Your Stories - Ashley

Content Warning: These stories contain mentions of body dysmorphia, body image struggles, pregnancy loss, fertility struggles and gendered violence. If you find any of the below triggering, please find a list of helpful and free resources below:

DV/SV: 1800 RESPECT

Mental Health: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/

Eating Disorders and Body Image Issues: Butterfly Foundation 1800 ED HOPE

Sometimes the way we feel about our body is conditioned through influences we never chose. When you’ve grown up hearing the wrong things about your body, it imprints so deeply it takes real intention to un-learn it.

Ashley is unbelievably electric. Sweet, bubbly, disarmingly clever, and the kind of person who makes you laugh then quietly drops a truth bomb that tells you she’s been ten steps ahead the whole time.

Her Filipino upbringing meant a lifetime of “Hija, tumaba ka” comments from extended family and zero media representation of women who looked like her. Even as an adult, that messaging lingers. So when she turned thirty-one she decided it was time for new things, new experiences, new ways of seeing her own body. A Crooked shoot made the list.

She arrived buzzing with nerves, talking herself into and out of confidence in the same breath. She settled in the makeup chair, and once Andrea started shooting you could almost see her climbing out of her head frame by frame. The moment Andrea showed her a back-of-camera preview, she snapped upright like she’d been plugged into a power socket. Pure disbelief. Pure light.

But her viewing was the best part. She sat frozen, jaw on the floor, whispering “that’s not me” over and over until the disbelief melted and this huge wave of joy took over. It felt like watching someone meet themselves for the very first time and actually like who they saw.

Ashley said she wanted to see her body in a new light. And she did. In the loudest, brightest, most Ashley way possible. She jokes about her “meat sack” in true chaotic goblin brilliance, but she finally sees what her partner overseas has been trying to tell her all along.

She walked out of the studio brighter, louder, and surer of herself in a way you could feel.

Every studio has a handful of clients they talk about for weeks. Ashley is one of ours.