Women wear beach cover-ups to hide them, buy creams to fade them, and look at magazines in envy of those without them. Stretch marks are a normal part of many women’s bodies, but they have been deemed a flaw by society.
That’s why this 21-year-old artist feels it’s time to turn our insecurities into works of art.
Cintra Tort Cartro, known online as Zineta, creates art that celebrates the female body—including painting colorful neon streaks over stretch marks to highlight this very natural condition of our skin.
In an interview with metro.co.uk in Spanish, Cartro said she wants to inspire people to consider the beauty in the parts of themselves they’ve been told to hate.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWapkDXhhRA/?taken-by=zinteta&hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWR5kdNB5fC/?taken-by=zinteta&hl=en
Embracing self-love is something the Barcelona native is familiar with, having struggled with an eating disorder in the past. “I wanted to have the perfect body society accepts,” said Cartro.
While the road to self-acceptance wasn’t easy, Cartro said she’s glad she made it through. The artist recently graduated from the University of Barcelona with a teaching degree, but instead of using the standard classroom setting, she’s teaching women about self-love and feminism through her Instagram account.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BT1VxTzBSDM/?taken-by=zinteta&hl=en
“There are many things happening in my town that I couldn’t be silent on, such as the male microaggression toward the female body. I know there are countries that have it worse than here in Spain, but I couldn’t stay silent,” Cartro told Yahoo! Beauty.
She has continued to speak out against female body stigmas on social media and recently began the project “Mancho y no me doy asco (I’m not disgusted by my stains).” The movement was meant to normalize female menstruation by covering the crotches of underwear in bright, mesmerizing glitter.
“We live in 2017. Why is there still stigma revolving around periods?” she said.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVUz4Vuhld8/?taken-by=zinteta&hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVhM4nMBQDh/?taken-by=zinteta&hl=en
With over 13,000 followers on Instagram, it seems many are also wondering why we can’t celebrate what nature gave us.