About

“Comparison is violence to your soul .”

RAW, to me, isn’t just about unedited skin or honest light. It’s about telling the truth we usually keep quiet—especially when that truth makes us uncomfortable.

Let’s talk about body dysmorphia, because it doesn’t only live in extremes. It lives in subtle avoidance. In angles you refuse to shoot. In mirrors you walk past quickly. In jokes you make about your own body so no one else gets there first.

I do this all the time. “stood up frog butt” - “trucker butt”

It is comic releif…

Body dysmorphia isn’t simply “not liking how you look.” Psychologically, it’s a fractured relationship between perception and reality. The brain fixates on a perceived flaw, exaggerates it, and then assigns it meaning: this makes me less desirable, less worthy, less lovable. But the person who I end up with with love me. Every part of me, because I am me. And when the day is done and I have aged, that person will love me.

What’s dangerous is that the flaw doesn’t even have to exist—it just has to be believed. And belief is powerful.

Can we stop this madness….

As photographers, we see this constantly. I’ve read countless blogs and essays from other photographers who admit the same paradox: we help people see themselves clearly, yet struggle to see ourselves without distortion. We know lighting lies. We know lenses compress, stretch, manipulate. We know images are curated, posed, sculpted, altered. And yet—knowledge does not immunize us from internalizing the lie.

Comparison is especially cruel because it asks us to measure ourselves against something that is biologically incomparable.

Two sets of genes come together once. There has never been, and will never be, another body like yours.

Comparing bodies is like comparing fingerprints and deciding one is wrong. The moment we participate, we’ve already lost.

Society thrives on this fracture. Entire industries are built on dissatisfaction. Beauty trends change just fast enough to keep you chasing, never arriving.

Thin was in.

Then thick.

Then slim-thick.

Then BBLs.

Then hourglass everything.

The goalpost is always moving, because if you ever felt complete, the machine would stall. Insecurity is profitable. Contentment is not.

And yes—right now, culture is obsessed with big butts. Curves. Volume. A very specific shape that social media has decided equals desirability.

I don’t have that. I’ve never had that!!

My butt has been the quiet insecurity I don’t photograph.

I joke about it. I avoid it. I frame around it. I tell myself I have other beautiful attributes—and that’s true—but insecurity doesn’t disappear just because logic tells it to.

That’s the part people don’t talk about enough: you can know you are beautiful and still be deeply self-conscious. Those things are not opposites. They coexist.

Here’s the grounding truth I keep coming back to—one I’ve learned not from theory, but from lived experience and watching real intimacy unfold between real people: the person who is into you is not auditing your body the way you do. Desire doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from presence. From chemistry. From familiarity. From the way someone moves, laughs, exists. The right person doesn’t love you despite your body. They love you through it. Fully. Enthusiastically. Without hesitation.

Everyone has insecurities. Every single person. Even the ones you think don’t. Especially the ones you compare yourself to. The difference isn’t who has flaws—it’s who has learned to stop letting those flaws narrate their worth.

RAW is me choosing not to hide mine anymore. Not to “overcome” it. Not to rebrand it as empowerment. Just to tell the truth: I am self-conscious. I have avoided parts of my body. I have internalized trends that were never meant to serve me. And I am still worthy of desire, love, softness, hunger, and connection exactly as I am.

If this resonates, let it land here: you are not broken for struggling with your body. You are human in a system designed to make you doubt it. And the moment you stop comparing yourself to the incomparable, you reclaim something that was never meant to be taken from you in the first place.

This is RAW.