The beautiful reason Caitlin Stasey posed naked on the internet.

Images by Jennifer Toole (shared from Herself.com with permission)

The internet can be an intimidating and, frankly, scary space for women. Just ask any of the thousands of women who are harrassed, threatened or stalked online for simply sharing an opinion, a passing thought, even a photograph.

This is why Caitlin Stasey’s latest project is such an important one.

On Saturday, the Australian actress launched Herself.com, a website designed to create an empowering, inclusive, and unapologetically feminist space for women. The site features longform interviews with women – Caitlin included – accompanied by beautiful images of their naked bodies.

“My sincerest hope for the site was building a community based on solidarity; I think solidarity is our greatest weapon against the compartmentalisation that society implements for women,” Caitlin, who hails from Melbourne and is currently based in Toronto, explains.

I think a lot of women generally aren’t asked about their views on the world around them, or how they feel about how they’re treated by society as a whole.

“Actually hearing someone talking about something you’ve experienced is so incredibly moving. I know, growing up, the only times I felt comfortable in my own body or comfortable in my own sexuality was when I heard another girl mirroring back the things that I was feeling.”

Initially, Caitlin – who you may remember from her Neighbours years, or her more recent roles in Reign and Josh Thomas’ excellent Please Like Me – wanted to create a forum where women could discuss sexual dysfunction or vaginal health.

Having frequently suffered from UTIs herself, the 24-year-old understood how rare it is to have a place to talk about these supposedly “taboo” yet entirely common experiences.

“Then I thought, well, beyond that there are so many issues women face that doesn’t necessarily pertain to their physicality,” she says.

“I think a lot of women generally aren’t asked about their views on the world around them, or how they feel about how they’re treated by society as a whole.”

These are just some of the beautiful photographs of Caitlin and other women featured on Herself (NSFW, obviously):

From there, the philosophy behind Herself expanded to take in a range of female experiences. The featured interviews are thought-provoking, deeply personal and honest, exploring everything from feminism and everyday sexual politics to relationships, sex and body image.

“I suppose, rather selfishly, I ask [my subjects] questions that I know I’ve been pontificating over for years now, and things I feel I’ve never heard other women talk about – at least not within the mainstream media. To be honest, I’m still baffled how in this day and age a woman’s sexuality, or a woman talking about her sexuality, is still a topic of upset or polarisation,” Caitlin says.

She would know – last year, Caitlin found herself in the headlines for her “shocking”, “bizarre” and “explicit” Tweets on these very topics.

Society has stipulated that women are a certain way and abide by rules about our gender, but men are allowed to be nuanced and difficult.

“I think the reason these issues are taboo is because women are broken down into subcategories – bitches, wives, sluts, mothers – and it’s difficult, I suppose, for some people to witness women speaking honestly, and unafraid of their own face and bodies. We’ve been taught for such a long time to be deferential and humble, and to be proud and loud and vain and self loving, and not apologetic is, I suppose, a little bit jarring for some people.

“Society has stipulated that women are a certain way and abide by rules about our gender, but men are allowed to be nuanced and difficult. If a guy is rude, people just think he’s confident and cool. But if a girl is rude, then she’s just a fucking bitch. And I think that’s so unfair.”

It’s not just women’s opinions that can be confronting or controversial for some. Women who consensually reveal their bodies tend to attract a similar response, particularly on the internet. Consider Instagram’s censorship of female nipples but not male ones, for instance. By featuring intimate, natural photos of women posing without clothing, Caitlin aims to challenge the objectification and sexualisation that typically surrounds this kind of imagery.

“I wanted to pair these nude portraits, that are totally unsexualised, with the words of these women and their experiences and stories,” she says, before highlighting the absurdity of how the male form is viewed through a completely different lens.

"A man could be fully naked as long as he's got a flaccid penis - everyone assumes it's either funny or it's artistic or it's brave, whereas a cisgender woman who is naked has no discerning features to prove that she's aroused or not, so [her body] just becomes a sexual object."

To put her money where her mouth is, Caitlin herself was photographed full-frontal nude.

"[As an actress] the reasons I shouldn't be doing it are the exact reasons I'm doing it - the fact that people would see it and think less of me, that I was unemployable, think that I was 'reckless' or 'difficult' or 'dangerous' - they're all absurd prejudices that I'm trying to oppose," she explains.

"If a woman appears naked on screen, it's justifiable - if she appears full frontal in a film then people can understand that, they go, 'Well, she did it for the film, she did it because she was paid a lot of money'. Where as if a woman is naked just because she's unafraid of her own body - not to say the women who are naked in films are afraid of their bodies - suddenly that becomes an issue and becomes alienating."

Many of the women currently featured on the website volunteered when Caitlin issued a callout on Twitter, while others were recruited by Jennifer Toole, one of Herself's photographers. Now the site is live, there's an email address where women can submit their interest in getting involved; from there, Caitlin arranges a photoshoot and sends each woman the interview questions.

Caitlin's hoping to publish new features every week, but says due to the length of the interviews production might be slower at certain times. The site is also in need of photographers and editors.

"Everyone is more than welcome to and offer whatever it is they want to offer," she says. " I currently have photographers in Toronto, Melbourne and one in LA. I'm looking for more in LA, I'd love to find some in Sydney and Brisbane, maybe even in the Northern Territories or WA. I'm willing to compensate everybody."

So far, Caitlin's been overwhelmed by the response to her project - in its first few days, the site has been so popular it's actually crashed a couple of times.

I really want it to be a forum for as many women of varying diversity, background [and] gender identity to come forward and feel they have a forum to express themselves and find like-minded people

"I've been so moved recently by the things I've read from people who've visited the site - just along the lines of, 'I read this interview by Candace and I completely understand this, this and this, and I love this question because it's something I've always asked myself'," she says.

"I've also read a lot of really thoughtful responses from men who can empathise wholeheartedly with some of the things they've read and also have been enlightened."

As it grows, Caitlin hopes Herself - and feminism more widely - will become a truly inclusive space where women can share their thoughts and experiences openly, regardless of who they are or where they're from.

"Moving forward, I really want it to be a forum for as many women of varying diversity, background [and] gender identity to come forward and feel they have a forum to express themselves and find like-minded people," she says.

"What I would like to see is feminists, myself included, amplifying the voices of women who we know to be authorities on the matter.  I think feminism has always done right by the white, cisgendered, able-bodied members of that community and it's time to really try and incorporate as many faces as possible and to amplify as many voices as possible."

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