Why Women Cry with Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
Why Women Cry with Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
The Portrait Experience • St. Louis
It happens with almost every session. A week or two after their photoshoot, each client comes back to the studio for their reveal session to view their photos. We hug, talk about how she’s feeling since her session, and she tells me how excited and anxious she is to see her photos for the first time.
I click play on the slideshow, and aside from the background music, the room goes silent. She stares at the screen, speechless. Then come the tears.
Yes, Many Women Cry Seeing Their Photos
She came in for her photoshoot feeling nervous. She told me she wasn’t photogenic and she even considered canceling her shoot. But she showed up, stood in front of my camera here in my St. Louis studio, and did the damn thing. What started with the awkward laughter you have when feeling self-conscious quickly turned to genuine smiles and ended with her embracing and baring every bit of herself (literally and figuratively). She then returned to the studio for her photo reveal, had a seat in front of the tv, and she cried.
“That’s me. I didn’t know I looked like that. I didn’t know I was that…beautiful.”
I’ve heard some version of those words more times than I can count, and every single time, I feel the tears welling up in my eyes feeling the privilege of being a part of this moment.
Here’s what I want you to understand about those tears: they’re not about the photographs. They’re not sad tears, but they’re not always tears of joy, either; they’re something so much more.
When That Voice Finally Goes Quiet
Most women spend decades at war with their reflection. That inner critic shows up uninvited every morning in the mirror. Too soft here, too much there, the wrong age, the wrong shape…the list goes on. We learn to move through the world managing our visibility instead of inhabiting our bodies.
A portrait session like this disrupts that pattern. For a few hours in my St. Louis studio, your only job is to be present. To be seen, not despite who you are but because of who you are. To not be defined by how your body looks but celebrated for everything it has been through. To feel worthy whether you’re in the middle of a career pivot, or the other side of a hard chapter, or another decade has snuck up on you. To do something just for yourself as the one who has been taking care of everyone else for so long you’ve stopped asking for what you need.
When the images come back and you see yourself as the camera did, as I did, that critical voice stutters. And sometimes, when it finally shuts up, the relief is so enormous that it has nowhere to go but out through your eyes.
When You’re Finally Being Seen
You show up fully for so many people. For your partner, your kids, your career, your friends (even when they need you at 11pm.) You pour out and pour out and empty your cup without stopping to ask: who actually sees me? Not the version of me that holds it all together and makes sure everything is perfect, but the whole complicated, tender, strong, uncertain, luminous me?
Your photoshoot isn’t about making you look like someone you’re not, and it’s not about just looking sexy or pretty or insert whatever adjective here. It certainly isn’t about adding to my portfolio or going through some checklist of poses. You come to Boudie City for an afternoon devoted entirely to you, shaped around how you actually look and feel and want to be seen. The wardrobe, the light, the direction, the edit, all of it is in service of one thing: an honest, stunning portrait experience of you at this exact point in your life.
Feeling seen by someone else (and yourself), I meaan feeling really seen, tends to crack something open in the best possible way.
When You Reclaim Something You Thought You Lost
Somewhere along this road called life, most of us stop feeling like we’re enough. It rarely happens all at once but instead accumulates over a bunch of small moments: a throwaway comment, a photo we hated, a season of life that asked us to disappear into caretaking. The slow fade of something we used to love about ourselves.
Women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are often in the middle of enormous transitions, and it’s never just one thing at a time. It’s a career shift, a relationship changing, kids growing up. Your body looks and feels different, and your identity adjusts with all of the changes. It can be frustrating to navigate, but it’s also a rich, complicated, powerful place to be. And it deserves to be documented.
Looking at beautiful images of yourself, images you didn’t expect to exist, has a way of giving something back. Not vanity; a memory. A reminder that you are always in there, even when you don’t see or feel it.
The tears are proof that something real happened. Not just beautiful pictures, but a shift inside you. Growth.
What Happens After the Tears
This is my favorite part. After the tears come the laughs. The disbelief. The awe. The “Wait, let me see that one again!” The confidence. The message I get three days later that says something like: “I just pulled up my gallery, and I cannot stop staring. I feel different.“
You walk out of my studio standing a little taller. That tightness in your shoulders and gut has loosened. You’ve been reminded of who you are in a way that tends to stay. Your photographs may be the physical proof of your empowerment, but the experience holds the real transformation inside.
You Don’t Have to Feel Ready
The women who cry the hardest at their reveal are almost always the ones who almost didn’t book. The ones who told me this wasn’t really their thing or that they’re too awkward. The ones who showed up the most afraid are usually the ones who left feeling the most changed.
You don’t have to feel confident yet. You don’t have to be at your goal weight or past the hard thing or finally at a place where you feel like you’ve earned it. You just have to show up. The rest of it takes care of itself.
If you’ve been thinking about doing something like this and something in you keeps saying “but not me,” I’d love to talk. That voice is exactly why we should. I promise, the tears will be worth it.
Curious what your photoshoot could look like?
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