Getting intimate with your vulva, with Lydia Reeves
Have you always wanted to get a cast of your lady bits to be able to proudly add it to your mantelpiece for all to see? Just me? Either way, Lydia Reeves is the gal to do it.
I managed to catch up with Lydia myself to talk about vulvas and everything you need to know about her Vulva Diversity Project. Personally, I find Lydia’s work awe-inspiring and sadly extremely necessary, as so many women feel anxious or harbour insecurities about their bodies and how they look. If even this article and Lydia’s work can help one other woman feel more positively about their own body, then I’ll be one happy lady. We must stop shying away from our appearance and think that we somehow look wrong because we don’t look like someone else. If you also believe that more light should be shone on female bodies, then you will definitely want to hear more about Lydia’s fantastic work and what she had to say on body positivity below.
What first made you want to start taking casts of women's bodies to showcase as art? I have always been fascinated by bodies, and have studied bodies throughout all of my art practices (I studied Fine Art at university) and I’ve always tried to show the reality of bodies, rather than the mainly photo-shopped, unattainable bodies depicted in magazines. I learnt how to body cast on my Art Foundation Course and was just fascinated with it! This was the closest you could get to replicating a body part, and turn it into a piece of art?! What wasn’t to love! Shortly after learning how to body cast, I cast my own vulva when I was nineteen, to try and help myself get over my own insecurities.
In more recent years I have started using body casting as a way to open up conversations surrounding our bodies, and more specifically our vulvas, and our boobs. Areas we tend to cover up and hide away. I grew up extremely insecure about most parts of my body, but mainly my vulva. Learning how casting my own vulva helped me accept this part of my body. I wanted to give that experience to all women who may have experienced the same.
Tell us more about your Vulva Diversity Project? What is it? What's it about? I have cast two hundred vulvas for my Vulva Diversity Project. I wanted to show a whole range of vulva diversity, but also I wanted to share everyone’s stories. I’ve asked everyone to write up a piece of text about their relationship with their vulva. I will be displaying these beside their vulva cast in the exhibition, and the Vulva Diversity book I am making. I feel as though it is just as important to hear everyone’s journeys, their thoughts and feelings, and what they might have been through – as it is to see the whole range of vulvas that there are too. I hope that this will make other people feel less alone in their experiences, or thoughts they may have had.
Do you feel like there is enough education and learning about how to feel secure in your own skin? I think that this is an area that still needs so much more education. Especially to young children. It is so easy to tear ourselves apart and think negative thoughts, especially when you’re never taught that it’s okay to look the way that you do. We’re thrown into a world where we’re surrounded by photo-shopped models in magazines and edited photographs on social media. Pornography is at every young person’s fingertips – where models are chosen for how they look just like actors in a film (and a lot of them have had plastic surgery to look that way in the first place). None of this is real life, yet we aspire to look how they look, and beat ourselves up when we don’t meet society’s expectations.
In my opinion, the conversation needs to start in school, educating young people that they are enough, exactly how they are.
Would you ever take your ideas and artwork on body positivity and focus on men as well as women? I’ve been asked this a lot! “When is the Penis Project starting!?” I completely see that penis owners have insecurities just like vulva owners. It’s definitely something that needs to be spoken about. But right now I am focusing on helping women, as I know I can relate to their stories, and relate to their experiences a lot more as I own a vulva, and have been through my own struggles.
Myself and my friend Naomi have started a project called ‘The What Is Normal Project’ where we are aiming to take some of these casts into secondary schools to speak to kids about vulvas and penises, show them a whole variety of casts, and answer the question of ‘what is normal?’ Trying to show them that in fact everything is normal. This will include penis casts and men’s stories of their experiences growing up with a penis. So who knows, maybe that will lead me onto the penis project!
What does body positivity mean to you? I don’t particularly like the term ‘body positivity’ but I use it for lack of better wording! I feel like ‘body acceptance’ should be used more! I don’t feel like we all should strive to get to the point of feeling super positive about every aspect of our bodies. It’s amazing if you can get there! But, for me personally, I feel like if we can get to the stage of just embracing and accepting what we have, that’s such a huge positive shift in itself.
It can feel quite daunting feeling like we need to learn to love an area of our body we have always hated. It’s a long process, but when we can get to the stage of looking at that area with a feeling of acceptance – to me that equals body positivity.
If you want to learn more about Lydia and how to purchase her work on her website or Instagram, or you can book your own session and get a cast for yourself via the button below. Can’t wait to get my boobs done, personally.
