Irina, 33

I was a very skinny professional model, but then I decided I don’t want to be on a diet all my life. I think you can look beautiful with a rounder shape. The magazines and videos suggesting that you have to be skinny are wrong. Those images just stick in your head! They make a lot of people feel insecure about themselves. If you are healthy, you look beautiful. If your shape is not skinny, you can’t make it skinny. If you try to make your body something it isn’t then you are not going to be beautiful.

I like myself. I think maybe a few less pounds would not be bad for me, but otherwise I’m fine. I don’t have a complex about my body. I think that is what makes me feel free to do this shoot in the nude. Sometimes I buy magazines to see a beautiful woman’s body. I think the female form is beautiful in general. So why not me, too? If others can be beautiful, why not me? (Laughs).

To have a woman be herself: that is beauty. Size does not matter; people have different taste. Not everybody likes skinny bodies. There are people who like round bodies like mine; we should not feel any lesser. We should take care of ourselves and be beautiful from the inside out.