Hairpolitan Magazine Vol 2 Oct-Nov 2016

LIFE
FLAWNTING
HER NATURAL SELF
By Nali Wafula Imende
I meet Taruri at a bustling café on Kimathi Street; she is
finishing up another meeting. She gives me a warm hug
and offers me a seat. Taruri has the easy confidence of a
woman at peace with herself, her natural hair is done up
in loose twists, her face is make up free and an easy
smile plays on her lips. She is beautiful!
At just 31 Taruri is a trained fashion designer, a life coach,
an amateur vegan chef and the creator of Flawnt It Love.
FlawntIt is an online website that lets people celebrate
their perceived flaws on a safe platform to share and
embrace the things we may feel conscious about. Taruri
decided to start the site as a way to deal with her own
and other people’s insecurities about their bodies.
Taruri says she begun to feel insecure about her body when she was about 14- 15 years old. Her family
was generally health conscious, in a positive way; and though there was a lot of attention on weight she
says she always felt beautiful growing up. “But when I went to high school and started getting a little
hippy- when I look at the pictures now I was so skinny so I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I guess
because I was an early bloomer
people would make comments like
“Oh My God your hips! And I was
just like what are these things and
where did they come from.” To
divert attention from her
blossoming body, Taruri began to
wear baggy clothing.
“I noticed my cellulite when I was 12
or 13 and I thought, oh dimples,
because you know dimples are
cute.” But as she got older she
remembers her older sister
mentioning how cellulite is
disgusting and when she asked her
sister what it was, she replied, “You
know those dimples!” I just thought
“Oh my god.”
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“It was one of the scariest things I’ve done in my life
because on social media, you know, you want to paint
the best picture of your life, capture the best moments,
even if you take pictures you want filters so...the fact
that it was so raw and my insecurity was just there.
Halfway through my shoot I started crying like, ‘I can’t
do this.’”
Taruri laughs and admits that she was so anxious the
night before the shoot she downed some shots. “I think
it was a journey through my own insecurities with my
physical body, coupled with seeing the frustration other
people had with their physical flaws that made me
realise this was such a universal issue. I also realised it
would be more powerful if I shared it and also drew in
other people to tell their stories”
After the first picture of her was posted as a teaser,
Taruri was inundated with requests from people curious
about what she was doing and eager to take part. “With
my head cut off, you couldn’t even tell it was me, we
wrote a short description along the lines of, ‘Have you
ever struggled with your flaws?’ We did not even write
anything calling people to join us, but so many people
responded asking to be a part of it.” she says.
Thanks to the powerful reaction, the picture garnered
Taruri realised that this was something that was bigger
than just one story and it snowballed from there. “I get
messages even now, every week someone is like can I
take part in this? The Facebook page is always full of
messages saying thank you for telling this story or I
identify with this person because I’ve gone through the
same thing”
“
YOUR PHYSICAL
BODY IS NOT THE
SUM TOTAL OF
WHO YOU ARE.
Taruri Gatere
Images of Taruri Gatere
by Teddy Mitchener Photography
“
What was even more powerful for Taruri, were
the people in her own life who were going
through struggles that she knew nothing about
but were now able to open up to her. “There is
one person who told me she is now able to wear
sleeveless things for the first time in her life
because she always felt insecure about her arms
since she was a kid…I mean that really made me
feel so happy.”
Taruri says the new awareness made
her avoid activities like swimming, “I
even wore bikers with a swimming
costume.” But after a while, she
became tired of hiding and decided
to be brave “…even though I didn’t
feel brave inside and still wondered
if people were staring, I decided to
just wear a swimming costume. I
pushed myself but would still feel
insecure about it.”
For Taruri, body acceptance has
been a journey “I feel a lot more
confident now but there are still
days when I feel… I just look in the
mirror and feel urgh.” Her shift
happened in 2010 - 2011 and she
remembers just feeling so tired of
constantly thinking about her body,
worrying about what she is wearing,
what people are thinking. “And
what happened was, because of all these insecurities I had actually started developing an eating
disorder, In fact, I was anorexic for a while in high school but I stopped then it came back again.
It was on and off.”
Taruri says she could feel the effect it was having on her body and she could foresee her health failing
her in the future. “I was exhausted and that’s when the concept of FlawntIt came to me but it was more
of a personal thing, I wasn’t even thinking of telling other people’s stories.”
For young girls going through body image issues, Taruri shares some advice: “Your physical body is not
the sum total of who you are, it is a vehicle that carries a spirit and a soul, there is so much emphasis put
on how you look (especially as women), it is so ridiculous, there is so much more that we are capable of,
there is so much more that we are than our physical body.”
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