"The love I have for my body these days is something I've had to learn. And it requires constant maintenance," Oldham wrote on her website. | Schlosshotel and ski resort Fiss, Tyrol, Austrian Alps

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"The love I have for my body these days is something I've had to learn. And it requires constant maintenance," Oldham wrote on her website.

Like so many of us, Oldham says she's been in a love-hate relationship with her body for as long as she can remember. There are days when she's thrilled with how she looks, and then there are days when she wants to delete every unflattering photo ever taken of her. The comments she would receive fanned the flame of her own insecurities.
"I had 31 years-worth of other people’s comments about my body swirling around my head and popping into it on a daily basis, and I wanted to do something positive with them," Oldham explained over email.

The dress is a badge of honor, symbolic of the fact that, while Oldham may have been called these things, she is not defined by them.

"The comments that made the final cut have all stuck with me for different reasons," Oldham wrote. "Some because they’re really weird, some because they’re really lovely, some because they’re funny, and some because they’re particularly nasty and they really crushed me at the time.

"Once I learned how to be happy with myself as I am, the negative things that other people said about my body just stopped mattering to me," Oldham explained.