Does Empowerment Come From Boudoir Photoshoots?

How I am learning to love my body and find empowerment after sexual assault.

One of the biggest messages of our time is empowerment—take control of your life again and live like you own yourself, because you do. Blast your intimate story online for the world to see to show that you aren’t afraid of it or those it involves anymore. Post those intimate pictures of yourself topless, pantless, or whatever feels most empowering to show the world that you don’t care what they think of your body. Do a lingerie or boudoir photoshoot and post it online to tell the world you love your body and that it’s not for their personal use. Put yourself and all your most withheld parts out for your lovers and haters to see to prove that you are no longer held captive to the traditions and arbitrary rules of others. Then you will be free. 

Yet what I often see is that people leave these moments much less empowered and far less confident than they were to begin with. While this kind of exposure truly is healing for some, for others it seems to be a step backwards in their healing. The defense shields rise in the comments section as they scream at those who either object to their sharing or find it offensive to look at. They’re now aware of more people who don’t believe their story, which re-traumatizes them. They bare their teeth at those who report their content. They seek to be more empowered through more raw social media posts like this one, but each time they leave with a longer list of people they have blocked and more triggered than they were before they made the post.

I’m not sure this cycle is empowering for everyone.

Lady Lilith (1867), vintage woman painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Henry Treffry Dunn

I’m a victim of sexual assault, and I have no desire to expose my body to a photographer or the internet to be examined and critiqued. At times I long to post every candid and gritty essay I’ve written about my abuse—yet I know in the shadows of my heart that what I’m truly after is affirmation and revenge. I wonder if those who get hurt online are after the same thing too, and that’s why it hurts so much when people respond with the exact opposite response. 

Power was taken from me; control was exercised over my body. I was made to feel small and helpless to a man much bigger than me, in more ways than one. I want power again. I want control. Even more, I do feel like my body is broken and disgraced. There are days I want to remove the parts of me that were violated so I and no one else can ever see them again. Where do I find healing if not through showing my body to the world and proclaiming my story to anyone who will listen? I’m learning the beauty of being hidden in Christ. 

He sees affliction; he sees my helpless estate. 

He knows my oppressor; he knows I am the victim. 

He made my body; he declares it good and clean.

He sees the inner workings of my ravaged mind; he promises to deliver me. 

After being used and tossed aside by the chosen man of God, Hagar wept in the desert in hopeless despair. She had so little hope that she left her child under a tree so she wouldn’t have to watch him die. In her helpless, broken estate, God came to her rescue and delivered her. She named him El Roi. 

While being believed brings healing for victims, if I rely solely on others or find power from my own maimed self, the mending I receive will be fragmented. It will rely on a flimsy foundation, made of brittle boards and crumpling cement. The moment one of them inevitably gives way—either myself or those who affirmed me—my restoration does too. It’s like when an unknowing, HGTV-obsessed person seeks to remodel an ugly home with bad bones; their home makeover will not outlast the crooked joists and beams underneath. I must find my worth, rest, identity, and courage in what’s lasting and eternal, in what will never tarnish under the blaze of sin.

I hope to someday share more of my story, but I want to do so from a heart to point others to God and how he truly is a Deliverer when it seems life is anything but just. I want to wait until God has taught me to trust that vengeance is his and I am quieted before him with trust. Until then, I hold these stories close for those God has brought into my life to act as his hands and feet for me. While the Holy Spirit carries my sobs and recitations of Psalms to the pierced feet of Jesus, the Father sends his people and even those who do not know him to wipe my tears, fill my fridge, and fight for my justice. 

Until then, each day, I strive to bear it all before him. I see my body as full of gruesome marks, marred by a man who believed he could do whatever he liked to it, and lay it before my Deliverer as I get dressed. I bring the fragments of my anxious, despairing mind before him, begging him to somehow knit it back together and redeem it. I take every report of disbelief I hear others whisper or my paranoid mind reminds me of and I cry out to El Roi, the God who sees. My strength, resolve, and fortitude come from him.