A woman in Texas was recently fired from her company after some salty manager somewhere (probably) saw her in a series of steamy boudoir-style photos. Photographer Bria Terry of Wolf & Rose Photography posted the photos to their Facebook a couple of weeks ago, where they quickly went viral for their body positive message.
The photos were shared over 85,000 times and feature intimate shots of a woman named Stephanie with her fiance Arryn, both hailing from from Overton, Texas. The sensual shots racked up over 10,000 Facebook comments, many of them in praise of the photographer and couple for showing a “real woman” and not shying away from sexy plus size imagery.
Both the photographer and subject raved about the photo shoot in interviews with Buzzfeed. Said Terry of the couple: “I’ve honestly never seen two people more in love. The way he looks at her in those photos, that’s an all-the-time thing with him. He treats her like she hung the moon and the stars.”
Stephanie was feeling it, too.
“I wasn’t worrying about how I looked, I was just looking at Arryn and that made me feel confident,” Stephanie told BuzzFeed. “He looks at me all the time, but the way he looked at me during the photo shoot, I could feel it was different because I could focus on him.”
Soon after the photos went viral, Stephanie’s employer Austin Bank Texas N.A. let her go, saying they were concerned about how the images would reflect on the company. “They said I was topless and it was inappropriate and we’re a family-oriented company.”
They didn’t even give her a chance to defend herself, although there really shouldn’t be anything to defend herself from in the first place.
“There was no defending myself, they had made their decision. I gave over a year to a company that I worked really hard for and then to have them turn on me for doing something so positive, something that I was so proud of – to help myself as a woman – it was hurtful. People were pulling out their phones at work and showing the pictures and that was blamed on me.”
Well, you know. We are talking about Texas.
While Stephanie says the bank’s reasoning was “disheartening”, she still disagrees with them and is proud of the end product. What do you think?