Why Lay Myself Bare?

Sir Joel's recent personal project, Bare, is all about empowering the subject. It's about celebrating both the beauty and flaws of your body (to read more on this, see: The Bare Project Manifesto). When he reached out to me to ask if I could do it, I couldn't contain my excitement. I always imagined myself doing the project because I always had fantasies about becoming a VS model, posing in sexy lingerie and channeling my favorite angel. Kidding aside, yes I know my proportions won't make the cut, I always thought that if I were to pose sexy for anything, I would do it for a greater cause; because, you know, it's not easy to open up to other people, more so to strangers, like that. I always believed in Sir Joel's cause and that one time I had the opportunity to ask him, "Why me, Sir?" he answered, "I ask people who I believe have a story to tell, one that I hope would resonate well with others and inspires them to look at themselves in a kinder and more loving light."

If you come here often, you may have read The Summer Pin-up Confession where I've spelled out how I'm not my body's biggest fan at first and... feel free to read that post if you're curious to know how that went. Well, I have great reason to believe that my story is worth sharing and if you'd like to share yours as well, please grace the comment section below. I will not be detailing my story here, I will save that for the full feature on Sir Joel's blog, but, if you were to take something out from it, I hope it'd be -

"The love you give your body comes back to you."

I'm not saying that I got it all figured out, there are times that I get bitten by the lazy bug and just bum life the day away. I'm also not saying that I have the most perfect features that I should go and expose myself like that for Facebook likes, I know that people have different views about it and I respect each and every one of them, whether I like them or not. Going back to my point - just love yourself and one way to do it is to take good care of your body. We only get one, and in case you didn't know, we don't get to choose how it looks like at first or how it functions, just love the heck out of it - whatever that may mean to you. You may have bad skin, unpleasant proportions and  fickle-as-the-weather hair, wait that's me, anyway, take care of your self. Who knows, that is all it takes to make you feel good in your own skin.

P.S. Try to imagine yourself a few years from now. How do you think you'll look? I always say that my present shape may be the sexiest I will be in my life and that made posing for the pictures a lot easier. We're all going to decay someday, pictures are one way to immortalize today. So, if you're in Cebu and you want to get your photo taken like those above and below, contact Sir Joel, he runs The Joel Locaylocay Photography blog, he's also on Facebook and Instagram.

Photos by: 

Joel Locaylocay