The Huffington Post reported Sunday morning on a photographer who is fundraising for “A Beautiful Body Project” to show real women’s bodies—nude or nearly nude—along with inspiring stories about their bodies and their lives, in order to encourage healthy self-esteem. I understand the benefits of women getting to see what other normal, un-photoshopped bodies look like so that they have realistic expectations for their own. I understand the danger of being exposed to countless images of flawless models who embody cultural ideals and who exercise/starve themselves for a living. Most of the time, we don’t see bodies that we can relate to: the bodies of other women working, studying, raising kids, or generally just living life without the supervision of a personal trainer and a nutritionist, or the “luxury” of working out during half of their waking hours. I remember a very liberating and helpful experience during university when the primitive village stay conditions during our semester abroad meant that many of my female friends and I had to live in very close quarters and take “bucket” showers in the same room together. Seeing each other naked resulted in all of us becoming a little less self-conscious and little more accepting of our own bodies as we saw a broad range of body types and physical quirks that were apparently normal, despite never being featured in mainstream media.Still, I have my doubts about this photography project. There’s a big difference between private, interpersonal interactions and public, impersonal displays.

The intentions behind it are good, but after looking through some of the photos, I thought, “This is still women putting themselves on display for the public to scrutinize and discuss. It still feels like female bodies being treated like public property.” Men don’t have to pose naked for photo projects in order to be seen as more than just sex objects, or to have their worth affirmed to them by others’ approving gaze. Maybe trying to reclaim our portrayal in media—by replicating the very kinds of images which have exploited us all along—is not an effective tactic. Maybe the problem with how women are treated in our culture goes deeper than redefining beauty—it goes right down to questioning why it is so important for women to be beautiful in the first place.

There have been photography projects depicting breast cancer survivors (naked), and mothers with their post-partum bodies (naked), but my question is why any of these women need to take off their clothes and have the public declare their bodies beautiful in order for them to feel valued, or in order to be able to accept themselves? Ironically, these campaigns seem to reinforce that the most essential part of one’s being—or of a female’s being, at any rate—is her body. Can we not recognize and honor the whole person without seeing them naked? Does seeing them naked bring us any closer to seeing the most unique and intimate parts of who they are? I’m not convinced that the fascinating complexity of a woman’s mind and heart, all of the experiences and decisions and determination and courage and vulnerability and creativity and whatever else makes her who she is, can be captured in a photo—with or without clothes. I worry that these photo shoots are not empowering enough because they do not question the socially-constructed idea that women must be physically attractive to be happy.

I’m still waiting to see the naked photo shoots of men who have survived prostate cancer, or dads whose bodies have changed due to stress, sleep-deprivation, and missing their morning workouts because they’re busy being parents. Actually, I have no desire to see those photos, but the point is this: I highly doubt that any of these campaigns are forthcoming, because men don’t have to be deemed physically attractive (within a narrow, cultural definition or otherwise) in order to be taken seriously in society. No one assumes that a man will have lower self-esteem because of his sagging chest or pot belly or graying hair or wrinkled jowls. Though I realize that many men do struggle with physical insecurities in the hyper-sexualized advertising wasteland we all inhabit, they do not face the same blunt message that women do of needing to be physically attractive to matter.

That is why, although I applaud the spirit behind what this photographer is doing, these bare-all campaigns to redefine beauty will ultimately fall short of garnering respect for women as whole people. They fail to bring us closer to gender equality because they play along with the unchallenged assumptions that physical beauty is a prerequisite for female self-esteem, and that it’s the most important aspect of a woman’s identity.