(photo by Dawn Felicia in collaboration with Nicola Canavan)
The history of body-shaming, particularly as it relates to women forced to adhere to unreasonable and somewhat arbitrary standards of beauty, is very, very long, and battles over the issues it raises in education, fashion, and beauty are increasingly high-profile. Enter artist Nicola Canavan, whose project "Raising the Skirt" attempts to call attention to a part of the body usually ignored in body-shaming discussions -- the vagina. Canavan, along with collaborator, photographer Dawn Felicia, puts women in a position to proudly show off their bodies, putting them quite literally in the viewer's face and making them impossible to erase, As she puts it in an interview with Dazed Digital, the project aims to allow women to "create a positive change in their relationship with their own bodies." Check out the rest of the interview for more of Canavan's thoughts on the project, as well as more photos, then take it upon yourself to celebrate your own body in whatever way you see fit.