The Story Of You - Jasmine

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

Some people have lived a few different lifetimes in one body, and Jasmine is one of them.

On the surface, she’s calm, articulate, and radiates this steady energy that makes you feel instantly safe. But under that stillness lives a story that’s anything but simple. She’s walked through more than most, navigating two cultures and two countries, surviving abuse, loss, violence, and heartbreak, while slowly building a life that looks nothing like where she started.

Growing up as an Australian-Indonesian girl, she never saw herself represented in the worlds around her. Beauty, according to every movie and magazine, was blonde and white and effortless, never brown-skinned, never with the features staring back at her in the mirror. It’s hard to find self-love when the world never shows you what that looks like.

But over time, she’s learned to take up space anyway. To celebrate the parts of herself that once made her feel “different.” To let her body be a home instead of a battleground.

When she came into the studio, there was this quiet confidence about her, not the performative kind, but the sort that comes from surviving, healing, and doing the work. She came in ready to re-write those conditioned perceptions.

Throughout the process, the writing, the shoot, the viewing, she kept reflecting on how far she’s come. How the girl who once wished for blue eyes and pale skin would never believe the woman she’s become. Seeing her images for the first time was like meeting that woman properly. The one who’s strong, brown, beautiful, brave, and finally, finally proud.

She said the experience reminded her that the little girl she once was would be proud too. And we think she’s right.