You get to choose

Khloe Kardashian has every right to say which photo she wants the world to see.

I work in photos. I see lots of photos. I see the entire camera roll and y'all it's totally normal to not love every photo that you take.

It's ok to say ehh I don't love that one as much because the lighting is weird, your pose is off, or you ended up with a weird expression on your face.

We all have a right to choose and yes like everywhere else consent should be granted first.

Beyonce isn't releasing the entire camera roll from her Vogue shoot and that has a team of some of the best in fashion.

And that's ok because every photo won't be an unbelievably stellar one, a totally normal thing for us human beings.

How we treat that not so stellar photo... Is how we can notice what work we have left to do.

Noticing what makes us uncomfortable about it being shared and making a note to check in on that belief is really helpful as we work on our body image but no one should be dragged kicking and screaming to that realization. That just sounds traumatic...

I will always ask that you give yourselves a break and then add on layers and layers of grace.

Especially because I see and hear all of the ways that my clients talk about the way they view their bodies in their images.

I used to rush in to say oh noo don't feel this way you're sooooo insert compliment until I realized that I was doing that to calm my own uncomfortability with how they were feeling. I was making it about me or my work but usually it's not.

Now I listen and if they're comfortable, I ask follow up questions about why and where that belief came from. Something I'm always thinking about after reading Sonya Renee Taylors book The Body is Not an Apology. (If you have not already read this book go get it NOW)

Sometimes that space to be open and look at it, is more than enough for that moment in time.

What I would love to see more of is all of us being ok with letting ourselves be seen as less than perfect. To look at a photo, not like it and move on instead of verbally accosting everything about it even if there are elements of it we don't entirely love.

To get comfortable with perfect for me, instead of perfect.

But even then it should be up to you to choose.