NEWS

'Honest Body' captures raw reality of motherhood

Sara Paulson
FLORIDA TODAY
Natalie McCain of Natalie McCain Photography is working on The Honest Body Project, photographing women with children to help women love themselves and instill a healthy body image in their daughters. She was photographing Crystalyn Koch and her 5-mont- old daughter Violet in her studio.

Natalie McCain was fed up.

About a year ago, a close friend of hers was having a hard time accepting her post-pregnancy physique.

"I started realizing that pretty much every mother I know was going through similar things, struggling with their new bodies and feeling like all of their imperfections were ugly — and ashamed of them," the Rockledge photographer and mom of two said.

And so The Honest Body Project was born.

The website — thehonestbodyproject.com — features photos of women (and their children) clad in black undergarments, proud to show off their not-always-perfect bodies. From stretch marks to loose skin and scars, the women don't hide much.

The photos are paired with musings on motherhood, written in the women's own words. Some are joyful. Some are devastating. Nothing is off limits.

"It's heartbreaking to hear how many women want to change how they look," McCain said. "They don't want to be remembered how they are."

That's why McCain felt it was so important to show —and celebrate — motherhood as it really is, to help women learn to love their bodies and themselves. Clearly, others agree. Since she started the project a couple months ago, McCain has photographed about 30 women, mostly from Brevard. She has a waiting list 100 deep. The project has gone viral, too, featured on websites such as The Huffington Post and Parents magazine.

McCain, married with a daughter, 8, and son, 3, is determined the Honest Body website be a testament to the wonderment of motherhood. It's a place where women can embrace their struggles and joys — and be a positive role model to the daughters (and sons) they're raising.

"You see everyone's highlights reel of their life," McCain said of social media. "You don't see what's really going on. I feel like this gives a look into what motherhood really is."

Reality Check

According to statistics cited by the nonprofit National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, "the body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by only 5 percent of American females."

And the body image struggle many women battle is only getting worse, said Lucy Lauer, an Indialantic licensed mental health counselor.

"Women don't want to go to the beach because they don't want to be seen in a bathing suit or shorts," said Lauer, who specializes in eating disorders. "A lot of people don't engage in the life they want because of something to do with their appearance... We ask people to think about, 'What are you missing here?' "

Lauer said weight gain is a part of a healthy pregnancy. But you'd never know it, given how society responds to moms-to-be.

"Even physicians congratulate women for not gaining much weight during pregnancy," Lauer said. "Women who are considered the successful ones are the ones who stay relatively thin during pregnancy."

Dr. Vanessa Dance, an obstetrician/gynecologist with Health First Medical Group, said there's no one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to pregnancy weight gain and "getting your body back." For example, Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, has been lauded in the media for whittling her weight down quickly after giving birth.

"She's six weeks postpartum and she's in her skinny jeans," Dance said. "This is what patients are seeing. And they're holding themselves to that standard and really, most average women, it's going to take them sometimes up to a year to get back to their pre-pregnancy weight or physical status that they were in."

New moms need to talk to their doctors about what's best for them, individually.

"Sometimes women are really hard on themselves and they hold themselves to unrealistic expectations," Dance said.

Changing that attitude is part of why McCain spearheaded the project. She takes the photos in a darkly draped-off section of her Rockledge garage.

The day FLORIDA TODAY visited, Crystalyn Koch, 32, a former Brevard resident who now lives in Colorado Springs, was posing for pictures with daughter Violet, 5 months.

Violet is Koch's fourth child. Koch, who is long and lean, may not be the typical mom envisioned for the project. But her story's just as valid to McCain. Koch bodybuilds, she said, because she likes to stay strong.

"I have a hard time carrying babies to term," Koch explained. "I've had miscarriages. My older two, I was in and out of the hospital for months — they were preemies. My last two babies, I had to have a surgery to stay pregnant, and they did make it full term."

"Looks can be deceiving," Koch said. "I look healthy, fit, strong on the outside, but on the inside, there's something wrong."

Jessica Bouwsma and son Adrian pose for the Honest Body Project. Courtesy of Natalie McCain

Jessica Bouwsma, 37, of Melbourne is another one of the moms featured. Growing up, her curvy backside and thighs were a source of sensitivity for her. Honest Body's black and white portraits struck her in "a very raw sort of way," Bouwsma said. She knows what it's like to think, "I can't go to this thing because I don't feel good about how I look."

