"My Gush"

Gush (g-uh-sh - rhymes with smush) syn. belly-fat; rolls.
We all have it. We love it, hate it, try to ignore it, or we can embrace it. For as long as I can remember, I always felt as if every day I woke up with a different feeling about my body and my gush. I’d go from hating it to ignoring it, working out and trying to get rid of it, and even making fun of it so I wouldn’t feel so awkward around my friends who didn’t have as much gush as me. I do this every time I sit in front of my mirror. Like a ritual. I examine my body, squish and move around the gush on my stomach. Before I learned to embrace it, I would mush the gush altogether, pull at it, and wish that I could just detach it from my body. Trying to squeeze into clothes and covering up my stomach while sitting always serves as a painful reminder of these insecurities. However, through photography and art, I’ve grown an appreciation and love of bodily form. Although intimidating, and a little uncomfortable at first, I used my love of form, specifically created by the body, to produce both a literal and abstract series that show my discovery of the beauty created by my own body. While smushing around one night, pushing, pulling, and molding at my gush like a new can of Playdo, I realized just how beautiful the form is. What started out as a reluctant endeavor somehow turned into a labor of love. I knew that in order to highlight the unique patterns made by my body, I would use studio lighting, something that I already love. Running from the back to the front of my camera waiting for the self-timer to go off while I molded my gush into position made me all the more nervous. “Was I wasting my time?”, “What if it comes out blurry?”, “What if the lighting is off?”, “What if it just looks bad?”, “What if this makes my insecurities more powerful?”, were all questions and anxieties storming my mind. Now, I think, “what if I hadn’t tried, what if I hadn’t put myself in front of that camera and pushed past my fears”. The first time I went to look at my camera and the photos taken, I let out the biggest gasp, it probably could’ve been heard from down the hall. My gush had absorbed the light so much more beautifully than I could have imagined. By moving in different directions, arching, pushing, pulling, and pinching, I made beautiful abstract patterns. Everything was just how I wanted it, and from then I decided that this would be a series to pursue. Photographing specifically where I had gush on my own body made it all the more meaningful. Intentionally leaving in all hairs, pores, or “imperfections”, is a testimony to the art and patterns made by the human form. Now, when I sit in front of my mirror, like a ritual, I examine my body as if it’s art in a museum; I found beauty in the gush. I realized that if I love art more than anything in the world, and I can create that art with my own body, shouldn’t I love my body? Shouldn’t I appreciate the beauty it encapsulates in what some people may see as a flaw? The human body is art in itself. Everybody is art themselves. This is my series, titled, “My Gush”.