Speak your mind, own your body: women support other women on Herself.com

Cover picture: Chelsea, photo by Jennifer Toole

Herself.com is the new feminist website launched by actress Caitlin Stasey, just a few weeks ago. In short, the website features interviews to a number of women – from different countries and different social contexts – Stasey included. The interviews are paired with pictures of said women, strictly au naturel. As the interviews start, we are provided with information about these women’s stories: where they grew up, the education they received, what was their childhood like; then, the interviews move their focus toward more specific questions concerning womanhood and sexuality. How do they live their sexuality/sexual orientation? What is sex according to them? What is their stance on reproductive rights and contraception? As women, do they feel safe? Have they ever suffered violence or discrimination? Motivations and goals of the website are clearly stated in the project’s manifesto, written by Caitlin:

“Herself is a gesture to women for 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. These women are simply & courageously existing, immortalized within these photos. Within their words, their experiences and stories are offered on Herself in the hopes of encouraging solidarity – that maybe we as women will take comfort in the triumphs of others rather than revelling in each other’s defeats. Let us reclaim our bodies. Let us take them back from those who seek to profit from our insecurity.”

If you don’t know Caitlin Stasey yet, I’ll introduce you to her. The Australian actress is known to most people thanks to her role as the young Kenna in the popular historical drama Reign on CW, but she stuck out in the real world because of her strong stances on issues that are very dear to us, such us slut shaming, reproductive rights, sexism and sexuality (but also racism, white privilege, representation of minorities in the media), proving to be an hardcore feminist: you should think twice before getting into a Twitter Fight with her.

Caitlin has not refrained from putting herself on the first line in order to raise awareness on these issues, always speaking her mind and talking sincerely about her personal experiences, be it in brutally honest tweets or during interviews (like in this one, or this one, or this other one). Neither did she back down from using her body for the cause: she posed topless for the #FreeTheNipple campaign (a movement that wants to put an end to the sexualization of women’s nipples, and therefore to their interdiction from social media like Instagram) and now she goes bare, literally and figuratively, in her interview for Herself.com.

I’ve been sexualized since birth and no amount of skin coverage has lessened it. I’m not hiding myself for your benefit anymore

— caitlin stasey (@caitlinstasey) January 19, 2015

Personally, I’m all for this trend that sees more and more celebrities define themselves openly as feminists, considering the huge impact they can have on their young fans thanks to their fame. Most of all, it makes me happy to see someone like Stasey speak about such relevant and sensitive issues, putting herself and her personal life on the line, especially when I think about her younger fans that can find in her stories the comfort of not being alone in front of certain hurdles.

To provide women with the possibility to find themselves in the stories of others is exactly what pushed Caitlin to create Herself.com, because, she said, “the only relief I feel when faced with an issue is to know I’m not alone, knowing that women, ones whom I may never meet, are out there rooting for each other and persevering”. (x)

“I hope more than anything that women will come to Herself.com and find themselves there, scattered throughout the stories and bodies of others”, also stated the actress, and as a proof of the inclusive vocation of the project, the website features the words and the bodies of women who are very different from one another for their race, their physical appearance and their education.

The value of the interviews does not only lie in the specific content – which can or cannot be agreed with, although I think some quotes should be printed out and framed – but also in their uniqueness, in the fact that they are extremely individual and subjective statements, which are deeply rooted in the personal experience, in the culture and in the personality of every single interviewed woman.

In a world that does not hesitate to classify us – in Caitlin’s words – as “mothers, sluts, virgins, or wives”, and with media constantly pushing the same prepackaged image of woman, the act of showing women as individuals defined by unique personalities is an absolutely radical gesture, just like showing an alternative (or many alternatives!) to the artificial image of the female body displayed everywhere.

Many people ask, “Why do women need to take their clothes off to be heard?” Or “If women want respect, why do they get naked?”. Those questions are surely fairer than the copious use of the word “Whores” that springs up in the comment section of many articles about the project, but, in my opinion, they are the result of a flawed logic and ultimately they are not very different from the use of “Whores” found in the comments. They sprout from the same misogynistic misconception, according to which the female body is sexual, always, a misconception that has been internalized by women as well.

Much like Stasey, and the other women who took part in the project, I believe that dignity does not come off with clothes, that a naked body is not the house of sin or a sexual provocation, and that there’s no reason to be upset by the sight of a woman’s nipple, men’s nipples are no issue after all. Posing nude does not mean to lose the feminist badge, on the contrary it means fighting for the cause. To free the female body from the burden of sexualization is exactly what Caitlin wanted to do with Hersel.com:

“I want to help demystify the female form, to assist in the erasure of coveting it, and to help celebrate the ever changing face of it. We consider a woman’s sexuality so linked to her physicality that for a woman to appear naked publicly is automatically an act of sex and not for herself. There’s also a very specific construct of woman we are all used to seeing, and while those women are no less women, I was so desperate to see different faces, different bodies.” (x)

The diversity of races and body types represented is in fact one of Herself’s best features. Breaking the assembly line that always presents the same reassuring and comforting bodies is an important element of discontinuity.

In my opinion, that initial rejection – especially from women themselves – for a project that uses the expressive force of the female body, is partly due to that suspicion towards nude generated by that above-mentioned misogynist mentality, and partly it is simply the reaction to a product launched on an overstocked market. Women’s body, naked or almost naked, is too often used as currency in all sorts of situations, be it advertisement or lascivious previews employed as click-bait in order to get traffic on some website (sometimes even on the ones of big newspapers).

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This inflated presence devalues the currency, as every Economy text would teach us. But it only takes a slightly more in-depth look to acknowledge the fact that the mainstream nudes have nothing in common with the ones on Herself.com, which instead aim specifically at returning value and meaning to something that has been spoiled, exploited and, yes, abused.

The purpose of Herself.com, just like other projects that move from the same assumptions, is for women to take back their bodies, which are no longer displayed to please and be consumed by the male gaze (and therefore to satisfy a certain standard). On the contrary, the bodies are shown in the most authentic way possible, in an act of self-expression and re-appropriation by women themselves. The nudes on Herself.com are nothing like the nudes on advertisements. They are neither perfect, nor obliging, nor reassuring. They are, if anything, discomforting, in their lack of shame, in their assertiveness and in their defiance towards the traditional idea of beauty. Their specific purpose is to free the naked female body from the association with sex: in other words the goal is to stop considering the female body as a passive sexual object.

Posing nude is a deliberate choice, and through the interviews – which remain the core of the project, the pictures are a just supplement – women can be active subjects in the expression of themselves.

It’s not just the mainstream sexy and flirtatious imagery that sees women as objects to dispose of that gets questioned, but also its most atrocious degenerations, in which the exposition of the body is an act completely inflicted and therefore violent, as it happens when nudes are released on-line without the consent of the woman portrayed. Be it a celebrity whose iCloud has been hacked or an unlucky no one, victim of the hideous revenge porn, the common ground is the will to submit, the erasure of the right to consent (to give it or deny it), the humiliation of the victim.

By choosing to pose nude it is possible to retrieve something once denied: the possibility to choose and therefore to be actively responsible for our own body, which can exist regardless of the gaze and the desires of others.

From where I stand, there can’t really be any resistance against the creation of a space like Herself.com, where women can freely talk about religion and masturbation, puberty and motherhood, and take back their bodies in a dimension that is finally not sexual but ontological.

That said, what is your opinion on the project? Do you agree on the assumption that the naked body can be empowering? And would you go as far as to get naked for the cause?

Chiara Baroni