COLOMA, Mich. — A West Michigan photographer is following up his past work with a new series of inspiring photos
Photographer Josh Fairbanks released the new series that focuses on moms and the beauty in their scars.
“It’s about telling everybody that hey we celebrate dad bods, but mom bods are frickin’ awesome man,” Fairbanks said.
The photos show moms posing with glitter, highlighting the stretch marks they got after giving birth.
“A lot of their identity is found in the way they look, when your not pregnant its found in the way you look one way and then when you’re pregnant society rightfully looks at you as this beautiful pregnant mom, but after you have a baby there’s no third identity,” Fairbanks explained.
“You are expected to go back to the first one even though you went through the earth’s most amazing physiological change that a creature can through which is giving life, you are expected to go back to how you used to be, which is an unfair expectation for anybody especially in how busy and wild today’s world is,” Fairbanks added.
The photos aim show that it’s beautiful to be a mom and to be proud of where those stretch marks came from, a concept brought to Fairbanks by one of the model moms.
“You spend so much time seeing woman on TV who look perfect and even post-baby they have a six-pack and there’s a lot of pressure to look that way so I even beat myself up for hating my stretch marks after wanting to have a baby for so long,” model Madolyn Wesaw said.
“I was a little bit nervous. I wanted to represent myself well for all the mothers out there but at the same time I was like okay, but in order to do this you need to face all your insecurities as well and say hey you can shed yours too,” model Amber Henslee said.
The photos prove it.
“Seeing these pictures and seeing that actually this is really cool I did something really awesome, I created life, that’s a really sacred thing, its such a blessing and so it just kind of brought it all back home to me and reminded me I did something amazing. I am powerful,” Wesaw added.
“I want to show everybody it’s okay to have stretch marks, to be a little overweight to have rolls, it’s okay. Life is beautiful and no matter what we are beautiful,” model Megan Rick said.
If you want to see more of these photos or Fairbanks’ other work, click here.
