We are a husband and wife team working on a body acceptance photo project.

It’s about reality and body acceptance. 

This photo project, which is the brainchild of two mommies, reveals to us that the everyday woman is beautiful in her own surroundings, and hopes to promote body acceptance on a widespread scale.

“In order to have a positive body image, you need to have a realistic perception of your body and enjoy it just the way it is,” says Michelle, one of the project’s creators.  “We need to understand that healthy, attractive bodies come in many shapes and sizes.  We are photographing everyday ladies in their homes, places of work, or somewhere familiar to them in order to show that they are beautiful just as they are.”

The women in this project are a varied lot – mothers, housewives, flight attendants, medical students, artists, models, bartenders, and women from all walks of life… They all share a common bond – the willingness to be photographed naked in their own surroundings.  They are unexpected and yet enthusiastically willing participants in this semi-voyeuristic look into the beauty of the everyday woman.  For many of these women, the time they spend in front of the camera represents the first time they have been photographed in the nude.

One series of photographs reveals a medical student as she studies for her upcoming exams. In the first photograph, she is dressed and in the next, she is undressed. To the viewer, the effect is as if her clothing simply vanished – and it's quite extraordinary.

“We are looking for the woman that you would find at the grocery store,” says Michelle, who is collaborating on the project with her husband, himself an internationally-published photographer, “the woman who you see in the produce section and think to yourself, ‘I wonder what she would look like if she were standing there naked?’” The photographs they create reveal just that – the everyday woman – dressed and then undressed in exactly the same pose.

Michelle and her husband encourage their models not to straighten up their homes before he arrives to photograph them. “One of the most important reasons for doing this project is to show that the everyday woman is beautiful in her own surroundings,” he states. “We are not looking for ‘perfection,’ we’re looking for reality.”

They don’t make pornographic images for their project.  “Nudity has for too long had sexual connotations and nude photography has, for the most part, been pornographic,” Michelle says. “Likewise, society has led us to believe that, in order to be beautiful, a woman has to be as certain shape and size. The “Natural Woman!” project breaks the molds and reveals the everyday woman as she truly is, beautiful – without being pornographic.”

Don’t be surprised if you get a tap on the shoulder and Michelle asks you to allow her husband to photograph you – the majority of the women who will appear in the book were found out and about. She relates that quite a few of the ladies he photographs are apprehensive at first but that they quickly become comfortable and have a great time. “Many of the ladies have called their friends and encouraged them to be photographed,” she says. “One ran inside her house from where we finished photographing her in the backyard to call her best friend. Halfway through the conversation, she realized that she was still naked!”

The Natural Woman! will be a well-received project and we anxiously await its release. To the ladies who have already been photographed, we say, “Outstanding – you go girls!” To those who are about to get that proverbial tap on the shoulder, we encourage you to seize the moment – you may never get this opportunity again!

We can hardly wait to see you.

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