The Art of Unmasking

By Kristine schomaker

Gal Mariya Rivers prepares to reveal her face after a decade of anonymous body liberation

I'm looking at a photo of Gal Mariya Rivers—green top, teal glasses, genuine smile, tattoos visible on her shoulder — and thinking about how revolutionary it is to simply exist in your body without apology. Today, on July 4th, she's showing her full face to the world for the first time after ten years of creating nude art online. The timing isn't coincidental.

"The theme of 'independence' feels fitting," she tells me over email, "because so much about this project is about personal expression, individual choices, being different, and fighting stigmas."

This isn't your typical artist profile. Gal Mariya (pronounced like "Gal Maria," but keep the Y) has spent the last decade creating what she calls "body liberation art"—nude photography and video work shared primarily on Reddit, OnlyFans, and other adult platforms. Her body doesn't conform to mainstream beauty standards: fat, small breasts, big butt, hairy. That's exactly the point.

The project began in 2015 when she was took nude photos and cried while looking at them, despite being more conventionally attractive back then, as she was thinner then and was still regularly removing her body hair. "I was so desperate for relief that I did the radical thing of posting the body I was so ashamed of, to the internet," she explains. "And specifically Reddit, which is known for having trolls, which heightens the fear and risk."

That first post to r/NormalNudes—a non-sexual forum for body positivity—changed everything. Comment after comment told her they liked what they saw. "I didn't need to see myself as the most beautiful, or to get a certain amount of upvotes. I just needed to get outside my own head, and to see that the ugliness that I perceived was mostly my imagination."

But when exactly did she realize she was making art?

"I realized that I was making a bunch of creative decisions as I was taking my nudes," she says. "How I set up the composition of the shots. How I could improve the look (and my ability to convey meaning or beauty) with lighting, planning, and/or equipment."

She started noticing beautiful patterns—the diagonal lines created by folds of her side when she twisted to show both breasts and butt in the same shot. The interesting composition from directly below while masturbating. "Would I have thought of the interesting composition of a photo from directly below me if I hadn't put my phone directly below me in a waterproof case while masturbating and later noticed what a unique and beautiful photo the lines of my body created from that perspective?"

A particularly artistic period came in 2018 with the Body Gratitude Challenge—365 days of posting photographs or videos exploring what she's grateful for about her body. Some posts focused on aesthetics, others on function. "I expressed myself both in visuals and in accompanying captions, to tell stories, including ones I was still finding in myself."

The project spans everything from serious reflections (never having had cancer) to observational gratitude (her knees don't hurt like they used to) to mind-body connections ("I've always been up-in-my-head, but now I'm learning to understand my body feelings too").

It's complicated living out loud and making art from deeply personal material. "This project started because I would cry looking at my body," she reminds me. The trauma and nuances are "so innervated through my past and present that it's painful and big for me."

She's constantly navigating how much to share versus hold back. "How much do I want to live out loud and serve as a model for those who are also working through similar experiences, vs. how much do I want to process just internally or with my close loved ones or therapist?"

Recently, she included this note in videos from 2018 when she was slimmer: "Please, no comments comparing my smaller vs larger body, though you are welcome to share other thoughts ;)" Even positive comments about preferring her current larger size feel intrusive. "I have enough complex experiences of seeing visuals of my body from different times in my life, without adding more to it."

Authenticity doesn't mean sharing everything, she's learned. "It's ok to share less than everything."

Being autistic and having ADHD shapes everything about her creative process. The hyperactive energy generates tons of ideas and content but makes consistency challenging. "I'm always giving myself projects or starting conversations and other activities that add a lot to my plate (exciting and fulfilling but also overwhelming)."

The administrative side—file management, account management, dealing with algorithms and bans—competes with actual creating. "Like so many kinds of artistic entrepreneurship, there's a huge difference between making the art and spreading/selling the art."

She uses spreadsheets to manage the overwhelm and comics to synthesize complex feelings into simple stick figures with speech bubbles. In her adult content comics, cartoon Gal Mariya has a blank horizontal gap where her eyes should be—missing the daily hair flowers and magnetic glasses that are major forms of self-expression. "Not only does hiding my eyes obscure me visually and create many other barriers and efforts, the constant hiding of an identifying aspect of myself is also cutting off my audience from major other ways that I express myself."

Many autistic people struggle with facial expressions being misunderstood. In photos and videos, she often holds a smile more than feels natural—a form of masking that complicates authenticity. "Choices that improve appearance at the expense of naturalness or comfort can be controversial and/or not quite feel right. It can be complicated balancing between simply showing what would be most natural for me at a given moment (e.g. a neutral facial expression) with making adjustments to how I present myself to create a more aesthetic or exciting photo (e.g. a smile)."

The face reveal today opens up new creative possibilities. No more checking every frame for visible eyes before sharing. No more editing out her eyes. "Eyes are a significant way that personalities, appearances, and pleasure is conveyed, so this adds substantially to my creative and expressive and aesthetic options."

She's also confronting new vulnerabilities. Her under-eye bags, for as long as she can remember, will be fully visible. "While my under-eye bags have shown up sometimes in closely-cropped photos, they obviously haven't been seen as much as if I have been freely showing my full face."

When podcast hosts who could see her during interviews mentioned she's very pretty, she felt unexpected relief. "Since most of the compliments I've gotten online in this past decade haven't been on my face... having people look at my full face and out-of-nowhere be moved to compliment my face" eased an insecurity she didn't realize she was carrying.

Another host said she looks like "a regular person"—which slightly stung (even though it was said neutrally) but also felt empowering. "Yes, I am a regular looking person, and regular looking people are sexy too."

What does she want people to understand about ten years of this work?

"I want people to see the journey that I've gone through (and continue going through), and if they can relate to any part of my experience or mission, I hope they find inspiration to find their own solutions." Not everyone's journey involves body image, and not everyone with body image issues will want to post nudes. "But I think most people can relate to having insecurities, and many insecurities can be helped by sharing their insecurities with comfy, safe(r) people."

She wants people to know this isn't about attention or compliments. "Rather, I am one perfectly imperfect human who is living my life (relatively) openly, and sharing vulnerably. I do this to make art, to normalize body diversity, to give viewers fun and/or pleasure, to understand and express myself, to grow, to learn new skills, to connect."

And she wants people to understand the work involved. The ridiculous idea that adult content creation is easy money—"I'll just throw up some feet pics and make a million dollars"—shows complete ignorance about the industry. "Anyone who says or thinks something like this has absolutely no idea what they are talking about."

All that labor is invisible. Files to manage, accounts to navigate, interfaces that make everything harder, spreadsheets for tracking, endless interactions. "Like so many kinds of artistic entrepreneurship, there's a huge difference between making the art and spreading/selling the art."

Looking at that photo again—Gal Mariya smiling in her green top and teal glasses—I'm struck by how radical simple existence can be. For ten years, she's been saying: This body, exactly as it is, deserves to be seen. Deserves pleasure. Deserves art.

Today, she shows her eyes for the first time. Independence Day indeed.

Gal Mariya Rivers' work can be found at stillinmetamorphosis.com. Her face reveal happens today, July 4th, 2025—the 10th anniversary of her stillinmetamorphosis project.