Reign Actress Calls Out Magazine For Nixing Shoot Because She Wouldn’t Pose Nude

You mess with the bull, you get the horns. Australian actress Caitlin Stasey isn't letting one magazine's sexist behavior slide. In a column for Jezebel, the Reign star calls out Australian pub The Good Weekend for expecting her to pose nude — and pulling the plug on the shoot when she refused. As Stasey tells it, the magazine was keen to interview her about the launch of her website, Herself.com. She describes the site as a "safe space for women of varying backgrounds, body types and belief systems to amplify their concerns, wishes, dreams, complaints and woes — a platform dedicated to expanding the scope of visible female experience and of visible female bodies." The site features nude portraits of women captured by female photographers, including Stasey herself. As The Good Weekend senior editor Ben Naparstek later told People, a nude shoot seemed "fitting" given Herself's content. Stasey, however, felt that her body "was going to be used as a prop to sell a magazine." She suggested a different (clothed) direction instead, only to have the shoot cancelled over concerns about cost. If Stasey wasn't going to be appearing nude, a large budget apparently wasn't worth the effort. Stasey writes that the editors requested existing photos of the actress, which she and her publicist provided, though the magazine sat on the story for months. At that point, Stasey felt like she was being punished for refusing to pose nude, and made the drama public. "Nudity in the abstract is not the issue, and my body is not the issue either," she writes. "What is the issue is the way that many men like Ben Naparstek-your-head-in-the-oven believe they have an inherent right to both because of my recent projects and my candor. It’s the same logic we apply to a woman’s sexuality. Just because she’s fucked one guy she must be available to all of them, right? Just because she’s wearing a short skirt, just because her shirt is sheer, just because she is a woman, she must be available to me." Good for her for speaking out. The story may never run, but so be it. We don't need a nude photo shoot to tell us what kind of feisty spirit Stasey is.