Caution: Upper Body Nudity

Healthline.com defines body neutrality as promoting “Acceptance of your body as it is, encouraging you to recognize its abilities and nonphysical characteristics over your appearance. This movement aims to decentralize the body as an object by challenging the myth that the way you look drives your worth.” Body neutrality is something that I believe should be taught to everyone from a very young age, especially in a time with so much social media and comparison of bodies paired with the normalization of commenting on other people’s bodies and putting down our own. The idea of fatphobia is running rampant, and there has been a massive movement pushing body positivity or self-love as a response. These are both opposite ends of the spectrum, so it makes sense that there’s a middle ground arising in the form of the body neutrality movement.  

The idea behind this shoot was very much about challenging the way that we see nudity and our bodies. There doesn’t have to be body positivity to be nudity. There doesn’t have to be shame or embarrassment, either. Sometimes nudity simply just is what it is and nothing more. With that in mind, I wanted to focus on power in relation to nudity without sexualizing the models. The vulnerability that is typically associated with nudity became almost a weapon to be aimed at anyone who may take issue with the nudity. The models seem to almost be asking  “why are you uncomfortable with my naked body?” with their eyes and body language.

Photography by Pierce Bartman

Models: Jay Hess and Laynie Oettinger

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Hi, I’m Grace Avery, a senior fashion merchandising student from Columbia, Maryland! I’m also the editor-in-chief of A Magazine. My staff and I are full of passion and aspiration as we commit our work to bring you the most meaningful and entertaining news from the realms of fashion, beauty, and culture. Our team is full-time students and hard-working journalists. While we get support from the student media fee and earned revenue such as advertising, both of those continue to decline. Your generous gift of any amount will help enhance our student experience as we grow our community into working professionals. Please go here to donate to A Magazine