Intimate Portraits

What a complex thing it is to be a woman. Perhaps the most complicated side to it are the expectations, not necessarily from the outside, but the ones we have ourselves. And, tragically, when it comes to self-set expectations, beauty tends to be primordial, our shameful priority. What’s beauty anyway? Where does it start and where are it’s limits? We care about our face, our hair, our fitness and our fashion choices. Yet, when it comes to our sexuality… Whose beauty ideal do we follow? Or do we simply, after some years of confusion, make up one of our own?

In this article a group of very different women (an African American, an open polygamist, a white heterosexual, two lesbians and a transgender person) each share their deep and intimate relationship with sex. And despite it circling around body hair, it also shows us a very interesting topic: The individual connection each one has with sexuality, their bodies and what it means for them to be feminine.

Right below their names, ages and the beautiful aesthetic photographs by Samantha Casolari, their stories and opinions can be read.

Personally I believe that the downside of this article consists of it hanging too much on the ‘’body-hair-positivity-movement’’ about which I have my doubts. Shouldn’t one of the biggest points of feminism be giving other women the freedom to make choices we wouldn’t necessarily make ourselves? Hiding her hair under a scarf, showing skin, hiding skin, shaving if she wants to. Providing the message that growing body hair is liberating might be focusing energy in the wrong direction. Empowerment looks different in every women, and telling her what it is that should make her feel sexy seems nothing to me but oppressive. Nevertheless, as I wrote before, if read with an open mind set, this provides interesting perspectives of intimacy from the eyes of modern young and diverse women.