Through the Prism: Living with Body Dysmorphia
Photographs & text by Vaishnavi V.K.
We learned our names from restless glass, from borrowed eyes that judged too fast.
The mirror taught a thinner truth to doubt our skin, to question youth.
Now softer sight rewrites the view I look at me the way I’d look at you.
The voice I thought was mine.
The body learned a language I never chose.
The weight of expectations.
Blinded by society.
The Modern-Day Mirror as the Enemy.
Softness as Resistance.
I learned to see myself like a problem to be solved, counting the flaws, measuring the empty spaces.
But this body kept waking up for me, holding my quiet days, my loud laughter, my stubborn, tender hopes. Now I meet it more softly, not enemy, not stranger, just a place I live. Some mornings I forget. Most mornings I try.
And slowly, like light near a window, I am learning to stay a little longer.