**Each love letter was originally posted on Instagram. Scroll down to the bottom to read about the creation of this project!
Visual Love Letter to Donuts, #1
This is the first photo of a project I’m calling “Off Limits.” This project is all about the foods I denied myself for so long in order to force my body to be smaller, and therefore closer to a patriarchal, unrealistic, unattainable, toxic body image. Every time I went on a diet, I mourned my off-limits food. I believed that if I never ate these foods again, I could be thin. I believed these foods were bad. I told myself these things every time I felt so very sad about never getting to eat them again. But, I truly believed that if I could be thin from never eating a donut again, it would be worth it.
It wasn’t.
Sometimes I’d lose the weight, thinking, “I did it! Finally! Avoiding the off-limits food worked!” And then I’d gain the weight back. Or, I wouldn’t lose weight at all, and I’d think, “I just need more self-control, more exercise, more food added to the off-limits list, etc.”
Well, since becoming a diet drop out, I’ve been more content with my body than ever before, even when I was at my thinnest.
So, here is the start of my visual love letters to the off-limits foods I’ve denied and deprived myself of for years, starting with the donut. Donuts remind me of early morning garage sales, big Saturday breakfasts with my fiancé, and road trips.
The donuts I used for this first part of the project are from Pharaoh's Donuts, and they were soooo good! I highly recommend Pharaoh’s Donuts!! 🍩
Here's a link to their Facebook:
Visual Love Letter to Donuts, #2
Back when I was on a diet that required me to count up foods as points, I lamented about how high donuts were on the points scale. Just one donut took up most of my daily points, so I’d have to decide if I’d rather eat a donut, or eat a meal. Sometimes I’d spend hours trying to make decisions like this, carefully calculating my points. I’m so glad that I don’t have to make toxic choices like this anymore! I wasted so much time calculating my food as numbers! Never again will I do that to myself. I deserve better. 🍩
Visual Love Letter to Donuts, #3
Trigger warning: disordered eating, dieting
I hope y’all aren’t sick of my donut pictures yet! Here’s the next one for this week. I chose this one for today because it shows more of the lovely vintage nightwear I was wearing and because it shows off the cute donut box. Have you ever felt like you couldn’t eat something because you didn’t “deserve” it? I used to feel like that, too, especially about donuts. They seemed so indulgent, so special; donuts weren’t for plus sized women like me. When I did eat a donut, I felt like I was doing something bad, and the punishment was going to be a higher number on the scale. I’m still healing from my disordered eating, so sometimes I still feel like I don’t deserve to eat, especially if it is an off-limits food. But every day I work against that, reminding myself that I deserve to exist, I deserve to eat, I deserve to enjoy donuts. 🍩
Visual Love Letter to Donuts, #4
Sometimes I yearn for how I viewed food as a young child, before 5th grade, when my obsession with trying to lose weight began. Food wasn’t something that had morals attached to it, donuts were simply donuts, just like carrots were just carrots. I ate when I was hungry without much thought about what I was putting in my body, and I focused on the taste and how it made me feel. I absolutely loved watching my mom make homemade donuts, and I remember watching the oil pop and crackle around the wet dough, transforming it into golden halos. My mom would dip the fried dough into a bowl of glaze she made herself, and then she’d carefully string each dripping, hot doughnut onto a dal rod to dry. She’d let me have one as soon as they had cooled a bit. I loved how the fluffy dough and glaze would melt together in my mouth like a warm, sweet, vanilla cloud. I wasn’t thinking about calories. I wasn’t trying to figure out what exercise to do later to work off that donut. I wasn’t thinking about how I was bad for eating something “unhealthy.” Instead, I was absolutely present in that moment, eating a warm donut my mom made for me. 🍩
Visual Love Letter to Donuts, #5
Last post of the donut part of my Off Limits project. Today, I want to focus on a biiig debate in my home. What’s better: cake or yeast donuts and why? What do you think is my preference? 😉 I’ll share my answer later!!
I’m so glad I decided to finally do this project, and I’m excited about the next off-limits food photo series!! 🍩
Creating This Project
As a blogger, model, and content creator, I've been trying to figure out how to create fun posts that were pandemic-friendly. I've been taking all the pandemic guidelines very seriously, and that means not going anywhere unless I really have to, wearing a mask, keeping my distance, washing my hands, etc. Before the pandemic hit hard in the U.S., my modeling, influencing, and blogging were starting to take off. I was going to all sorts of fun events, I was being invited to influencer gigs, and I was connecting with super cool local bloggers, models, and influencers in the St. Louis area. I was having such a great time doing all these things, and I was excited about this kind of work. But, once the pandemic hit, all of this came to a screeching halt.
As an extrovert, having to stay at home and have very interaction with people was really hard. Perhaps I'll create a blog post about that at a later time. But, long story short, I was very fortunate to be able to stay home, but I was feeling pretty depressed, and I had very little motivation to do content creation. Until one day, I got an idea about taking photos related to foods I used to avoid.
