#BodyPositivity – Learn To Love Your Body With Laurie of Vanity & Me

Meet Laurie

Creator and Author of 

Vanity & Me Blog

Wife, Mother, Grandmother

Ladies, please drop what you're doing and read about this incredible ladies journey to the wonderful place she is today. No spoilers but trust me when i say she's has seen the extreme end of lacking Body confidence. Read on to hear about Laurie's journey

Hi Everyone

It’s my greatest pleasure to be here today sharing with you my journey (and it’s been a long journey) Gaining confidence and body positivity and learning to like, sometimes love myself a little.

Readers often think that because we share our photographs online sharing our passion for fashion and beauty that we are full of confidence and have a huge ego, when that is often not the case!

There are so many things that I would like to change about my body. Being taller would be top of the list. Alas not a lot can be done about that, and you will always find me in heels! But do let me tell you that I have learned through the years that trying different styles, I feel comfortable being titchy me.

The thing is about being a shorty is that even half a pound can make a difference and I do eat quite healthily.

Arms. I hate mine, I have tried weights, different types of exercise all to no avail. So, most times I wear a cap or short sleeve rather than no sleeve. It looks passable and I’m happy with that. It’s just trial and error finding resolutions if you can’t fix your problems.

Let me tell you about a journey I travelled from the age of Eighteen.

Even back then in the early eighties the pressure was there to have the perfect figure. OK, not anywhere near the amount of social media pressure that there is now, but you didn’t even have the fuller or should I say average sized female model back then. The skinnier the better in the media’s eye.

I feel sorry for the young girls of today. The pressure for them is huge. My daughter posted this on Instagram and I thought it really struck a good statement

Anyway, back to my story!

When I was Eighteen, I was really on the heavy side. One day a family member came for a visit and commented on how large I had gotten. I can still remember that moment clear as day. Totally upset, I vowed to starve myself until I was the perfect size.

And that’s what I did. Starve myself. I won’t go into all the details of how I hid it from my parents. I would be writing a book if I told you the whole story. But after about six months of barley eating anything the weight started to fall off. The compliments started rolling in and I felt amazing. What happened next you ask? I wanted to carry on feeling amazing and for the comments to continue rolling in, so I carried on starving myself, thinking that a decent meal would make me look huge again!

I can’t tell you when the point of no return began. I often think about this, but for the life of me I can’t remember. The whole starving myself disaster completely took hold of me.

To shorten the story, I ended up hiding myself in baggier clothes to hide my wasting away frame. I knew and that’s all that mattered at the time. My little bird like skeletal body now weighed 5 stone 9lb. I ended up collapsing and of course my parents inevitably found out. They helped so much to try and get me to recover, but I still had a lot of days struggling with just trying to eat. I just thought they wanted their “fat” daughter back and decided to become Bulimic instead. Terrible huh?

My turnaround for me came when one day I was having to take so many laxatives the pains in my stomach were just too much to bare. Just like that lightbulb had lit up to start my Anorexia another lightbulb lit up for me to stop.

But that’s not the end. And a lot of the time I did still eat like a little bird, but I started to get ill. From my stupidity of not eating for so long I totally broke my immune system and started to get allergies. Foods that I had eaten all my life I could no longer eat. I have spent many years I’m 54 now and still each year I have to see different specialist about my allergies that grew and grew and grew! Touch wood, it’s been two years since my last new edition which was Aspartame.

I got my payback! Now I can’t bloody eat anything! I got what I wished for basically. Something I have to live with for the rest of my life all because I was a silly girl trying to be what the media say’s we should be.

If I could eat all the pies I would. And I’d be sticking my fingers up to anyone that was to judge me! There are so many things that I would do differently if I could, but getting on to the body positivity, you’ve just got to let go and learn to love yourself. Eat healthily, exercise a little, learn what accentuates your good bits and hides your bad bits. I now have my own fat rolls and flabby arms, but I’ve just learned to do the above. I make do the best I can and I love myself more now in my fifties than at any other time in my life. I too did the MandCo body positivity challenge with Rachel a while back. Sticking my fingers up to society and telling the world that I’m loving my time in my fifties and not scared to show off my body. (It was hard but very liberating!)

