This Body, Too: Reflections on Sophie Tea’s Nudes and Learning to Be Seen
Trigger Warning: This piece includes discussion of disordered eating and body image struggles. Please take care while reading.
first found Sophie Tea on TikTok during her GROW collection. I was immediately struck not just by the color, but by the energy. Her joy felt electric. The way she spoke about creativity, about experimentation, about pushing herself to do something bold lit something up in me. I am a visual artist too, and watching her work made me want to create with more freedom. She made me want to be better, braver, louder, more myself.
Later, when she began sharing her Nudes series, an ever-growing project painting hundreds of real bodies in all their shape, stretch, softness, and color, I felt something shift. These were not anonymous figures posed for someone else’s gaze. These were people painted with joy and intention. Bodies you rarely see celebrated in media or traditional art spaces, rendered in full, glowing color.
It was not lost on me that I had never seen bodies like mine shown that way, with such love.
I have carried body image pain for as long as I can remember. I was a gymnast as a kid and constantly compared my body to others. At the pool, extended family called me thunder thighs. At home, quiet comments were made when my stomach or legs began to change. I have vivid memories, starting around the age of twelve, of comparing myself to every other girl I saw. Every body felt like a measurement I was failing.
In high school and college, I cycled through periods of binging and restriction. After graduation, things became worse. I spiraled into patterns of disordered eating that still echo through my life today. There were years when I counted every bite and punished every calorie, believing I had to “earn” each one through a strict routine of exercise.
At no point did I think my body was worthy. Not of attention, not of kindness, not of love. Not from others, and certainly not from me.
I could never be the so-called “old standard” of beauty. I was short, hippy, soft. I did not see bodies like mine represented in art or media. And while to some I was considered smaller, the world still found ways to tell me I was not small enough, tall enough, good enough.
When I look at Sophie Tea’s Nudes, I feel a mix of comfort, joy, and grief. Comfort because it is soothing to see softness held with reverence. Joy because her colors are full of life, movement, and celebration. Grief because I am still learning to believe in that kind of love for myself. And yes, envy too. Not just of the bodies, but of the freedom they seem to radiate.
I wish my younger self could have seen this. Could have known there was never just one acceptable way to be. That the idea of a single standard of beauty was always a lie, an empty mold built to keep us questioning our worth. I wish I had been kinder to myself. I put my body through so much, physically and emotionally, and I am still learning how to come back to it with care.
I am not sure I have reached the point where I would feel safe being painted myself. It is hard to even imagine it. But I want to work toward that. I want to believe that this body, scarred, changing, alive, is still worth being seen.
Sophie Tea did not just paint bodies. She painted a world where we all deserve to take up space. Where beauty is not a currency or a competition. Where every curve and crease belongs. It is art that gently and defiantly pushes back against the ways we have been taught to shrink.
And slowly, maybe, I am learning that I belong too.
