This blindfolded woman stripped down in public for an important reason

By Kit steinkellner

August 17, 2015

By Kit steinkellner

August 17, 2015

Things got a little wild last weekend in London’s public thoroughfare Piccadilly Circus as Jae West ventured into the fray, stripped down to her underwear and tied a blindfold over her eyes. West was armed with a whiteboard, several marker pens, and a powerful message about body positivity.

As the Huffington Post UK reports, West’s whiteboard displayed the following message:

“I’m standing here for anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder or body image issue like me… To support self-acceptance draw a ‘<3’ on my body.”

West works with a group called The Liberators, a social movement that creates public and private events to encourage people to participate in acts of unconditional kindness. West was inspired by Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk, “The Art of Asking,” in which Palmer describes taking off all her clothes and allowing fans to write whatever they wanted on her naked body. So inspired, in fact, that West decided to put her own spin on the idea, and created an experience that dealt with West’s own personal history of eating and body image disorders.

Thought West was a hundred percent committed to spreading body positivity awareness with this bold experiment, she still had her fair share of nervousness going into the experience. As she writes on The Liberators’ blog:

“My heart was racing while all the worst case scenarios were going through my head. I was scared that no one was going to draw a love heart on my body and I was going to be left out there in the open in my underwear on show to be ridiculed.”

West goes on to explain what it felt like to have the first heart drawn upon her skin:

“As the minutes passed it felt like hours…All of a sudden I felt one of the pens in my left hand slip out of my grasp. The feeling of the felt pen was on my skin was one of the most overwhelming feelings of relief, gratitude and love that I’ve ever felt. I just burst into tears. I don’t know who that first person was but I am so thankful for their contribution. After that first love heart was drawn it felt like others were liberated to follow suit because soon all the pens were leaving my hands at a rapid pace!”

We love the leap of faith West took with this experiment and how her act of bravery prompted pedestrians to thoughtfully consider the issue her experiment explored, and reward her courage with kindness.

As follows, a video that recounts the experience, which has, as of this writing, racked up over 100,000 views on YouTube: