Moira Rose : I am suddenly overwhelmed with regret. It’s a new feeling for me, and I don’t find it at all pleasurable.
Stevie Budd : You regret that embarrassing photos of you aren’t online?
Moira Rose : No, I regret that they’re lost. They were the one perfect memorial to who I once was. And I should’ve appreciated those firm round mammae and callipygian ass while I had them.
Stevie Budd : If you’re talking about your body, uh… I think you still look amazing.
Moira Rose : Then allow me to offer you some advice: Take a thousand, naked pictures of yourself now. You may currently think, “Oh, I’m too spooky.” Or, “Nobody wants to see these tiny boobies.” But, believe me, one day you will look at those photos with much kinder eyes and say, “Dear God, I was a beautiful thing!”
Stevie Budd : Will I?
Moira Rose : Mm-hm. Oh, and make sure you submit those photos to the Internet. Otherwise, your own children will go looking for them one day and, tragically, they won’t be there.

In 2014, I did a boudoir shoot because that is what you do when you are 25 and have more time and money than sense. (Or even if you have plenty of sense but must sacrifice to the god of impulsive whim to feel alive.)

10 years and two babies later seemed an appropriate time to revisit.

But the babies! We must worry about the babies. The girl babies especially! (Do you know how many people I have heard say they are glad they didn’t have girls because they’re so worried about everything they’d face? What?!)

Believe me, I worry. As a parent, you become torn between the things you want and the things that are good for your children. Where does a boudoir shoot stand for that? Reprehensible in the indulgence of vanity or empowering in the celebration of life as it stands? With enough pretty words, can I perhaps sway the tide?

I could have pushed this off. I could have waited until I was able to do this or that. Fit in 50 more sets of pushups to build up those triceps for Michelle Obama arms or wait to see if the wrinkle tightening cream ever works its magic on my stomach (I doubt it). Maybe at least wait until the summer to get the smallest hint of color in my skin tone.

I could have kept it a wonderful secret. That’s not the object of the exercise.

Women are put into so many boxes of what to be. Everything you do is wrong no matter what you do -a la America Ferrara Barbie speech. At least my generation certainly feels this way. Maybe my girls can begin to undo it.

I want them to have fun and be able to enjoy their bodies with freedom. Wear pink and frills! Glam and glitter! Have it all! But don’t let the indulgence in performative vanity lead you to believe these are the things that are important because they are not. How do you do that? I don’t know. I’ll do my best to figure it out I suppose.

For now, I will celebrate what is mine, and I hope my girls can adopt the candid freedom to enjoy their bodies as they are as well.

Let’s see if I do it again in another 10.