Did the Good Weekend dump Caitlin Stasey because she wouldn't pose naked? - Women's Agenda

Did the Good Weekend dump Caitlin Stasey because she wouldn’t pose naked?

Earlier this year Australian actress Caitlin Stasey launched a website to create a new online space for women to tell their stories safely and honestly. On Herself.com, women are posing nude to challenge objectification; the idea being that on the site their bodies become the subject of their own narrative, rather than the object of someone else’s.

How profoundly ironic, then, is this. Stasey has had a magazine feature and photoshoot with Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine delayed and derailed due to her unwillingness to pose naked for it.

The story was conceived earlier in the year after the successful launch of Herself.com. The Good Weekend flew a reporter to Canada to interview Stasey. Things went awry, however, when it came to locking in the artistic direction for the accompanying photo shoot.

The mood board the magazine sent Stasey featured only naked, or barely-clad, women and she suggested a different approach.

Myriam Robin reported on Women’s Agenda sister site, Crikey, yesterday that it was at this point the feature was delayed

“She and her publicist began trying to suggest other photoshoot ideas, but the magazine then said it didn’t have money to do a shoot and would instead use pre-existing photos. Later, Stasey says, she was told there wouldn’t be space to run a feature at all.”

These machinations had been kept in the background until yesterday when Stasey took to social media to express her disappointment.

“Good Weekend magazine suddenly doesn’t have the space to run a piece on me because I wouldn’t do a shoot in my underwear,” she posted. “They wanted to team an interview about my upset over the constant objectification of women with a sexualised photo shoot. I declined.”

“And miraculously, conveniently after I said I wouldn’t do it, they claimed the magazine was downsized and there was no space to run the piece.”

Myriam Robin reports:

“Crikey has seen numerous emails sent between Stasey and her publicist over the matter, and between Stasey’s publicist and the person in charge of the shoot. In April, Stasey’s publicist wrote that she called up Good Weekend editor Ben Naparstek to ask why the shoot was not going ahead. According to the publicist, Naparstek told her over the phone that he was unwilling to spend money on the shoot unless the planned concept went ahead. The publicist says she told Naparstek that that concept had never been discussed with her or Stasey, and Naparstek apologised for the miscommunication.”

Yesterday Naparstek responded:

“I totally understood and respected Caitlin’s decision not to pursue our shoot, which would have been a classy shoot with a leading American fashion photographer in line with the beautiful artistic imagery she’d published of herself on Herself.Com, which she’d just launched,” Naparstek says. “We decided not to pursue the shoot when her agent offered us access to existing portraits instead. But with the Herself.Com peg no longer as strong, we decided to delay the profile until later in the year so it could be tied to the new seasons of her series Please Like Me and Reign. Apologies to Caitlin for any miscommunication.”

Stasey isn’t accepting this.

It seems to explain why Stasey’s Herself.com was as insanely well-received as it was. A place where women can pose on their own terms remains a rare enigma.  

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