An Interview with Lydia Reeves

Arriving at Lydia’s studio, we were met with the façade of an old workshop in the heart of an industrial estate.

Lydia answered the door in her colourful Lucy & Yak dungarees and led us up to the studio. It felt as if we were transported into a safe space, a haven – surrounded by colourful and glittery boobs, bums and vulvas. As we set up the equipment, the colourful busts that lined the walls, reflected the morning light around the room. They all held such similarities but showed off every bit of uniqueness, right down to stretch marks, piercings, tattoos and scars. All beautiful in their own right.

How did you get into body casting?

On my foundation course at AUB, we learned all sorts of different things, one of which was body casting. It was an hour’s lesson on how to cast a hand – the most basic introduction into body casting and I just found it really interesting. I’d always focused on bodies in my artwork, and I liked that it was no longer my interpretation of someone’s body.

On my undergraduate degree, I learned a little bit more and just dabbled in it. All my friends volunteered for me, bless them. Casting all my friends boobs and vulvas… it was a great bonding experience!

What’s been your favourite casting?

I literally couldn’t choose. I love them all, but particularly the pregnant bellies. They make really special casting sessions and the end result is just beautiful.

Would you do any male casting?

If you scroll back far enough on my Instagram, you’ll find a lot of dicks on my profile – it’s where I started out. It’s funny thinking back, at AUB people called me the dick girl. One of my final pieces was a penis with loads of flowers painted all over it. It’s just not my bag anymore and it’s much nicer working with women…

You’re an author, too. Can you tell me more about My Vulva and I?

The book came from my vision to create something that I wish that I’d seen when I was younger. It’s a collection of 100 stories and 200 beautiful photos of vulva casts. I wanted to create something permanent, not just on the Internet, which people could flip through and hopefully see a part of themselves in there. It’s got so much diversity, the stories are all so unique with different experiences. I wish that I’d had that growing up, so that’s why I created it.

I’d done about 10 vulva casts and when I started putting the book together, I quickly realised that I wanted to do a book and an exhibition. I didn’t want to have the casts and do nothing with them. I wanted them to have permanency.

So, this became a mission to cast 100 vulvas for the book, which then quickly turned into 200 vulvas for the book. It took me a year to cast them – I don’t know how I did 200 vulva casts in a year, but I did! I worked with an incredible book designer and my friend who’s an art director. It took us another year to put the book together – a lot longer than we all thought. But it was so worth it, because it’s absolutely beautiful.

Getting to know you

So usually, people come in and I always make sure we chat lots before they take any clothes off. When we get casting, I make sure everyone feels comfortable – we go through their intention for the session and what they might have been through to lead them to wanting this – I talk them through everything.

...and relax

I work with everyone individually; some people want to really open up and talk quite a lot and some people don’t want to talk very much. I don’t move on to the actual casting part of it until I feel like they’re completely relaxed.

Casting

What we make in every session is a mould – we make the inverted version of whichever body part is being cast. Later, I cast into the mould to create a positive version, and then work on that to create the finished piece.

Materials

For materials it’s always resin and fibreglass. Unless you’re getting a vulva cast, then there is an option of having it created in plaster too. Anything bigger than a vulva, I don’t offer in plaster just because it’s so fragile.

Finishing

For colours, it’s up to the client; we’ve got loads of options in the studio, including glitter. I can also do hand-painted illustrations – there’s so much choice.

Why is it important to challenge perceptions on vulva diversity?

I just don’t think we see them very much. Especially growing up as a straight woman, I literally saw no other vulvas apart from my own. The only ones I did see were in porn and they weren’t – at the time – the most diverse selection.

I’ve spoken to people around my age, and they’ve all said similar things – porn was their education source. Which is terrible! It doesn’t show a proper variety of vulvas. I think this where it all started for me. I came across porn when I was around 12. I grew up thinking that my vulva was completely different from everyone else’s in the world, so and I booked into get labiaplasty when I was 18… luckily, I ended up cancelling my appointment last minute.

Did you know that labiaplasty is the fastest growing cosmetic procedure in the world? It’s super shocking, and it’s mainly down to lack of education. If people actually had more education around vulva-diversity and were able to access things like My Vulva and I, I don’t think it would be as prevalent as it is now. And that’s how my passion has grown, I just want to help women and people with vulvas to just really see that they don’t need cosmetic surgery. Everyone is so unique and so different and that’s what makes us all so normal and so beautiful.

Shouldn’t this kind of education start much earlier?

Having education like this in schools would have completely altered the way that I thought about myself. It would have given me so much more confidence about my body going into teenage years and early adulthood.

My hope is that schools can use my book in sex education classes or PSHE. I did have a school recently commission a few vulva casts, which honestly made me cry because that is 100% what I would’ve wanted to see when I was younger. Imagine seeing real vulvas? I think starting this kind of education at the source, before kids can create any kind of narrative around their own bodies is incredibly important. It takes a long time to unpick negative thoughts, so the ideal would be to not develop them in the first place.

Your Instagram is quite a safe and educational space, how have you found that?

I don’t really know how I fell into the space of the more sex education vibe online, but I think it suits me. I’ve always been quite confident and passionate talking about things that other people haven’t been comfortable to talk about.

Your work isn’t just empowering, it can be healing. Do you often work with sexual assault survivors?

I do work with survivors of sexual assault quite a bit. People come to me for all sorts of reasons, but that is one of the big ones. I think a lot of people use my art as a way of reclaiming their body.

I also have people that come to me if they’re going in for breast surgery, either for breast reductions or if people have got the BRCA1 gene and they need mastectomies or reconstruction, or people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. They come to me pre- and post-surgery – it’s a really nice way to remember their boobs up to this point and then they’re going on to their next part of their journey. And for people post-surgery it’s a way of celebrating their new body; being able to look at themselves with love and with celebration. It’s really nice to be able to offer that to people.

Sessions like this must be quite hard on you, how do you work through this?

It’s definitely more of a positive outcome. So even if people come to get cast and are initially quite sad, anxious, or insecure – they’ve been through quite a big thing to get themselves here – they leave feeling so positive. It just feels amazing to be able to run the casting session and see the change in the person. I try really hard not to take any of the negativity home with me, just so I can keep that sense of positivity all around. I think that’s such an important thing to be able to offer people.

Tell me about your collaboration with Marks and Spencer.

They contacted me out of the blue, to take body casts of M&S staff for an installation on London’s South Bank. The campaign was all about the uniqueness and diversity of boobs in support of their bra fitting services.

It was an amazing thing to be a part of. I love it when big brands want to do things like this because I feel like people really stop and listen to big companies.

It was just so nice to be able to show the public how diverse we are, especially as a lot of the casts were of women who run the bra fitting services being promoted. Going for a bra fitting shouldn’t make you feel anxious – we’re all normal and different.

Finally, what’s your One Piece of Advice?

Keep. On. Going. If there’s something that you’re really and truly passionate about and means a lot to you, just keep on persevering. It might not happen on the first go, or the second or third, and you might get knock-back after knock-back, but just keep on pushing at it. You’ll look back and be grateful that you did.