‘Our erotic knowledge empowers us’: The women’s group chat that explores the power of nudity

When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential elections in November 2024, Zoe Mendelson — author of Pussypedia: A Comprehensive Guide (2021) — turned to humor and eroticism to try to combat “post-election blues.”

Through her Instagram profile, she encouraged her followers to send her photographs of their breasts, as a form of combative action. “This was 80% a joke. One that, I was told, my gender afforded me the privilege of making publicly — a double standard. But that’s what makes it fun,” she reflects.

“Many women wanted to do it. And so, I created [a group called] ‘the Chichi Chat,’ announcing that the second rule of the group is that there would be no security protocol. In other words, whoever uploads an image showing their face does so at their own risk. I think sharing our bodies under that premise makes it possible for us not to be ashamed of them,” she explains to EL PAÍS. “Patriarchy has taught us that the female body is something indecent, profane, sexualized and inappropriate. But you can choose not to accept that. Sharing your body makes you feel free.”

Journalist Catherine Lacey joined the group. “The chat is often (unsurprisingly) horny as many of us are queer, but the point of the group isn’t to be seduced or lusted after. The most common selfie is casual and domestic, a half-clothed body going about her business, the kind of picture that would befuddle the male gaze,” she explains in The Cut. “My friend and fellow group member Jessie noted she enjoys doing something sexual for an audience that doesn’t include anyone she’s sleeping with, detached from any particular need for validation or reciprocation,” she adds.

It’s precisely the absence of the male gaze that makes those in the group feel liberated and more beautiful than ever. “The images show their bodies in their most natural states, in poses and situations that aren’t as staged as when a selfie is sent for sexual purposes. The result is glorious: imperfections outside the standards of patriarchy achieve this,” Mendelson says.

After speaking with many of the members of the chat, she notes that they all find it to be a healing space. “It’s much easier to see another body and think it’s beautiful. In doing so, you think yours is beautiful, too. It’s very difficult to let go of that deep-rooted instinct to criticize yourself, but this is an opportunity to see yourself positively,” she says.

The diversity of breasts displayed in the group chat has been empowering for those who share images of their bodies. “Most of the bare boobs available for viewing in the world are ‘perfect’ boobs. The breadth of boobs, nipples, colors, shapes, hair and bodies in the chat has been astounding. It’s been incredible to see them all communally celebrated. It’s been healing for me [...] and from what I’ve heard from many other members, it has been for them too,” the chat manager writes on her Substack.

Nudity has become a kind of virtual oasis. It’s a sort of secret key to accessing a safe space, where women can share fears, insecurities and moments of happiness. On her Substack, Mendelson explains how the chat has become an interesting space for support. “A few times, the group has broken out into discussions, which have included: rituals around grief (this spawned a spinoff group), best-practices and strategies for taking booty shots, using primrose to curb premenstrual boob swelling, how growing up in a naked or not-naked house impacted your body image, why Agatha of Sicily’s boobs are on a plate, ways we’re teaching our kids to love their bodies, (as well as) areola eczema,” she details.

For her part, Lacey notes that, before joining the group, she had never encountered a network of women who spoke so freely about their lives and bodies. “I have never so regularly seen the beautifully wide variety of tits we never see in film, on television, or even in those supposedly body-positive ad campaigns that still feature only conventionally attractive women who are merely a bit curvier than their runway counterparts,” she writes in The Cut.

Using nudity as a form of rebellion is by no means new. And it’s increasingly common for the act of nudity to become an ally in looking at things differently. In fact, from October 8 of 2024 until March 9 of 2025, an exhibition titled Naked: Normative and Rebellious Nudes in Spanish Art (1870-1970) was held at the Carmen Thyssen Museum, in the Spanish city of Málaga. Various works were displayed, in which canonical beauty merged with the erotic impulse and the modern vindication of form. Other essential aspects of the disruptive contemporary art scene also reflected on the denial of beauty, while flirting with a more performative kind of body art.

For her part, the artist and teacher Liliana Maresca turned her naked body into a form of social and political activism. And now, groups like Mendelson’s invite their members (her group chat has 255 people from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Kenya, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, Denmark, Norway, Georgia and Turkey, although the creator claims not to personally know “about 200 people” who are part of the group) to show their silhouettes without shame, in order to learn to love themselves and to turn the object of censorship into a paradoxical element of union.

The group chat is a place where trans people have also found a freedom that — as U.S. writer and illustrator Rani Baker indicated in the study #Toxictwitter: Violence and Abuse Against Women Online, published by Amnesty International – can be difficult to embrace on social media. “People have made so many dehumanizing and humiliating assumptions about, references to and descriptions of, my body, surgical results, sexual orientation and proclivities, general lifestyle and behaviors that it could fill a book. It’s shockingly common to see the most degrading descriptions of myself and my existence being bandied around by people trying to get under my skin,” she laments.

Medelson believes that every person in the group possesses this freedom. She points out that, while her group chat isn’t intended to have a sexual purpose, the truth is that a friend told her it was a safe and empowering space for women and queer people, as well as “undoubtedly erotic.”

“Being publicly pervy like I was with my Instagram ‘joke’ is far from a privilege we generally have in the world. It’s a social risk and, for me, a form of protest. So is the chat,” she writes, at the end of her essay.

It’s no wonder she admires Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978), which points out that, to perpetuate itself, “every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.”

Therefore, she asserts that, in the case of women, it translates into the suppression of the erotic as a source of power and information. The author explains that Western society has portrayed the superficial aspects of the erotic as a sign of feminine inferiority, while pushing women to feel despicable by virtue of the mere existence of the erotic.

“The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference,” Lorde writes.

“Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe,” she concludes.

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