In Their Own Skin: Mariah
Welcome to the “In Their Own Skin” series.
One of the biggest honors of my job as a boudoir photographer is hearing the stories clients share with me. While these stories are not mine to share on a public platform, I hold them close in my heart. They bring me inspiration, strength, and light in a way that only true humanity and vulnerability can.
I created the “In Their Own Skin” series to share some of these stories with you. The “In Their Own Skin” participants graciously consented to share their stories (told in their own words) alongside their boudoir pictures. My sincere hope is that these stories and pictures will bring you moments of strength, uplift your soul, and encourage you to keep moving forward, especially as we navigate these challenging times.
Friends, I am so excited to introduce you today to Mariah, the second participant in the “In Their Own Skin” series. Mariah is a 28 year-old band director who loves music of all kinds, cooking, and people. She has such a beautiful story, and she speaks with bravery, joy, and groundedness about the peace she has cultivated with her body! Here are her words.
“Even before she knew I was a possibility…”
“My name is Mariah. I really love my middle name: Mariah Asma! It’s a beautiful story.
“Asma is Arabic for “names.” There are two things you need to know about this: number one, I am a test tube baby, and number two, that my mom is actually Baha’i, a beautiful religion that’s about the humanity of everybody.
“I was a test tube baby, and this was in the early 90s when in vitro was still pretty new. My mom was a very active Baha’i at the time, and it was so important to her that she had another child. One of her Baha'i friends in her prayer group asked, if you knew you were pregnant, what would you be doing right now? And my mom said, ‘I’d be looking through names.’
“‘Asma’ means ‘names’ in Arabic, and it’s also part of the Baha'i calendar. That’s how she came upon that middle name before my first name. You forget sometimes when you talk to people about their names what that meant for that adult in their life. She had picked that out for me even before she knew I was a possibility, and that’s a really beautiful and wonderful thing.”
“The biggest thing that has changed is how I talk to myself about my appearance.”
“Who I am as a person, how I talk and interact with people, and what I keep near and dear has really been the same my entire life. There are things I’ve changed because I’ve experienced new perspectives or new things, but I wasn’t a super quiet kid who then exploded with extraversion — I’ve always been that way. I’ve always felt comfortable talking in front of crowds. I’ve always felt the need to dance all the time!
“From age six all the way until today, I’ve always been my biggest critic of my body. I remember coming back from the end of first grade, thinking I was fat, and jumping rope in my backyard to lose weight over the summer before second grade. I was probably like six or seven, and I remember thinking, ‘I’m not good enough, I need to get better over the summer.’ It’s so sad that that’s how it was! If I could go back, I would tell my six year-old self, ‘It doesn’t matter what those girls are saying, you’re gonna get there, and you're gonna love your body!’
“I've been able to realize this is my body, it’s gorgeous, it’s getting me places, it’s healthy, I can move, I can walk, I can dance, I can do all these beautiful things — and so what if I have some fat in my midsection? I am more than that. There is this thing I heard this thing, like, ‘I have fingernails, but I am not fingernails. I have fat, but I am not fat.’ I’m very much looking at it that way and shifting it.
“I can go on and be a woman who might have kids and my body’s gonna do that, or might run a marathon someday — or might not, might just sit on the couch during a pandemic! That’s been a huge shift, from constantly critiquing to accepting and moving on.
“The biggest thing that has changed is how I talk to myself about my appearance; fixing my thinking around what it means to be here and exist and be beautiful. To finally love myself from the inside and the outside has been huge, and it just started for me when I turned 24. It’s just been four years of truly loving myself and giving myself all the love I could give.”
“I am comfortable and confident enough to be brave.”
“I’ve always appreciated that in most cases, I can be the person who sticks up for something or is okay being uncomfortable in a situation. I’m not saying that I’m always that person, but generally I am comfortable and confident enough to be brave. My mom always raised me that way, and always told me how much she appreciated how brave I was.
“There are things that I am a total coward on, too, and I recognize and understand that! But I feel like I’m pretty much unapologetic about who I am as a person, and because I didn’t stick up for myself when I was younger, now I will. I will say things and do things that I really feel firm in.
“I usually try to be the person to go there and recognize when I’m uncomfortable about something, and see how I can continue to turn that uncomfortable feeling into growth and reflection. What I love about me the most is my ability to reflect on my actions, my thoughts, my words, and grow from them internally. That’s number one. I’ve always felt that I can do that, in my job and in every relationship I have.”
Mariah, I am so grateful that we got to work together. Your pictures are so full of light and joy while also feeling really grounded — just like you. I so deeply appreciate the reflection, bravery, and insights you shared with us in your story! Thank you so much for being a part of this project.