A picture worth 707 words

Around this time of year, in 2016, I replied to a Facebook post and booked a boudoir photoshoot. The owner of the post had a studio in Cleveland and she was offering discounted professional shots in exchange for maintaining rights to the pictures for marketing and/or to build her portfolio. 

At the time, I was working at National Interstate as a workers’ comp claims adjuster trainee and had been taking doctor prescribed Percocet for several months. I had decided to leave the teaching field and found (what appeared to be) a stable corporate job, with an interesting assortment of possibilities for advancement. My thought was that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing this shoot as a teacher, so at that point, why not?

Part of the package included discounted hair and makeup styling, you could bring your own outfits, use some of theirs, there were multiple settings and staged backgrounds; her space was warm, welcoming, safe, and professional. Leah is a legitimate “Boss Babe” who owns her profession, place in the world, and truly is an inspirational artist. My sister in law, Kerry Bucy, and I have discussed part of her photography business leaning toward boudoir photography and Cleveland Boudoir's* experience is #goals for anyone interested in personal empowerment, because regardless of your size, perceived flaws, or hang ups, you will leave your session feeling amazing.

🚀 Rewind to my last post where I asked, “When it's time to intentionally focus on your own self-esteem, what do you do?” Now, fast forward, backwards, to March 2018. 🚀

During this time, when I was feeling badly about myself, was bored/stressed/irritated with any number of things that I didn’t know how to handle, I’d post pics or send messages on Snapchat and carry on inappropriate conversations with whomever replied that was interesting to me. This is not a healthy representation of self esteem boosting strategies and/or techniques, but for my brain, and like, millions of other people that use Snapchat, it is/was effective. Sending a flirty picture to someone sparks a little release of dopamine because in an instant, it’s gone. Was it only sent to you? Was it a little secret only you got to see? 

Clearly, this is not the ONLY reason people use Snapchat. Their filters, their stories, their content: it’s all pretty great. For marketing, their custom filters and geographic elements were new and fun to use. This wasn’t Snapchat’s fault, but the platform definitely creates the environment for situations to develop and I did not use the app responsibly. I denied students access to my private account for most of my teaching career until after they had graduated high school. Around this time, I had opened it up and used it primarily for posting teaching pictures or videos about labs we were working on.

The power of a picture is the point here, because this was taken under the pretense of body positivity- an attempt of heightening my post-baby body/self-esteem. Regrettably, I used them to flirt, get attention from, and tease people that had no business ever seeing them… just because I felt like it. I didn’t think about my values when I was doing this, I was “whatever emotion here”, and wanted the instant gratification of attention to distract me, and feel better about myself for the moment. 

In Fall of 2018, when I confessed my offense to the Twinsburg Police Department, I gave them my Snapchat login credentials. I gave them my cell phone. I gave them all my IDs and passwords to my social media accounts so they could pull any pictures they needed. Those images were pulled, processed, sent to who knows who as evidence; I know my attorneys got copies, etc… 

By sharing my experience with an amazing photographer (who showed her character by not trying to sell or use the images that she had every legal right to capitalize on when news of my case broke) I'm reclaiming this version of who I was and this image. It's not a special secret that only a few people feel entitled to anymore and that makes it just as empowering as the day it was taken.

*This is not a sponsored or endorsed post.