Interview: Laura Dodsworth talks Bare Reality, her book on real breasts

Jane McGowan chats to photographer Laura Dodsworth about celebrating the female body and breaking down taboos

Thanks to the recent #freethenipple campaign – a creative protest against the ban on female nipples on social media – getting naked is officially trending. It’s a wave that has seen the likes of Miley Cyrus and Scout Willis walk topless through New York, resolutely affirming that boobs – contra our male-dominated media – are about rather more than just sex. After all, not many of us gals are blessed with the perfect, full-bodied melons that constitute the commercial ideal.

Taking up this rallying cry is Epsom photographer Laura Dodworth, whose new book, Bare Reality, celebrates the female body in all its guises. It includes shots of the breasts of 100 ordinary women, all accompanied by the women’s stories of their relationships with them.

“There are so many reasons I wanted to do this,” says Laura, as I sit down to talk to her. “As I drove up and down the country talking to women and photographing their breasts, I began to think about what it means to be a woman...”

“My milk went when Hitler marched in”

This woman, born in 1912, tells how she and her husband fled the Nazis and came to England after she persuaded the Gestapo to release him from Dachau concentration camp. She was later given a mastectomy, even though the lump was benign.

“I was conscious of the mastectomy and never exposed my chest. I would never have gone topless anyway, even in my younger days. I’m very careful with my appearance. I wear a prosthesis. I forgot it once on holiday. I had to use loads and loads of plastic bags!”

“I’m proud I decided to have a tattoo”

After having her breast removed 10 years ago, this woman decided to have a tattoo created where her breast had once been.

“It makes a statement and it’s pretty to look at. I’m proud of it. I want people to realise you don’t have to hide away just because you’ve had breast cancer.”

“Sport has changed my body image”

Following her divorce, this woman thought having a ‘boob job’ would help her find a new partner. After realising that surgery wasn’t the answer, she turned to sport and is now pleased her small breasts don’t get in the way.

“Sport has changed my body image because my body has become more functional… It’s changed all my attitudes – shown me that someone can find you attractive for what you can do, not for how you look.”

Like many children of the 1970s, Laura, 41, grew up surrounded by what we now know as the casual exploitation of women: an insidious saturation of the media, with certain indistinguished newspapers at its heart. The Sun, with its ‘topless beauties’ on page three, made household names of models such as Linda Lusardi and Samantha Fox; workplace walls and teenage bedrooms groaned with calendars displaying women in minimal attire.

“My dad had a pink satin cushion with Sam Fox on it which he kept in the car,” Laura recalls. “Even as a little girl, I knew there was something slightly tawdry about it. I remember thinking: ‘This is what a grown-up woman looks like. This is what I should be, but I don’t know if I want that.’”

It’s an honest admission with which many of us can empathise; an acknowledgement of fragility, coupled with a stubborn refusal to live up to the prevailing ideal. Drip-fed images of the supposedly perfect woman, Laura grew up feeling that her body left much to be desired.

“We are constantly presented with that hopelessly unobtainable ideal,” she laments. “The woman who is beautiful and uncomplicated, has big pert breasts and is always smiling.”

Eschewing this distorted version of womanhood, Laura resolved to expose some myths about the female form and discover what real women think about their bodies.

“I have always been fascinated by the dichotomy between how we feel about breasts privately and how they are presented for public consumption,” she explains.

To which end, she resolved to avoid objectification and embark on a project portraying women as subjects instead.

Cue Bare Reality, in which the ladies – photographed from the neck down to preserve their anonymity – are from varied backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures. The youngest is just 19, the oldest 101. There are sex workers, cancer survivors and a woman who persuaded the Gestapo to free her husband from a concentration camp. There is even a Buddhist nun.

In telling their stories, the women bare not only their breasts, but their souls too. Their candid observations about their bodies lead to revelations about their childhoods, families, health and careers. It’s fascinating and unbelievably moving.

The final image is of Laura herself. She simply couldn’t, she felt, ask these women to do something that she wasn’t prepared to do herself.

“Our breasts and our personal experiences of them can truly shape how we see the world,” she concludes. “In turn, our breasts can shape how the world sees us.”

Bare Reality is published by Pinter and Martin, £25

Check out some stories from the women in Laura's book

Laura made a recent appearance on Loose Women to talk about her book