Carmen Smith was about 3 years old when her mother noticed something wasn’t right. The little girl repeatedly complained that her feet hurt.
The doctor gave it a name: lymphedema. Most likely, she was born without some of her lymph nodes, which move fluids throughout the body. In her case, the blockage is in her legs, which is why her legs, ankles, and feet swell.
The swelling worsened over the years. As a child, she could only find flip-flops that fit, and in photos she tried to hide her right leg, the more swollen one. When people looked at her feet or commented on them, she felt embarrassed.
Today, Carmen is 38 years old, lives in Pasadena, California, and poses in lingerie for her 286,000 Instagram followers. Her turning point came when she decided that what other people thought of her body wouldn’t define her. Her boyfriend, Kahari Jumal, helped her see herself in a different light.
“Our differences make us beautiful”, she says. And several women with lymphedema have already written to her saying they had never seen anyone with a body like hers.