What it’s like to photograph (mostly) naked women as a female student

“OK, so should I just . . . ?”

“Yeah, you can just take them off. You can change in the bathroom or right here, whatever makes you feel more comfortable.”

“Like, right now?”

Cue uncomfortable laughter. “Yeah. Right now.”

This is how pretty much all my conversations went with the women I photographed naked (or without the majority of  their clothing) as part of my Every Body photo project for Iris Magazine.

I’m used to naked women. I went to an all-girls summer camp for eight years, I have seven female roommates, and I’m a Gender Studies major.

I don’t find naked bodies shocking anymore. I find them beautiful, powerful, able to communicate stories about a past and present in a remarkable way – but not shocking.

But these women didn’t necessarily know this. And finding a way to communicate this in a non-awkward manner was difficult, because saying something like, “Hey, don’t worry, I’ve seen a lot of naked women” might not come out exactly the way I intended.

So I pretended to be fiddling with my computer or camera while the women undressed, and then reminded them of our concept so they could position themselves accordingly.

I could almost immediately sense their self-consciousness as I began shooting.

“Is this okay?” they would ask. “I’m not really sure what to do with my body.”

As someone who is hyper conscious about my own body, I was caught between trying to tell these women’s  stories and make them feel confident about the way they look. Every now and then, I would stop in between photos and show the women what I could see behind the lens. With one woman, I asked her what she saw when she looked at her photo.

I half expected her to say happiness, strength, or release. Instead, she said, “my fat rolls.”

I was frustrated. I wanted this experience to make women more in tune with their bodies, to have them look at themselves through my eyes. To see the incredible beauty and power their bodies held.

But then I realized that trying to convince a woman she’s beautiful when she doesn’t feel that way defeats the purpose of my project. I wanted to show women as they were. In their bodies as they felt.

If they saw only their fat rolls in a photo of shimmering eyes and beautiful smiles, that was their truth. It would be hypocritical of me to try to make them feel otherwise.

It’s a strangely intimate experience – being in the same room as someone you barely know, while they trust you enough to photograph them completely stripped down. I felt the need to show them as they wanted to be portrayed, to capture their bodies as they moved naturally.

I hoped this project would bring some self-acceptance, but that wasn’t necessarily the point. I wanted to show women as they see themselves.

It wasn’t my job to tell women how to view these photos, or to respond when they pointed out the flaws or triumphs with their bodies. It was my job to point and shoot. The meaning these women read onto their naked bodies is theirs to keep.

You can see the rest of the Every Body photo project here.

This is the first of three pieces from The Tab UVA about body image. The next one, focusing on the pressures of looking a certain way at UVA, will appear tomorrow.