(All photos and text by Liora K)

I am an unabashed sex-positive feminist. I fight hard for a woman’s right to choose, for easy access to birth control, and for comprehensive sex education. I work hard to educate about the very real ramifications of slut shaming, loving your body, and the benefits of boudoir photography (in fact, I’ll even be giving a talk about it at the Body Love Conference!). I am pro pornography, sex toys, and masturbation. I frequently photograph people in various states of dress, and while I struggle with my personal body image, I am more at peace with it then I have been.

While my week to week often involves me interacting with nude people, and I’m extremely comfortable with it and admire deeply the individual beauty of each body, I had an experience recently which shocked me into a very strange reality:

I was leading and directing a photo shoot with Jes Baker (aka: The Militant Baker) with 68 gorgeous almost completely (and sometimes completely) naked women. I was photographing each woman about 4 times, her face, her breasts, her profile, and her bottom. The air was completely electric with positive energy - each woman getting cheered on.

Normally, when I’m working, I stay completely clothed as one might expect. I felt that this shoot, that this experience, was a unique and I decided to take off my tank top and bra in solidarity. In the moment where I took off my clothes - a moment that initially felt as natural to me as anything and was greeted with wild cheers - I instantly wanted to put them back on. Never in my life have I been so naked - not even when my best friend and I stripped down in college to roll around in blue paint together. And even though I kept it all in my brain and went right back to shooting, it caused me to do a lot of meditating on my personal modesty in the face of the type of work that I do and causes I support.

I find that my modesty even goes beyond a physical modesty, but becomes an action-oriented one as well. I’ve taken dance classes for much of my life and love to do it. It’s such a powerful form of expression and it brings me a lot of joy. Why then, is it, that certain moves - powerful, hip and groin oriented moves, bring me to my knees with shame to perform in front of other people? I would rather grimace through and half-ass a sexual dance move instead of owning it powerfully; all in the name of hiding my personal authentic sexual nature. For a time it even impacted my photography, until I really pushed myself through it (thanks Katy!)

I feel that a lot of my personal modesty stems from living in a culture that blames it’s victims and both hyper sexualizes and refuses to acknowledge a woman’s right to engage with her sexuality - instead giving that power to those around her. And while with my photography I work hard to engage with that boundary and put the power back in the hands of the women it was taken from, on a personal level I find it much more difficult to take hold of.

I don’t know when or how I developed my personal brand of modesty, but I do know that since realizing it exists, it has become crucial in my life to investigate it and to nudge at it’s boundaries. I want to break my fear of taking my sexuality seriously and instead OWN it as a part of my human-ness. Welcome to my 2014 New Years Resolution.

(Liora and Jes Baker AKA The Militant Baker)