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A mother decided to recreate Victoria's Secret campaign pictures in an effort to embrace her postpartum body after struggling with societal pressures to 'snap back' after the birth of her daughter.  

Hana Erskine, who is believed to be from Dubai, admitted in a personal essay on Bored Panda that she gained a lot of weight during her pregnancy, similar to most women. But while she says she wasn't unhappy with how she looked - because she was too busy celebrating her beautiful daughter - it took her time to come to terms with how her body has changed.

After admitting she felt 'unattractive' when she looked in the mirror, Hana decided to recreate the Victoria's Secret photos herself, showing off her postpartum body in her own shoot in an attempt to overcome any negative feelings she was experiencing - while also poking fun at some of the less glamorous aspects of motherhood.

Positive: Hana Erskine (right) shared a personal essay about dealing with her postpartum body while sharing images of her figure after having a daughter

Hilarious: The pictures that she shared mirrored Victoria's Secret campaign pictures but had a 'touch of motherhood' in them to celebrate women 

Accurate: This started out after Hana felt ashamed of her postpartum body and realized that society doesn't often depict women naturally in ads or media 

'To be honest, I wasn’t sad or depressed about my postpartum body as I was (and I still am) overwhelmed with joy and love for our daughter,' Hana wrote at the beginning of her Bored Panda post. 

But a man who Hana used to know from university made her feel self-conscious about her body after running into him. 

'His first words to me were: "Whoa, you gained a lot of weight! Do something about it so you are attractive again,"' Hana confessed in her post. 

She continued: 'After coming home, I spent a while looking into the mirror, evaluating my postpartum body and suddenly I was feeling very unattractive. I was comparing myself to all the skinny girls out there (although I was never considered skinny even before pregnancy).'

The issue Hana had was she felt like the postpartum body is often not flaunted in mainstream media, especially in her country. 

Instead, there is the universal idea in advertising and film about how a woman should look. 

'In my country, the popular opinion is that, “Postpartum body or, basically, any not-model-like body is something that makes you very unattractive, so you shouldn’t show it until you are back in shape again – and get back in shape as fast as you can, it cannot be that hard,"' Hana wrote.  

Inspirational: Hana decided to take a photo shoot celebrating her body that matched pictures posted from Victoria's Secret

Lounging: 'Just stop comparing yourself to others,' she wrote. 'It is incredibly hard, but once you are able to manage it, you will suddenly feel happy and free'

To promote positivity about her body image after having her daughter, Hana decided to take pictures of herself with a 'touch of motherhood' that showed off all of her curves. 

But taking the pictures brought up insecurities about her stretch marks and the size of her body.

'However, after checking my own photos, my first thought was: “Gosh, I am fat, I have to do some post-editing to make myself look skinnier, to make my skin look smoother, I have to retouch the dark circles under my eyes, I have to erase the second chin, etc,"' she admitted. 

'Then I remembered the real purpose of the photo shoot and I didn’t edit my body at all,' Hana wrote. 'I will never look like a model and I know it.'

She posed similar to Victoria's Secret models in their campaign pictures to show what women actually look like in their postpartum bodies. And the shoot helped her appreciate her body for what it was, not for what it wasn't. 

'You are beautiful exactly the way you are,' the mother advised to readers in her post.

'Just stop comparing yourself to others. It is incredibly hard, but once you are able to manage it, you will suddenly feel happy and free.'