Lydia Reeves

sex+ Front Line brings you the people and groups on the front line of sexuality, doing what they love and changing the world for the better. This edition features Lydia Reeves, a body casting artist who is working to combat body shame.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

I’m a female body casting artist, which means I cast people’s bums, boobs, tummies, vulvas, basically anything that people want me to cast. It’s really based around allowing women and people who identify as women to celebrate their bodies as much as possible because I feel like as a gender, particularly, we are raised to feel ashamed and embarrassed of our bodies and to not think we’re good enough. We get sold products all the time for things and areas that don’t need to be fixed. We don’t get given the opportunity enough to look at our bodies and go ‘aren’t we amazing’ and ‘aren’t our bodies amazing’. That’s kind of the basis behind it, but obviously people come for like all sorts of reasons, and it’s not necessarily always that but that’s kind of where it’s come from for me.

What is a typical day at work for you?// Can you explain the process of a vulva casting session?

I run casting sessions, Covid-permitting, 3 days a week and then the other 2 are times to finish everything off or work on my upcoming Vulva Diversity book. Casting sessions take between 1-2 hours, depending on what you’re getting cast, and that’s allows time for chatting and people looking round the studio and looking at my other works. It allows me to share a bit of my story and to hear about why people came to get cast. They’re not just sat there for an hour being cast, I allow way more time to actually get to know them before. I make sure that it’s a very comfortable environment so that people feel like we actually know each other a little bit before getting naked. Vulva casts can take up to 6-8 weeks to get finished and then boob casts take between 10-12 weeks. They’re quite a different process. What I’ll do with the client is take a mould, so I’ll put the gooey material on your body and create an impression, it’ll be like the indent almost of your vulva, boobs or bum. That’s all that I’ll do with the client there. Then I’ll work on making the actual positive copy of your body so if It’s vulva it can be a plaster which I do in the studio. It takes about 2 weeks to fully dry out before I can then sand it, paint it. Then with boob castings they actually need to be fibre glassed and resined. That takes quite a while to do and then set and after that I trim them down, sand them, spray them, soak them. It’s quite a lengthy process, it doesn’t take 10-12 weeks solidly working on one thing, obviously I’m working on lots of things at the same time. With Covid it’s tough because obviously I can’t cast, which is like my main thing, but it’s also, like with every business, it’s pushed me to think of other ways of working. It’s allowed me to focus, on my book, exhibition planning and lots of other things that are going on.

What’s been the most rewarding part of this line of work?

There’s so many that I’m very grateful for. Definitely one of the rewarding parts is hearing everyone’s feedback from it. I get messages fairly often from people being like ‘I’ve spent the last hour looking through Instagram, and it’s already changed how I feel about my body and I feel so much better about myself’. I read all of my messages and it’s just so heart-warming to be like this is why I started in the first place and so for people to actually be getting that from it and actually getting that’s why I’m doing it and it’s actually helping people. I always said at the very beginning if it helped one person feel better about their body then I’ll feel like I’ve done a good job. Now I get messages all the time like that and I’m like oh my god it is actually really helping people.

Why does it matter?

I think it’s different for different people and it matters differently for different people. Everyone takes something different away from it. It’s not going to have the same impact on everyone. I’ve realised from my own struggles, which is how it all kind of started anyway, from my own experience growing up, dislike of my body, of my vulva and everything. It’s helping two groups of people in a way, which is the people who are coming to get cast and then me showing these casts to other people online. They’re taking something away from it and being like ‘wow what a variety’ and it’s helping people feel empowered within their bodies, celebrating their bodies, feeling liberated, like proud of their bodies, and all these positive ways of thinking about your bodies, rather than the negative which is so easy to do. It’s super important, and for all aspects in life as well not just to feel comfortable naked. It’s to feel empowered to go and hold a meeting, or to whatever it is, like if you feel strong within yourself, it impacts all areas of life, which I think it can’t get more important than that.

What does the future hold for you?

The Vulva Diversity book came from doing these vulva casts and realising actually this is so much bigger than I ever really thought and so many people can actually really relate. I thought an exhibition would also be amazing, which has been postponed ‘cause of Covid but it will be this year. There’s people all around the world who won’t be able to see it though so I thought a book would be amazing to be able to reach a wide audience and for them to have that in their homes and to spur on amazing, important conversations. The book is hopefully coming out in the next few months. We’re working really hard on it; we’ve got an amazing designer and it just looks more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, so that’s really exciting. The Kickstarter link to help back the book is here

How can we show you some love?

My Instagram is where I post the majority of my stuff and then I’ve got my website which has got all the information about body casting, prices, the process and more. I also run the WE ARE community on facebook, which is a safe space for womxn as well as the gender nonconforming and trans communities, to discuss all things bodies, confidence, sex, vulvas, as well as any topic society has not yet deemed ‘acceptable’.

Photo of Lydia: Chloe Hashemi

Photo of book: www.veegaphotography.com