It’s funny because I have never written about my time of being anorexic on my blog! When Rachel kindly asked for my input, it just seemed right. Sorry Rachel!

I may not have the perfect body, but I have learned to love it.

Thank you so much Rachel for having this time on your blog. I will leave my media links below, just in case they want to visit an over 50 woman trying to make the most of herself!

Find me at:

Vanity & Me Blog

Twitter

Instagram

RTH: Laurie please don't apologise, the more we talk about these things the more we enlighten ladies on the journeys we all go through daily and how we should learn to love ourselves just the way we are.

Thank you for talking about your extremely personal journey. Its been a privilege to have you here and i think i can speak on behalf of everyone when i say, Laurie, you look absolutely gorgeous!!

#BodyPositivity : Embracing My Body Just as it is: Why I've Chosen To Ditch The Bra

If you saw last weeks confessional post you will have read that one of my confessions is that at the age of 32 i have decided to ditch the bra.
Here's the thing, I've been processing a lot of body image factors of late. From putting pressure on myself, not daring to looking at myself naked and then to finally accepting who i am and what my body actually looks like.
Us women are strong willed creatures aren't we? When we we use that will for good, it is a force to bereckoned with, but when we use it for bad, more specifically beating ourselves up over how we look, well then it can be desperately hard to come back from. Once we have planted that seed, it spreads like a nasty weed that you just can't dig that root up, and it sinks itself more deeply in to your psyche with each day that passes.

In the vein of complete transparency and honesty its probably best i start at the beginning.
As a young teenager i was teased awfully for being flat chested. I never had that growth spurt other girls had that seemed to take them from girl to woman. Being athletic in my youth meant i was just flat chested, and it just stayed that way.

The teasing made me insanely insecure, an insecurity so deep-seated that it would stay with me for the next 17 years (to this year).

As a young woman i would joke with friends about my "Fried Eggs" and how i would kill for a boob job, little did they know that what was said in jest was how i actually felt.

As i got older i invested in every push up bra on the market. Gel inserts, air pooches, pully systems and even "chicken fillets", anything to give me that enviable cleavage that i so wished for.
Looking back i guess the reason i felt so out of place and less of a woman was because, even then, society dictated that women who had big boobs were more beautiful young men looked at page 3, watched Baywatch and dated girls with big breasts not scrawny girls like me.
Media also told me the figure us ladies should aim for is an hourglass, big boobs, big hips, small waist.
Why though? To please men? To look good in clothes? To fit in and all look the same?

I never left the house without a padded bra on. After years of ridicule i feared i would be judged as "less of a woman" or severely unattractive. All through my twenties, even happily settled with a wonderful man (who I've been with since i was 21) who loves me just the way i am, i still had this bitter underlying current of not being good enough.

But then hitting my thirties, i noticed a change in me. A slow change, but it was a definite shift.
I started to care less what others thought.
I've changed. My boobs haven't, they're still tiny, but actually that's ok!
In fact, for me, its pretty great!
I am a woman, I am happy, healthy, I am married and have a beautiful family.

I am small breasted, but so what? 
That doesn't reflect on who i am as a person, just as being curvy, skinny, tall or short doesn't.

Once i had this realisation, breaking the bonds of years of internal torture, i started to ask myself, why do i even wear a bra?
The simple fact of the matter is.. i do not need a bra.
So why do i feel the need to hide my boobs in a contraption that is uncomfortable?
The contraption that was keeping them in, covering them up, pushing up or flattening down.
It got me thinking why do we wear them?

The reasons are simple:

• Social norms dictate that's what women should do (as they do with size and figure shape too)
• To de-sexualise women ( ie put them away love)

Since going bra free i have researched and spoken with lots of ladies about the topic, it's great that we all have a point of view on this.