First, I started brainstorming ideas, and I shared these ideas with a few friends to see what they thought. They enthusiastically supported it, and I was very appreciative of their feedback. Next, I had to figure out what food to start with. I immediately thought of donuts because they are one of my favorite foods, they are often colorful, and St. Louis has a lot of great donut places. After I made my choice, I knew that I wanted my outfit to be similar to the donuts I would get. At first, I wanted to do a breakfast in bed photoshoot. I even bought a breakfast tray on Mercari. But then I realized that where I have my bed doesn't have enough lighting, even with the windows open and the ring light. It probably wouldn't be an issue if I had a professional photographer helping me, but it was just me with a tripod stand and a cheap ringlight. Haha! So, next I figured out where to shoot, and that was going to be right in front of the fireplace.
After this, I spent a loooooong time looking for the right vintage lingerie for the shoot. As a plus sized woman, finding authentic vintage clothing that I love isn't an easy feat. However, 1960's nightwear was often oversized, so finding something that would fit me was a bit easier than finding a 1960s plus sized dress, for example. It still took a while, though, because even though nightwear from that period was oversized, a lot of what was available was still designed for smaller bodies. So, for example, the sleeves or arm holes would be way too small for me. Also, I was noticing that the vintage lingerie I liked was expensive if it was still in good shape, so I kept surfing Mercari, Poshmark, and Etsy to find what I was looking for in a price point that I could afford. I had to collect the things for the shoot in chunks because I don't make a lot of money, so I bought the breakfast table first, then the pink nightgown weeks later, then the blue peignoir, and then the slippers. And after allll of this, I had to wait until I could afford to buy some donuts for the shoot.
While I was collecting all the things I wanted (luckily I already had a wig, makeup, and lashes so I didn't have to spend money on that, but I did buy some press-on nails because my natural nails look rough from all the pandemic hand washing), I began my research on local donut places. I asked on Instagram for suggestions, and several people shared places. I always feel so grateful and fortunate to have friends and followers on Insta that respond to my questions on there, so thank you to those people! I eventually went with Pharaoh's Donuts in downtown St. Louis because 1) I've been wanting to try them for a while, 2) the pictures of the donuts looked like they'd work well for photos, 3) they have a wide selection of yeast donuts (which I much prefer to cake donuts), 4) and they are a black owned business, and I try to support black owned businesses when I can. When I picked up the donuts, Pharaoh's Donuts put them in such a cute box:
So adorable! And even though I felt nervous going inside a place during a pandemic, everyone was wearing masks, including the other customers, everyone was spaced out, and the service was quick. I made my purchase, and then the next day I prepped for the shoot!
In terms of make-up, I don't know how much you can tell, but I used makeup (and markers, haha) to create sprinkle frosting on my cheeks. I put white eyeshadow on the top ridges of my cheekbones, and then I used a wet, slanted make-up brush with different eyeshadows to make some sprinkles. The colors weren't showing up as bright as I wanted, so I also used some markers I had. Eeek, sorry, skin! Once my makeup was ready, my wig and outfit were on, it was finally time for photos.
Having to take my own photos is SUCH a pain! As much as I love taking photos, it's super challenging when you don't know if you are in the frame or not or if your expression and pose looks okay. I had to retake a LOT of photos from the shoot because the lighting needed to be adjusted, or I wasn't in frame, or something looked weird, or whatever. And with a wig on, I was sweating a ton, so I was in a hurry to get photos taken while I had natural lighting coming in through the windows and before my make-up melted off. In addition to all this, my dog, Zora, was losing her mind because she had to stay in another room with my fiance while I took the photos so she wouldn't get in the way (or eat the donuts within her reach). So, shout out to all the awesome photographers I've worked with! I appreciate y'all's hard work so much!!
Next came the process of narrowing down the photos I wanted to five, and then editing those selected photos. For editing, I usually brighten up my photos and add more saturation. I try not to do too much editing because I don't want to mess up my photos since I'm not super experienced with photography. I wanted to do a different photo each day on my Insta account, so I tried to narrow it down to five photos that had different poses and looks. I realized afterwards that I didn't have as much variety to choose from as I had thought (having an actual photographer take my photos would have helped with this, but thanks to COVID I knew that wouldn't be safe). However, I do believe that I picked five photos that are pretty great, considering I did most of it on my own. My fiance helped a little bit with taking the last two photos I posted on Insta.
I haven't decided what food to do next, although I have a lot of ideas! And even though this was A TON of work, I really did have fun1 Having a project to focus on really improved my mental health and gave me something to look forward to. It was also very healing because of all the struggles I've had with food and disordered eating. It was fun to play with my food like this, and to eat it, too!
I hope this "behind the scenes" section was interesting for you. I think sometimes people don't realize how much work goes into content creating and modeling; I know that before I got into modeling, blogging, and influencing I didn't realize how much time, focus, research, and care goes into that sort of thing. Especially with the pandemic, I feel like content creators have to be more creative and resourceful than ever. It's a lot of work! Even so, I really, really enjoy it.
What foods were off-limits for you? What food do you think I should feature next? Are you a content creator, too? If so, how have you managed to keep up with it in a pandemic-safe way? Please feel free to share in the comments!