Motherhood, she noted, is about embracing the small moments with our children, seeing the joy in their faces as they experience something. She recalls taking her son Adrian, 2, to Disney World for the first time in November. She wasn't happy with her arms when her husband starting snapping photos, but then she saw the pictures.

"There was something, it was in my eyes," Bouwsma choked up. "Feeling the magic of the moment with him, and it didn't matter anymore that I was less than thrilled with my body."

Bouwsma hopes the message reaches other women.

"This is something that other mothers need to see and hear," Bouwsma said. "It's such a lonely time in the beginning, it was for me at least, where you're just like, 'Oh my gosh. My world has just been completely rocked and I don't know what to do with myself'....To be able to share something like this with other mothers opens the door to conversations that maybe don't happen as often as they should."

Mind games

As far as body image, Lauer believes it's not so much celebrities bouncing back after giving birth that influence women's psyches.

"We women do it to each other," Lauer said. "I think that our language is very much a culprit in perpetuating this idea that we all should all be obsessed with our bodies, whether we are or not. We're either supposed to be or we're dropping the ball."

She's seen body image issues strike girls as young as 8.

"Pay attention to how you talk to yourself and to other people about your weight, your eating, your belief in what you're supposed to look like," Lauer said. "Slow down and think about, 'If I wasn't thinking about how fat I am, what would I be thinking about instead?' And those are the scary questions that a lot of us don't want to answer."

It's important to be a role model for the young minds being shaped right in front of us, too. That means no fat-talking in front of the kids.

"As women, we're role models for our children, and one thing I like to discuss with patients is being conscious of how you talk about your body in front of the children," said Dance, the OB/gyn. "We're the template, and we're the model for our children. And we want to make sure we're creating positive body images for them to model after."

Dance is happy to see campaigns celebrating real bodies — such as McCain's, she said. And she's seeing more crop up.

Platform for all

McCain doesn't charge the women for Honest Body pieces but accepts donations.

"I feel really passionate about no matter what your circumstance is in life, you should be able to have your portraits taken and share your story," she said.

Geralynn Martinez, 31, of Deltona saw the project via social media. She couldn't sleep that night, she so badly wanted to be a part of it. She messaged McCain but cautioned that she may not want her to tell her story.

Doula Loren Krizmanich and Geralynn Martinez grieve over the loss of Martinez’ stillborn son, Alex. They are featured in the Honest Body Project. Courtesy of Natalie McCain

Martinez has plenty of childbirth scars. She'd planned on having a home birth, leaning on the support of a doula. But when her labor took too long, the plans changed and she was going to head to the hospital. There was one last check of the baby.

"We lost heart tones," said Martinez, whose son, Alex, was stillborn on Dec. 15, 2013. "I had a C-section, and the situation was pretty horrible."

Martinez was hospitalized a week later with various medical issues. But that's nothing compared with losing the child she and her husband had pined for.

"I have a lot of scars from that event and I have no baby," Martinez said. "It's very difficult sometimes to look at myself and see I have all these battle wounds, and I don't have a child. It's a very, very difficult reality to live with."

But it was one she was determined to share. The fact she doesn't have a baby in her arms shouldn't matter, both she, her doula and McCain insist. Martinez had her portraits taken with her doula, a session that was emotional for McCain as well. She wept as she photographed the women grieving over a book filled with pictures of the beautiful, tiny infant.

"She was there through everything," Martinez said of Loren Krizmanich, her doula. "The moment we lost heart tones, she was right next to me and my husband. She was there at the hospital and she came and visited us. She was definitely a presence through the whole thing and was literally the first person who told me to never question my motherhood."

That statement was "really important and really profound." Having the portraits taken was not necessarily about the loss but the person she's become.

"When you have a baby and they're not alive when they come into the world, you struggle with it," Martinez said. "It happens."

"I'm still a mother, and I still embrace motherhood," she insists.

McCain plans on more powerful sessions, telling the stories of women who have overcome domestic violence and breast cancer.

"I hope that it'll inspire other mothers to speak about it rather than keep it silent," McCain said of hard-to-talk-about topics. "I want everyone to be able to relate and realize that. Just because you don't hear about it all the time, there are women struggling with the same things that you are. Whatever it is, you're not alone."

Contact Paulson at 321-242-3783 or spaulson@floridatoday.com.

Learn more

Check out the Honest Body Project at thehonestbodyproject.com or follow it on facebook at www.facebook.com/thehonestbodyproject

Donations are accepted at gofundme.com/tw6epg8.

Photographer Natalie McCain can also be reached at 321-749-0759.