Regular visitors to my site will know that I love to write posts about artists who, in their work, have celebrated older female bodies. So I was delighted to come across the Real Beauty project by Jodi Bieber.
 
The project was inspired by a number of factors including her own ageing, the Dove Real Beauty campaign, a chance encounter with a fashion model who talked about the wonders of Photoshop, and a BBC documentary which outlined the increasing levels of anorexia nervosa in black south African women. Jodie says:

“I felt a need to create a body of work that went against what the media depicts as beautiful. Even within a complex society such s South Africa, across all communities, women hold unnecessary perceptions of self-doubt regarding themselves and their beauty, and these feelings start from an early age.”

And thus all the women’s bodily ‘imperfections’ such as blemishes and cellulite were maintained rather than erased by photo editing software. Jodi discusses her Real Beauty project in more detail here (flick to the end of the photos for the text) and has a book of this wonderful work due to be published later this year.

 
I have blogged about why work such as this is so important here, here and here. And I’d love to hear your views.
 
Acknowledgements
 
The Illusionists: The Problem with Dove