The women in Sandro Botticelli's paintings are curvy, voluminous, beautiful. They are the epitome of womanhood - the total opposite of many of the images we see today on television, in movies, and on the covers of magazines. They are the women I want to be.
I hit puberty in the mid-1990s when cases of eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia were at an all-time high. I knew girls who binged and purged, and I even thought about becoming one of them. I didn't, but the pressure was still there.
Instead, I went on a diet and I lost weight with the help of a very strong appetite suppressant. I didn't learn how to eat. I didn't exercise. I just let a little blue pill melt the fat away. I lost 45 lbs. in 2.5 months and my high school experience went from a negative to a positive for about 4 seconds. I started modeling locally, and I felt like I was actually starting to live the life I was meant to live. Then, life happened. A modeling agent told me I needed to lose another 45 lbs., which would make me a skeletal 120 lbs. and a boy I liked didn't like me back. I thought once the weight came off, the world would be a beautiful Botticelli painting, but it wasn't. It was still just the same old world it was before, but I was hangry now.
So, I'm back to chasing Botticelli at 33 years old. But, this time it's because the women in the Botticelli paintings represent something more to me in their curvaceous bodies: a healthy and possible reality. I am no longer chasing an impossible beauty ideal I will never achieve - I'm chasing down the life I want to live. I hope you'll join me as I find my own inner Botticelli babe and bring her out for all the world to see.