The Femme FATales

I think my blog is in need of a gorgeous, opulent and voluptuous photograph to see in the new year so here it is. This is the delightful, Carina Shero, Founder of the plus size burlesque group, The Femme FATales. I loved doing this shoot for my show, Chicago Lights- we had a lot of fun as she’s very creative.

Here she is, in her own words, in an excerpt from my coffee table book, which is released this Tuesday.

Carina Shero 

You can’t go to Target and buy confidence and self love – there’s no handbook for it, it’s something that you have to find for yourself and no one can hand it to you. 

Imagine there’s this wall in our mind, that is made up of restrictions that society has placed upon it – things like “I can’t show my body in a bikini at the beach”, “I’m too fat to have sex with the lights on”, “I’m not pretty enough to be desirable” and so on. 

However, once people see my photos, in which I exude sensuality and confidence and am not at all hiding that I am fat – it starts forming cracks in that wall. 

The more representation people see of people being unapologetic about what society deems as undesirable – the more cracks form and the more their own perception of themselves changes.

It will be gradual at first, from – “I have no worth because I am too much of this or not enough of that and I hate my body because of such and such” – to finally breaking large holes out of that wall and realizing: “Holy crap – I actually do have worth regardless of what societal beauty standards say! …maybe I’m even perfect.”

Because in reality, beauty standards are all made up and no one person can ever be what everyone likes and it is not our purpose in life to cater to what society thinks we should look like. 

It is the most liberating experience getting to choose how you perceive yourself and choosing to love yourself. 

It is in fact, a revolutionary act.