Living in a society that glorifies a certain type of what they would call a "perfect body" made me hate myself. When I was little, people around me would ask what the favourite part of our body was and my friends would immediately have an answer, but I never knew what to say because I had never seen any part of my body as beautiful, especially not the parts that were usually hidden. Growing up seeing all those beautiful people in the media and later seeing naked girls in porn put an unattainable ideal in my head and made me think looking like them was the only way I could ever look normal, let alone beautiful. A few years ago, I came across the Vulva Gallery on Instagram and while some may think it is a strange concept, all I could think of was how beautiful every single one of the portraits were. Funny thing is, all the vulvas there looked different and none of them looked like the ones I thought mine was supposed to look like. And all of those painted vulvas looked perfect. Seeing something that wouldn't normally be perceived as beautiful through a work of art made me realise what beautiful actually was about. Beautiful is everywhere. Looking at my body through art helped me understand how much beauty there is in this world that we are not even aware of. If you take a moment and look around you, or simply look at yourself, you will realise how much beauty there is in and around you that you had never even seen before. There are no rules in beauty. There is no such thing as an ideal of a perfect body. Every body is different and beautiful. I am beautiful in my own way. Because I am a work of art and so is every single one of you.
E – 19 years old