// Behind the scenes. A photo and the story behind it!

I had been a chubby little girl since childhood, Grandma's favourite. The people around me expressed love through food, and I kept gaining weight. Then came teasing and exclusion from others, and I escaped into the happiness sweets gave me. Eventually I reached the point where I wanted a relationship. But until I could love myself, I could not expect someone else to accept me either. Like many people in that situation, I began building walls around myself.

According to my cousin, red lipstick — and red underwear — are compulsory after forty. After she made that statement, I stared at her blankly while my mind raced to find a way to prove her wrong. Surely it could not be that simple. You cannot just paint your lips red and suddenly become a Woman. And yet, somewhere beneath my resistance, another thought was already floating quietly: She might actually be right.

For a long time I had been carrying the thought that I wanted an artistic nude photo series of myself. Why? At the time, I could not really explain it. It was simply a feeling. One evening I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw Norbi's invitation for an artistic nude session. Afterwards, the model could write about her thoughts and the story would appear as an article on his website. I immediately thought: yes, this is what I need. Here is the opportunity.

When she walked out of the studio, I already knew that something impossible to put into words had happened inside her. Perhaps the change came in the second she saw the photograph we had made. She saw herself as beautiful, even though for the previous four years — since she felt cancer had taken away her femininity — she had not dared to look at herself in the mirror. “This is a miracle,” she said softly while wiping tears from her face.

This story is one of the chapters from our book A Woman's World, created together with Miklós Vámos. The camera clicks, and all I hear Norbi say is: "This picture is so beautiful. Tell me about your journey — we're making a book." I didn't want to look back, but then one morning I picked up a pen… I was born 45 years ago in a village near the border, in the Partium region of Transylvania, barely seven kilometres from the Hungarian frontier.

This story is one of the stories from our book A Nő világa (The World of Women), created together with Miklós Vámos. (Trigger Warning: This post discusses sexual abuse.) Have you ever felt that you were not where you belonged? That you did not know who you were or which path was yours? That you were searching for yourself but had no idea how to move forward? When rejection seems to come from everywhere and everyone, and you cannot understand what you are doing wrong?