Culture

Caitlin Stasey Has Penned A Withering Piece For Jezebel About The ‘Good Weekend’ Fiasco

"Is it exhausting being so full of shit?"

by Steph Harmon  21 July 2015

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If you thought Caitlin Stasey was going to leave her complaints against Good Weekend at last week’s door, you were naively, adorably wrong.

On Thursday, the actress, model and feminist commentator deployed a series of tweets claiming that the Fairfax magazine’s now-outgoing editor, Ben Naparstek, had pulled a profile on her after she refused to pose nude for a shoot. The profile was planned to be pegged to Herself.com, a body positive feminist site Stasey launched in January which coupled interviews with nude photographs of a diverse group of women, with the aim “to witness the female form in all its honesty without the burden of the male gaze”. But when the mood boards for the shoot came in, illustrating Good Weekend‘s intent to have her pose nude, Stasey’s team rejected the concept and, she says, proposed another — before the shoot was cancelled altogether.

“They wanted to team an interview about my upset over the constant objectification of women with a sexualised photo shoot,” she said on Twitter. “I declined. And miraculously, conveniently after I said I wouldn’t do it, they claimed the magazine was downsized and wouldn’t run the piece”.

Last week, Stasey referred to the organisation as “entitled cunts”, calling Ben Naparstek “the lead culprit” and saying he had lied in his statement to Junkee, in which he claimed a different shoot was never arranged. And this week she’s gone even further, penning an opinion piece for American feminist site Jezebel, describing what she calls “a recent run-in with a crooked magazine editor”.

In the article, Stasey details the events leading up to the cancelled shoot. She says that after the magazine sent a journalist to interview her — “several hours airing out and exploring all of my deepest and sexiest secrets”, she claims, with no small amount of mocking — the magazine had scheduled the shoot for Saturday, sending over a mood board of the shoot’s direction: “Lots of ladies in panties, big hair, big makeup. Panties, panties, panties.” (Naparstek’s description of the proposed shoot differs substantially: “[It] would have been a classy shoot with a leading American fashion photographer in line with the beautiful artistic imagery … on Herself.Com,” he said in his statement.)

After Stasey’s team told the magazine that the shoot contradicted their message, Stasey says the shoot’s coordinator was surprised: “I was sure that ben said to me he had flagged this with you and it was clear that we were hoping to do a nude shoot,” reads a screenshot of an email from her.

Stasey says her team sent over new themes and mood boards, but the next day received another email: “My editor [Ben Naparstek] has just pulled the plug on the shoot”. It’s here Naparstek’s version of events differs from Stasey’s: in a statement supplied to Junkee on Thursday, he said his magazine “decided not to pursue the shoot when her agent offered us access to existing portraits instead”,  claiming that the proposal for a different shoot was never arranged. Stasey denies this:

In Jezebel, Stasey writes that her publicist “was able to get explicit confirmation that Ben had cancelled the photoshoot because we had pushed back on their very complex, interesting “nudity/panties” concept”; she also includes a screen shot of a portion of that email:

“Hold up. You suddenly don’t have the money to dress me for a shoot?” she writes in Jezebel. “I’m literally only worth my weight in wardrobe cash to you if I’m naked? Were you going to cloak me in pasties made of gold and saffron? In panties made of unobtanium, or whatever was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Then, and only then, is it acceptable for you to scrap a feature on someone because they have refused to pose nude.”

Stasey also draws attention to Naparstek’s history with controversy: in February 2013, John Van Tiggelen — who replaced Naparstek as editor of The Monthly, when Naparstek joined Good Weekend — alleged he had been trying to poach Monthly writers, had let standards slip at Good Weekend, and was paying women writers less.

“Is it exhausting, Ben?” Stasey writes in Jezebel. “Being made of lies, living in your lie-house and feeding your lie-mouth? Is it exhausting being so full of shit? It seems decent for your career, anyway, doesn’t it?” She points to an article reporting on Naparstek’s forthcoming move to a high profile role at SBS, which was announced yesterday.

The full Jezebel piece is absolutely worth a read, but if you’re after a summarised version, here’s the pic that accompanied it:

stasey1–

Image republished with permission.