The Wildfemmes Census - I want to know how we really feel.

I’ve spent years photographing women’s bodies. Now I want to know how we actually feel about them.

When I started Wildfemmes, I was interested in what happened when you took away all the things we’re normally encouraged to use to make ourselves look “better”.

The clothes. The angles. The posing. The carefully curated version of ourselves we’ve become incredibly good at presenting to the world.

Underwater, most of that disappears.

Bodies move differently. Skin folds. Hair goes everywhere. Gravity takes the day off. And women who might have arrived telling me all the things they didn’t like about themselves would often look at their photographs afterwards and see something completely different.

Strength. Beauty. Freedom. Themselves.

That has always been the heart of Wildfemmes.

But over the years, I’ve realised I’m just as interested in the conversations surrounding the photographs as I am in the photographs themselves.

Because despite all the progress we’ve supposedly made around body positivity, representation and ageing, I’m not convinced we’ve completely escaped the old rules.

Maybe they’ve just changed outfits.

We grew up with magazines telling us how to lose five kilos before summer. Now an algorithm can quietly serve us a thousand tiny reminders that we should be smoother, younger, leaner, stronger, healthier, more toned, less tired and somehow drinking three litres of water while also getting eight hours sleep.

Exhausting, really.

And yet I also think something is changing.

I hear women questioning things we once accepted without thinking. I see women caring less about being palatable. I see conversations about ageing, bodies, motherhood, menopause, beauty and identity happening far more openly.

So I started wondering: where are we actually at?

Not what Instagram tells us.

Not what the beauty industry thinks.

Not what a headline says women want.

What do we think?

That’s why I created The Wildfemmes Census.

It’s an anonymous survey exploring our relationships with body image, ageing, beauty, confidence, representation and the cultural messages we’ve carried with us — sometimes since we were girls.

And I want it to grow.

I want to hear from women in their twenties and women in their seventies. Women who feel fantastic in their bodies and women who are struggling with them. Mothers and non-mothers. Women in cities, women in regional Australia, women from different cultures and backgrounds, and women whose experiences look absolutely nothing like mine.

Because this only becomes interesting when the sample gets bigger.

I don’t want Wildfemmes to tell women how they should feel about their bodies.

I want to understand how we do feel.

Where we’re changing. Where we’re still stuck. What we’ve rejected. What we’ve carried with us. And what the next generation of women might inherit from us.

The Census only takes a few minutes. It’s anonymous. And there are no gold stars for having achieved perfect body confidence.

Come exactly as you are.

Fill out The Wildfemmes Census.

And when you’re finished, send it to a woman who sees the world differently to you.

Actually, send it to five.

Let’s see what women really have to say.