2019.12.16 Daily Star
Naked or near-naked bodies are everywhere these days. In adverts, on TV, and all over Instagram.
But all too often the nude bodies we see belong to models, and they’re frequently retouched so heavily that they’re more like drawings than photographs.
That can lead to us ordinary people getting a distorted idea of how we should look. To help restore some balance two best friends have spent six years photographing hundreds of ordinary women’s bums.
Frédérique Marseille, 30, and Émilie Mercier, 31, have snapped over 400 pictures of naked posteriors and travelled the world together to take the cheeky images.
The friends, who met at school, were inspired to start the ongoing art project in 2014 after moaning about their stretch-marks and cellulite.
Frédérique said: "We were complaining about our butts.
"We've always called Émilie the queen of cellulite and said that I'm the queen of stretch marks."
Photographer Émilie had already shot a few female nudes and Frederique encouraged her to take more, focussing on women's behinds.
"I was used to asking my girlfriends if I could shoot them naked or part naked," Émilie explained. "The female body always triggered something in me.
"I find its beauty in every little spot."
Frédérique added: "Émilie's pictures of butts showed the beauty of the body and reminded me of Renaissance paintings.
"The butt is a beautiful part of the body that we seem to hate.
"All women have something to say about their butts – it's too big, it's too small.
"We are never happy with it.
"The butt needed a little bit of love."
"We put the pictures on Facebook," Frédérique said. "It was an instant success.
"We had women from across Canada and from around the world asking to participate.”
The project collects pictures of women not only in Canada but as far afield as Switzerland and even China.
"We never retouch the pictures obviously," Frédérique said.
"The images we see all around us are not realistic at all.
"We don't know what an ageing body looks like naked.
"But all the women we meet are so beautiful and graceful."
Frédérique says that unfortunately the women are rarely happy with the pictures of their butts.
She said: "We never know what's going to happen on a shoot.
"We arrive at a woman's place and have a conversation and get to know her.
"Sometimes we become emotional.
"The experience of getting naked and having someone take your photo is very empowering.
"But we are all so hard with ourselves, even though the picture is beautiful, we still feel that we are not beautiful.
"It's pretty rare that our models look at the picture and think: 'Oh wow, I'm such a babe!'"
Émilie added: "I always hope the pictures will give strength to the model.
"I hope she will find that she is beautiful."
Frédérique and Émilie are frustrated that they keep running into censorship.
Frédérique said: "Any time we have a lot of visibility, for some reason Facebook and Instagram flag our accounts.
"One day in 2015, our Instagram account, with 23,000 followers, was just shut down and then two years later it was back online.
"If we share an image and there's a butt anywhere, we are going to get shut down instantly. It is slowing down the project."
She continued: "It is frustrating when you see a Playboy account or any soft porn accounts, and as long as there is a little G-string in their pictures, it is okay.
"We really try to show the body in a non-erotic way, almost like it is a plant in the forest.
"But for some reason, we are treated like we are showing violent and pornographic content.”
The pair always pose for a sneaky "belfie" on every shoot too: "We have a playful picture, “ says Frédérique, “but we are not going to tell anyone which picture it is."
