Staff Feature Saturday: Boudoir Blogger Finds Self-Love in a Glittery Gown

July is a beloved month at Jezebel VonZephyr. Why? Because it’s JVZ’s birthday month! We’re celebrating all month long with a special blog series that highlights the Jezebel team. Every Saturday in July we spotlight one of the JVZ team members so that you, our lovely readers and clients, can learn more about us! 

Our final feature is on our very own Wizard of Words, our magical blogger extraordinaire: Krissy! She was our very first Project Fan Girl participant and has been a cheerleader and supporter of Jezebel VonZephyr ever since she first stepped into our studio! She’s thrilled to be blogging for JVZ and she has a lot to say so let’s get to it!

Who are you? Hello! I’m Krissy, an elder millennial, musical-loving Disney dork and pet parent who’s so happy to be a part of the Jezebel VonZephyr family!

How long have you been a part of the Jezebel team? And what do you do? I had my first shoot in March 2018 and immediately fell in love with the JVZ philosophy and team. I became a Brand Ambassador and was then offered the amazing opportunity to blog after my term ended in early 2019! I’m Jezebel’s blogger so I basically write all the words you see on the site and blog. I’ve been with the team for over two years and I still pinch myself because this is seriously a dream gig. I get to work with some of my favorite friends and uplift and support women from all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond? Am I dreaming?!?

What is your theme song? Uuugh, I love SO MANY songs. This question is hard! And I wrote it, so I’ve been thinking about it a lot! Right now I’d say I have two theme songs: “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen and “Jump” by Madonna. And on the hard days my go-to song is “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman. I also really love “Champion” by Bishop Briggs–that song fires me up so much!

When you’re not doing Jezebel things, what do you do? I spend an obscene amount of time spoiling my pets. I have a rescue dog, Ms. Maeby Moo, who is a sassy Corgi-terrier-Doxie mix and a very fluffy cat named Aaron Purr that I adopted during the quarantine. I also have a husband who I love to adventure around with. My hobbies include reading, writing, crafting (mostly cross stitching and mixed media art), rewatching The Office for the 1,973rd time, reading oracle cards, drinking caffeine, wandering bookstores and flea markets, and napping.

What are three words you’d use to describe yourself? Loud. Creative. Magical. 

What three words do you think the JVZ team would use to describe you? Oh god, do I want to know? Haha! JKJKJK – I know they love me! Sara calls me magical all the time! I think they’d also use the word “unicorn”. And dorky because I’m the biggest dork! (Here’s a secret: the whole Jezebel team is dorky. It’s why we work so well together!

Do you have a favorite drink? This sounds weird but I am obsessed with Starbucks water. Did you know it’s triple-filtered? It is and it’s delicious! I also love basically any kind of caffeine. I’m not much of a drinker, but I’ll never refuse a good Old Fashioned.

What’s your favorite season? Why? FALL. OMG I LOVE FALL. I even did a whole fall look during my team shoot I love it so fucking much!!! I love the colors and the chill in the air. I love how crisp the atmosphere is and how lovely it is as the world transitions. I love the shorter days and longer nights. I love how spooky it feels as the end of October nears. I feel powerful and magical in the fall and love how cozy it is. I could wax poetic about autumn all day long!

What is your favorite swear word? I love all forms of the word “fuck” but “fuckery” is probably my favorite. 

Would you like to share a random fact about yourself? Ooooh! I’ll share a few! 

• I graduated from high school in a class of 16 students. (I told you all I was from a rural area!) 
• I love red lipstick and own over 75 different variations, shades and types of it. Why do I know this? Because I catalogued them all during the pandemic lockdown. My go-to lipsticks tend to be liquid lipsticks that dry down quickly. The Maybelline Super Stay Matte Ink formula is amazing, especially when you’re wearing a mask, FYI! 
• I am an avid collector of things! What kind of things? All kinds of things! I have a crow brain so I like all things pretty and shiny. I have a fairly epic purse collection (and the team likes to tease me about it from time to time). I am super obsessed with office and school supplies, so I have many, many, MANY pens and notebooks. (The back-to-school section is my happy place!!) And I’m a bookworm, so I’m a sucker for pretty books. I’m quite proud of the little library I’m curating in my home office! 
• I read oracle cards and I fully credit Jezebel VonZephyr and the support of the team for helping me to truly tap into my intuition and this gift. I would never have had the courage to read for anyone beside myself without their encouragement and support.

What book do you recommend to all your friends? My favorite book of all time is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It’s beautiful and the prose is simply magical. I love it so much I collect special editions of the book–I have around four different editions right now and I’m on the hunt for a couple more, including a really gorgeous signed leather-bound one. I recommend it to everyone and gift it to friends from time to time. I’d love to do a Night Circus themed set some day! 

A book that changed my life and helped me on my journey of radical self-love is The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s a small book but it’s fucking powerful. I have highlighted passages and notes on basically every page. It’s like a hundred pages long but it took a couple of months to read because I was digesting and processing all of the amazing information. I recommend it to anyone who wants to have a better relationship with their body.

Do you have a favorite JVZ shoot look or outfit? Or outfits?  I have a few favorites for different reasons! I loved my Dwight Schrute/The Office look because I had put together a cosplay for ECCC 2020 and never got to use it due to Covid. I took most of it to the studio and made lemonade out of lemons. I love my photos from that set so much! I also love the spring flower goddess look I did during my Soul2Soul session. I wore pearls, a flower crown, and not much else and felt so fucking amazing!

