Love Your Boobs, Love Yourself Movement

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and to most women, it’s a month to bring more awareness to breast cancer, to remind women to get their mammograms regularly, to celebrate those who’ve survived, and remember those who’ve lost their lives to breast cancer. But this month isn’t just about that. It’s about reminding women to embrace ourselves and recognize what makes us beautiful, unique, and what defines us as women.

Several months ago I had this idea where I should candidly asked women questions about their breasts. I remember telling my husband about it and him giving me the look of “you’re crazy.” Yeah it sounded really weird, random, and some might say perverted but I thought there’s was a strong and powerful lesson to be taught by having women talk about their boobs.

As a bra fitter, educator, and a blogger whenever I meet women and tell them I’m in the business of boobs I always get the same responses.

“Oh I hate my boobs, they’re so ____.”

“I can’t wait to get implants so I can have boobs again.”

“My kids sucked my boobs dry and now have nothing left to show!”

“I wish I had smaller boobs, my big boobs always get in the way.”

I realized that I hardly ever came across women who actually liked their breasts.  Even women who were augmented weren’t entirely in love with their breasts because they were still too small, big, too perky, too fake looking, etc.

This made me really sad that so many women have a hate relationship with their breasts.  Our breasts and our bodies are amazing and can do powerful and wonderful things and so why aren’t we celebrating them more?

So that’s how LOVE YOUR BOOBS, LOVE YOURSELF came to be.  I wanted to create a video where I interviewed a group of different women and asked them questions about their relationship with their breasts, how they’ve experienced breast shame, how they feel the media depicts breasts, and how we as women can come to love and accept and love our breasts.

As I dug deep into this conversation I came to realize more than ever that as women to completely love ourselves, we need to love and accept our boobs.  I find there’s a direct relationship between our self image of and the relationship we have with our breasts.  Breasts don’t define us, but they are definitely a part of us.  I want to bring awareness that this dysfunctional relationship we as women have with our breasts and with our bodies are directly stemmed from what the media portrays to be what is perfect and the ideal of beauty.  I want to push the message that we aren’t defined by our breast size and how we as women are defined by something greater.

A group of blogging women from different backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, ages, shapes and, yes, breast sizes have decided to come together and to love ourselves and our breasts! You can join in this movement too by sharing a picture of yourself and type what you love about your breasts and what defines you as a woman! You don’t need a blog either! Just tag your photo with #LoveYourBoobsLoveYourself on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and search the hashtag to see who else has joined in.

So go ahead and watch the video, it will truly inspire you to stop breast shaming and start loving your breasts and yourself more!

Below are other brave and beautiful women who are sharing their stories of breast shame, breast love, what they’ve learned from their breasts, what they mean to them, and how we as women we can learn to love our breasts and ourselves more!  So don’t stop here. Get clicking around,  its a blog hop!  I hope as you click around (and YES pin these different posts!) you will feel the importance of women loving themselves, the empowering effect sharing each of our voices will inspire others in some way.

1. Fry Sauce & Grits  2. Allred Design  3. Ashlee Marie   4. Lucky Blogs  5. Alix Burrows 6. Diary of a Brown Eyed Girl 7. Tara Made It 8. Dreaming About Someday 9. Nicole Carpenter 10. Dana Ohlsen Photography11. Utah Mom Connection  12. Lionesses at the Gate 13. Laura’s Crafty Life 14. Feel Great in 8 15. Life in My Heels

Are you ready to share your story?  Make sure to tag your picture with the hashtag #LoveYourBoobsLoveYourself and @courtney_frysauceandgrits to participate in this powerful movement to inspire women to completely love themselves!

There’s a lot of people I need to thank for making this video possible.

First, I would like to thank the talented Jenner Brown from Lumineux Films for filming this video.

For the beautiful Ashlee from Ashlee Marie, Lori from Allred Design, Alix from LitJoy, Shannon from Lucky Blogs, and Lindsay from See Lindsay for being so willing to bare their souls.

Thank you to local businesses Ginger’s Garden Cafe and Melissa’s Raw for providing us food while filming this video.

Thank you to my aunt, Marianne, for unknowingly letting us use her beautiful home to film this video. I owe you big time.

For my sisters, Caitlin and Melanie, for supporting me through this entire project and for helping me and letting me bounce ideas off their brilliant minds.

Thanks to my husband and family for not thinking I’m crazy and for loving me despite of my “weird” passion and aspirations that have to do with breasts.