So here's what i've learned.

Firstly we wear bras because of social norms, it is what everyone does and what is expected of us. 

Our mothers do, friends do and it is the norm. We wear a bra to fit in, be the same and not stand out (there's a nipple pun there i'm sure ;).

Secondly we wear a bra so that we don't have them "on display", God forbid our breasts distract anyone from going about their daily deeds.

Just like normalising breast feeding in public, women should be allowed to go bra free without being stared at, made to feel like a slab of meat, or suggested that she is promiscuous.

Men do not wear extra coverage of their nipples/pecs and that is completely normal.. yet all shapes and sizes of women feel the need to hide their boobs away.

Why?

The more we normalise it the more we will raise young people to see that our bodies are ours. We can do as we please with them, it is not for society to dictate to me or anyone else what i can and can not wear.

Thirdly? Why are we subjected to uncomfortable apparatus 12 hours a day with a garment that is currently in studies to see if they are actually doing our bodies more harm then good! Underwire digging in, pressure, and potential cancer threats.. why do we do this to ourselves?

I finally just wanted to touch on my personal thought, if i had seen more shapes and sizes of all types of women when i was growing up, then maybe i wouldn't have  had years of hating my body, loathing bikinis and investing in crappy bras just to try and feel more of a woman. It was such a horrible places to be that really took me years to come out of.
Nobody should feel crap about their body. Our bodies are amazing fantastic things that should be praised not criticised. 

So this is me. 

Small boob crew and proud. 

Bra free, extremely comfy and happy. I'm not burning all my bras, there is of course times when i may need one, sports possibly or transparent tops, but i will be opting for a bralet type with no padding or wire.

Its so important that all shapes and sizes are represented in society so that we normalise and celebrate our magnificent differences and not feel we all have to look a certain way.

Going bra free, how does it feel?

The first time i went out bra free was to the supermarket, i wore a baggy top and felt myself hunching over to begin with. I was absolutely terrified. I was scared people would stare, i was worried what they would think of me, i felt on show. 

However after being out for a small amount of time i soon realised nobody stared, nobody cared and i was sublimely comfortable in my own skin, just the way i am. I stood tall and gave no shits. From there i then went on to wear tighter tops and not think twice about it. Lets face it, the outline of my breast is really the least of the worlds problems right now. And why i should i/we be ashamed of our bodies and boob outline? 

As time went on i felt liberated. I felt like i was in control of my body, my world, no longer pretending to be something i wasn't.

I felt empowered that i am a woman and i am happy with my body and nobody can take that away from me.

Its crazy to think i hid behind bras for so many years.

I can only speak on behalf of myself of course, and i know there are many more larger breasted ladies who may feel they can't go without a bra, but perhaps consider just being your wonderful self..

Naturally beautiful the way you are without the bra, big small, high or low, breasts are breasts and why not let them just be as they are. 

We all have this preconception of how our breasts should look due to society and social media filling our heads with pert big boobs, but the more we are all open about our shape the more we normalise the real women of the world and all the fabulous shapes and sizes. I hope that maybe one day, young ladies won't feel agonised by their size because society says that she doesn't look right.

If you wear for comfort and support, i appreciate this is integral to how you feel, but the feeling at the end of the day, when you take the bra off is always one of utter relief isn't it? Why not go free for an hour, an afternoon or a day. 

They are part of your wonderful body that should be loved and celebrated.

Lets not let society dictate to us how we should look and our breasts should be kept.

So go on I dare you, let the puppies out for a day and see how you feel!😂💛💜💚💙


PS. Its worth mentioning that this is still very much a work in progress for me and this post took
A LOT for me to be completely honest with both words, images and content.. I'm still bricking it if i'm honest, but like i said, its a work in progress, my personal development. Sure there will be people who think i have an awful figure and that is their opinion, but this is about me being happy in my own skin.. something that has never ever happened and that I'm pleased finally is beginning!

* This is part one of an ongoing Body positivity series I am presenting. More to come soon!*