But my favorite outfit is from my first session. The full-length rose gold sequined gown that I wore as a part of my Project Fan Girl shoot quite literally changed my life. When Sara first showed me the dress I thought “there is no fucking way that I am going to fit into that.”

She noticed my hesitation with it and asked why. I told her that I didn’t think I could fit into it and she and Tiffany paused everything to talk me through it and assure me that I would fit into it. I started crying–as a fat woman I’m not used to being able to wear beautiful clothing. I’d gotten accustomed to having fewer options and settling for things that just fit my body, so I didn’t think something as stunning as that gown would fit.

To hear Sara and Tiffany say that not only would it fit, but that I would look gorgeous in it totally blew my mind and challenged me to think about clothes and myself in new ways. The fact that such a gorgeous gown was readily available and accessible to any woman who stepped into the studio spoke volumes to me and made me feel so welcomed and seen. My heart grew so much in that moment.

Later, when I was wearing the gown, I felt like royalty. It fit like a glove and I could feel myself opening up in new ways as I was shot in it.

Sara showed me one of the photos – and my stomach dropped.

I may have felt amazing in the dress, but when I saw that photo all I could focus on was my stomach and how big I thought I looked. I wanted to throw up because I didn’t think I looked beautiful at all.

But because I’d spent hours with the Jezebel team by that point, I’d been so loved up that I’d started to see myself differently already. Even though I initially reacted negatively to the image of my body, I thought to myself “what if I chose to look at myself differently starting now? What if I showed myself love? What if I chose me and accepted ALL of me EXACTLY as I am in this moment?”

And, while wearing that gorgeous rose gold gown, that is exactly what I did: I chose me and took my first step on a new journey of radical self-acceptance and love. That gown is powerful, friends! You all should try it on. 😉 

What advice do you have for anyone coming in for their first shoot? Don’t overthink things. I live in my head and grapple daily with anxiety and I almost convinced myself a hundred times over that I should not do a Jezebel session. Even while driving to my first shoot I almost turned around several times because I was in my head and questioning myself. But I chose to lean into the fear and go through with it because my desire to do something for myself was greater than my fear.

Lean into your fear. Befriend it. Get to know why it exists. Then work through it and do your JVZ shoot for you. You deserve to prioritize yourself, no matter how much your anxiety and fear tries to convince yourself otherwise.

Can you share one of your favorite JVZ memories? It is WAY too hard to choose one! I have a few, but this one makes me laugh, even three years later, so I’ll share it. When we were planning my first shoot, I was in a group chat with Sara, Tiffany and Kaitlyn and we were brainstorming looks and ideas for my Project Fan Girl session. Tiffany, being the creative genius she is, asked me the day after she’d first met me: “how do you feel about being nude, covered in glitter and surrounded by bubbles and Disney?” I said yes so fucking fast I think it shocked us all! I knew in that moment that the Jezebel team members were some of my soulmates.

What are your biggest hopes and dreams for Jezebel VonZephyr? I want every woman to experience a Jezebel shoot. What Sara and the JVZ team has created is nothing short of magic – they help women fall in love with themselves! I have seen so many lives change after they’ve done a session. It’s amazing to witness!

I want the JVZ community to continue to grow. I hope that Jezebel continues to help and inspire people to build better relationships with their bodies and themselves. Every person is worthy of a healthy, uplifting relationship with themself!

I want women to know their worth, step into their power, set boundaries, flip off the world, roar, and soar.

Jezebel helps kick start that process and I am HERE FOR IT.  I want an army of Jezebel queens running the world and taking no shit. That’s what I want!

Anything else you want to share with everyone? If you’re thinking at all about doing a boudoir shoot or you feel drawn to the JVZ studio, then you should 1000% DO A SHOOT.

I wanted to do a boudoir session for years and held off because I thought that I needed to lose weight and have a fuck-ton of confidence in order to do a session. I finally realized that I looked cute just as I was, so I started researching body positive Seattle boudoir studios, which is how I found and fell in love with Jezebel VonZephyr. I talked to Kaitlyn for a decent amount of time before I finally had the courage to say “yes, let’s go!”  

I am so grateful to Past Krissy for having the bravery to book a shoot. It’s fucking changed my life in ways I could have never imagined–and I’ve seen so many other women’s lives change because they were brave enough to step in front of Sara’s camera.

If you find yourself wanting to do a session, but you keep talking yourself out of it because you’re waiting for the perfect time or the perfect body, hear me when I say this: you are perfect exactly as you are. NOW is the perfect time. You are so fucking beautiful and so fucking worthy and you deserve to give yourself the gift of a Jezebel boudoir session. Don’t put it off. Seriously. Life is too short to procrastinate on those things that spark your heart and soul. 

The Jezebel VonZephyr team works hard to help women see themselves in a new light. We are proud of the community we’re creating and the experience that we get to give to women. Jezebel VonZephyr believes that boudoir is for every woman, regardless of her age, race, size, fears, or budget. Krissy was brave enough to say yes to herself and it changed her life in profound ways. The same thing could happen to you! We invite you to book your own session, where you’ll be pampered, supported, and start to see yourself as the worthy and beautiful person that you are!