuinely happy to gather in one place.
Seats are limited and these fill up fast, so if it is calling to you, come let yourself be taken care of for once. Come meet someone new. Come remember that you are still in there, and that you do not have to do any of it alone. I will see you on the 22nd.
RSS Feed
