Hundreds of Aussie women over 50 pose for nude portraits in the new Melbourne art exhibition 500 Strong. Photo: Ponch Hawkes/500 Strong
Many older women will not wear togs or even short sleeves in public, says Australian photographer Ponch Hawkes, so to her it seemed like a hard sell finding 500 willing to be photographed naked for an art exhibition.
But although some cried with nerves, every woman who volunteered to be photographed for 500 Strong went through with the challenge and walked away feeling liberated, she told RNZ's Saturday Morning.
Hawkes and exhibition curator Jane Scott - who both stripped off for a portrait themselves - spoke to Susie Ferguson about the power of showing older women's bodies to help tackle gendered shame and ageism.
Feeling good about flesh after fifty
While our culture took a "slightly warm" view of older men, Hawkes said women who were no longer young did not get such fond treatment. It was no wonder they felt physically invisible, she said, when online there were very few positive images of mature unclothed female bodies that were not "granny porn".
As ageist beauty standards prevailed, many women over 50 thought their bodies should look the same as they did in their late 20s, she said. In reality, though, we did not have that much control over the inevitable and indelible marks left over the years by childbirth, illness, accidents and menopause.
These days people got a shock just seeing a nude that was not filtered up or photoshopped up, Hawkes said, and as many celebrities got thinner thanks to drugs like Ozempic, it seemed the body inclusivity movement was losing ground.
500 Melbourne women over 50 bare their naked bodies in 500 Strong - an exhibition now on at the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh). Photo: Ponch Hawkes/500 Strong
Asserting the reality and value of their not-young bodies in 500 Strong, the women posed with personal objects that sometimes concealed their faces and/or body parts.
Fans and hats were the most popular so eventually banned, Hawkes said, but kidney pumps, walking sticks, books, knitting, brooms, shovels, dumbbells, a welding mask, a rifle, a few dogs, a chicken and a rabbit featured.
"If you can imagine something, somebody bought it in."
Scott, who has always considered herself "a very big person" said it was scary as it was having her backside, boobs and belly photographed, she knew she would be proud of herself on the other side - and the feeling was fantastic.
"When I finally saw my body in amongst all of these other fantastic bodies, I thought, 'I'm not so weird after all, I'm not alone.' I think that was a feeling for a lot of the women who participated as well."
As a culture, though, we still had a long way to go before bodies that were no longer slim, fit and smooth were seen as acceptable to young people, she said.
Scott's 15-year-old niece found 500 Strong to be a horrifying sight.
"I was just standing there going, 'This is not what I wanted to hear.'
"It is not getting better, people and I honestly don't know how we fix this… In popular media, this beauty myth just goes on and on and on."
Watch a video of the exhibition here. (Warning: Contains graphic imagery).
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