As the nation battles uni-brows, long locks and roots down to our ankles amid the coronavirus, model Ashley James has admitted her confidence has taken a knock.
Sharing bikini pictures on Instagram on Sunday, Ashley, 33, admitted her 'body dysmorphia has crept back in' as she has had to forego her weekly spray tan.
Posing in her garden, she wrote a lengthy post to explain her feelings.
She penned: 'Let's talk about body confidence in lockdown. I talk about feeling comfortable in your own skin a lot, but I'm not going to lie, being in lockdown has been testing for me in terms of my own body image and I've felt my body dysmorphia creeping back in...
'"We don't do this anymore", I keep telling myself, as I remind myself that I am more than my body. Sexiness is not defined by the shape of our bodies, it's a state of mind.
'Our beauty is not defined by how toned or tanned we are. We just have to look around at all the beautiful women we know (or dont know) to see that. We judge ourselves more than others.'
She continued: 'Being stripped of my weekly spray tans has made me realise that a lot of my confidence depended on feeling tanned. I feel better with a tan.
'Maybe because I associate it with how positive I feel when I travel, or maybe just because I've grown used to seeing my body that way, or because it's seen as sexy. Either way... Here I am without a tan.
'When my dysmorphia used to creep in, or when I struggled with my body image, I would take the hottest photo I could and post it to social media. I needed that validation. I needed people to 'like' what they saw to make me feel better.
'And it did, but not deep down. Not really. Ironically, I was a lingerie model during this time, further proof that my lack of self esteem and confidence had nothing to do with how my body looked.
