Whether you call them your ‘tiger stripes’, ‘lightning strikes’, or ‘mummy medals’, one things for sure – stretch marks should be celebrated, loved, and embraced from women (and men) across the world.
One woman on a mission to help women do that is Barcelona-based artist and feminist Cinta Tort Cartró, who is turning women’s stretch marks into beautiful works of art and showing the world there is no shame in your body’s natural evolution.
Known as ‘Zinteta’ on social media, the artist’s page is flooded with colourful images of women whose stretch marks have been emphasised with an array of rainbow-hued, pastel-coloured and neon lines to champion what women have long felt the need to cover up, erase or reduce the appearance of.
The 21-year-old artist told Yahoo Beauty her project ‘all started as a form of expression, but it quickly turned into social commentary of the male-dominated culture we live in’.
“I grew up feeling sometimes out of place. I’m tall and big, so it’s important for me to state in my art that everyone is beautiful and those ‘flaws’ are not that. They make us unique and special,” she added.
In several of her images, she inspires women to appreciate their ‘stripes’ with captions that range from ‘Tu cuerpo, tu casa, tu decides (your body, your home, you decide)’ to ‘Obsérvalas, léelas, descúbrelas y ámalas (look at the them, read them, discover them, and love them)’.
She ends many of her posts, encouraging women to learn to love their marks, writing: ‘Quererse es un acto revolucionario (Loving yourself is a revolutionary act).
However, it’s not just the stretch mark taboo that Zinteta is addressing.
Her Instagram feed is glittered with beautiful images of rainbow-stained underwear and rainbow-speckled thighs to represent period stains.
Others show models standing with flowers over their nipples posted with the hashtag ‘#freethenipple’ to encourage society to rid the world of shame and stigmas surrounding the body’s natural form.
Remember, each stretch mark signifies your strength, power to overcome adversity, and are gorgeous little momentos from life, not to be hidden away.
We’re not going to lie, we’re feeling pretty tempted to paint our stretch marks right now. Someone fetch the paintbrush.
From: ELLE UK
