Latina
''Real Women Have Curves...''
by Karen Grimaldos
September 2004

[excerpt from article]

Ultimately, of course, every one of us needs to find some way to accept her body, no matter what she looks like, so long as she's healthy. Two years ago Shirley Miranda-Rodriguez, 25, a Puerto Rican photographer in Brooklyn, New York, began a project designed to explore ''what Latina women really look like, because in the media, Latinas are either misrepresented or underrepresented, and as a result, many of us have self-esteem problems,'' she says. The project took an interesting turn when, about halfway through, Shirley, who has been petite all of her life, became pregnant. ''For the first time I had cellulite, and I was 40 pounds heavier,'' she says. But the project allowed Shirley ''to really be accepting of the changes in my body, and I felt like a woman in a way I never had before. And in being that honest with my own body, I was able to help other women feel comfortable.''

That empathy proved invaluable in encouraging women to pose nude for her. ''There were women who would walk in and say, 'I just want a portrait of my face. I don't want to do nude,''' she recalls. ''The way I set it up is that there would be 15 women waiting in the wings to get their photograph taken, so they could see the woman being photographed. If she decided to go nude, these other women would be encouraging her and applauding her, saying 'You're beautiful.' When it was a large woman especially, she knew and everyone else knew that by doing this, she was telling thousands of little girls that they were beautiful. And there's something so important and powerful about that.''

After taking portraits of 118 mujeres, whose weight ranged from 95 pounds to 300 pounds, Shirley presented the collection this past spring in a New York City art exhibit called LatiNatural. The show was a critical success - but more important to Shirley, it was a personal one. ''I had so many people come up and say, 'Oh my god, that's me,''' she says. ''They would see a picture of a woman and say, 'My whole life I have felt bad about this part of my body, but I see this woman and she looks amazing.''

Indeed, that shift in perception is the key to loving our bodies - curves or no curves, cellulite or smooth - and inspiring other women to do the same.


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