Australian actress Caitlin Stasey’s website Herself.com (NSFW) is all about empowerment. Featuring photos of completely naked women of various sizes, ethnicities, gender identities and sexualities, Herself.com was created to serve as a place where normal women can be themselves in an open-minded, proudly feminist and judgment-free zone. Photographer, Jennifer Toole takes the pictures and Stasey accompanies each portrait with an in-depth interview. Here are five reasons why herself.com is definitely worth checking out:
1. The Message
“Herself is a gesture to women by women, a chance to witness the female form in all its honesty without the burden of the male gaze, without the burden of appealing to anyone,” says Stasey in a Buzzfeed interview. “These women are simply and courageously existing, immortalized within these photos.” Herself.com serves a space where women can reclaim their bodies. In a society where a woman’s body is constantly subjected to judgment, hypersexulization, and scrutiny by both men and women, Herself exists as a break from all of that – where a woman’s body is just a body.
2. The People
Herself features a plethora of people from Candice and her long, bright red hair to adult film actress, Casey. Each woman on the website has her own interesting story and unique comments on society. Stasey plans to update the website with a new profile each week.
3. It Debunks the Myth That Nudity Equates to a Lack of Self Respect
For many people, nudity equates to a lack of self-respect. Herself aims to eliminate that myth. For the women featured on the website, they draw their power and confidence from being nude – proving that it is absolutely possible to use your body to express yourself. It is also refreshing to see that nudity can exist without sex. The women on Herself are not viewed as sexy – but confident. This is a revolutionary attack on the ways in which women’s bodies are viewed, and a brave attempt to reconstruct societal standards.
4. It’s Inspiring
It’s no news that our society tends to idolize a certain standard of beauty. However, on Herself, those standards are non-existent. “I wanted to feature women from all walks of life in hope that women who rarely see themselves reflected in the media could find solidarity,” admits Stasey, and “could find people LIKE them rather than people they are constantly being told to be like.” Stasey accomplishes this goal quite well by featuring a myriad of women with different faces, colors, stories, values, and beliefs. Stasey strives to reinvent the notion of beauty by smashing standards.
5. It Sparks a Conversation About What it Means to be a Woman
As time progresses, so does the idea of what it means to be a woman. In the past 10 years, alone, the definition of “woman” has evolved drastically. Herself.com tackles this by featuring women who relate to their womanhood in different ways. Some women define their womanhood by their sexualities and others by their gender or sex; one woman defined her womanhood by her ability to overcome obstacles in life, and another by her journey to finding security and confidence. Clearly, the idea of womanhood is very abstract, and Herself serves as a platform for such a conversation to take place.
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