How Boudoir Photography Challenged My Definition of Beauty | Chicago Boudoir Photography Studio 

Written by:  Katie Kastner

In my 38 years of being a woman on planet Earth, I’ve been shown and told by society that beauty was big hair and too much eyeshadow, tragically skinny and bare faced, overly frosted and plucked, skinny but with curves, airbrushed but not in real life. I’ve had the “ideal” of female beauty shoved down my throat since I was old enough to recognize shampoo commercials by the cascade of iridescent hair…and I can bet you did too.

Well I’m here to tell you, they got it all wrong.  Female beauty, from a historical standpoint, is as ever changing as the weather. Trends, preferred body types, fashion and the ideal are different depending on the decade you and yourself in. Living in the 21st century, and with almost countless sources of information, female beauty and its definition has become a bit muddied and I think this is a great thing! There aren’t just one or two definitions of beauty, there are a multitude and women have the freedom, now more than ever, to define it for themselves.

When I joined the team at Boudoir by Elle Photography as the makeup artist, I figured I would meet some great women, have a blast and be a part of a really cool experience. Boudoir photography, as I had known it, was maybe a bit cheesy, sometimes overtly sexy and not always a celebration but more of an objectification. But the boudoir photography Laurie creates is miles away from that; it’s emotive and sensual, it’s deeply beautiful and subtle. It’s as special and original as the women themselves.

…’I am in awe during each and every session at the tenacity of the female spirit and how that comes through in the photographs. I leave each session feeling emboldened with that spirit; I go out into the world with each of these stories tucked away and inspiration for my own life.’

Each and every woman that has sat in my chair brings their own story. They come to us with a very clear reason for wanting to do a boudoir session and each reason is as individual as they are. They want to celebrate a milestone, they want to see themselves in a way they never have, they want to create images they can gift as tokens of love, they want to push outside their comfort zones and challenge definitions, they simply want to do something that’s just for them.

The beauty we see when our clients step in front of the camera can’t be captured by an Instagram post, it can’t be explained in a magazine article, it can’t be defined by anyone else’s checklist. The beauty we see in our studio is born from living lives full of all the messy, beautiful, hard, joyous things that make a woman who she is. We see strength that no trend can hold in, we see resilience that no self-help book can prescribe.  Our clients are living examples of true beauty. I am in awe during each and every session at the tenacity of the female spirit and how that comes through in the photographs. I leave each session feeling emboldened with that spirit; I go out into the world with each of these stories tucked away and inspiration for my own life. I’m learning, thanks to our amazing clients, to not worry so much about the world’s definition of me and my woman-ness.