So let's say you're a guy who's been reading about boudoir pics (perhaps at THIS VERY BLOG), you find the idea intriguing, and you start to think that it might be nice to have some similar pictures of your special lady friend.
Today we're going to talk about how you might suggest that in a supportive and nonpressuring way. (Yes, that's right, it's another Unsolicited Relationship Advice post! Come for the racy pics and DJT rants, stay for the unsolicited relationship advice.)
I'm going to start with two baseline assumptions: (1) you already have a good relationship, and your lines of communication are open and clear; and (2) you have a good guess that she'd be receptive to the idea, or at least wouldn't be adamantly opposed to it.
If neither of those things is true, then this probably isn't the best time to go pushing for a boudoir shoot. As I've talked about before, boudoir pics frequently represent a significant gift of trust (not to mention a significant financial outlay, at least if you're using a good and established photographer), and if your relationship isn't currently as secure as it could be, then it may not be reasonable to ask for something that big. Meanwhile, if you happen to know that the lady would definitely not be open to the idea -- maybe she's extremely modest, or uncomfortable with her body at the moment, or this just plain isn't her style -- then, again, this might not be the time.
Boudoir isn't for everyone. It doesn't have to be for everyone. And with this as in all things: her body, her choice. Respect your partner's wishes, and don't push for something she truly does not want to do.
But assuming that she's curious and potentially into the idea, you shouldn't have to do a hard sell. What you might have to do is offer gentle encouragement, which I'd suggest structuring as follows:
1. Tell her why you want pictures of her.
This might be a hard one, because a lot of guys are unaccustomed to expressing their desires frankly and with sensitivity. The culture of Our Dumb Society hands you a whole lot of vocabulary about objectifying women at an emotional distance, but doesn't provide much help when it comes to earnestly and honestly telling your partner "you turn me on, and this is why."
To some extent, you're going to have to chart your own path here, and it's natural to feel self-conscious and awkward about that. It's totally normal to have flashbacks to the time you bared your heart to Mindy in ninth grade and got it stomped into paste and resolved to never ever do that again. Confessing your desires and being vulnerable -- even a little bit, even with a degree of self-protective irony -- is hard. It is!
But it's also really, really important. If you want her to do this for you, then you have to do this for her. You have to offer a little bit of vulnerability in turn and tell her, openly and with specificity, that the idea of having pictures of her turns you on, and why, and how.
There are a million impersonal beautiful women who are naked on the internet. You can look at them anytime. But there is only one lady you're asking to do this right now. So what you need to do is think hard and honestly about what makes her special, and why her pictures would be uniquely treasured, and why you want to see her, above and beyond all the other women in the world, in this light.
Then you have to tell her that. Many (read: all) women are self-conscious about perceived imperfections in their bodies, so this is where you really need to bolster her confidence that yes, she's attractive; yes, she's desirable; yes, you want to see her in pictures, and no one else in the world will do. Write it in a card if you can't work up the nerve to say it aloud (Valentine's and anniversaries are good for this, especially in combination with gifts as suggested below), or say it aloud if you can't work up the nerve to write it down -- whichever's easier. But tell her. Make it personal. Make her feel special, and make her understand why it's special to you.
2. Do the legwork for her.
Some women prefer to take charge and control their own projects from start to finish, and if your partner happens to be of this mindset, then you can safely skip this step. But if you're looking to make this as easy and stress-free as possible, then one of the ways you can do that is to look up boudoir photographers in your area. Figure out what's in your budget, who's got solid reviews, whose style you like, and whose aesthetic seems most likely to flatter your lady friend. If you know that she's more likely to be comfortable shooting with an all-female team, look for that.
Then, when you're ready to move forward with the proposal, you can point her to one or two of your top choices. Be ready to discuss why you picked out those photographers, and what in their portfolios made you think that they'd be able to put her at ease and portray her in the best light. Go through the samples together, if you like: this gives you an opportunity to talk about what she is and isn't comfortable showing, to get her thoughts on different poses and outfits (if you're thinking of buying lingerie in the future, listen carefully to what she likes), and to tell her (again! you can never do this too often!) how you'd like to see her.
3. Provide some inspiration.
Again, this might not be a step you need to spend much time on (if she prefers to work independently or wants to make it a surprise, step on out of the way), but if you think your partner would find it helpful, you might offer a little bit of inspiration as to her props or outfit.
I don't recommend laying out the entire ensemble and storyboarding her whole shoot for her -- it's supposed to be about what she likes and how she wants to be seen, and it's not for you to dictate her whole shoot -- but if you happened to buy an extra-nice piece of lingerie for Valentine's, or a special necklace for an anniversary, it might be a romantic gesture to ask for its inclusion. If the purpose of these pictures is not only to commemorate how lovely she looks, but her personal and irreplaceable importance to you, then including signifiers of your relationship in the shoot can add to the romance.
Besides, I'm a big advocate of building sentimental value into pieces by using them as touchstones as often as possible, e.g. giving a lovely trinket one year and then including that gift in a personal photograph the next year. It's a way to remember who you were at that moment in time, and how you felt about each other. Including the object as a symbol can help anchor the sentiment.
4. Offer to cover costs.
Good boudoir pics ain't cheap. You're paying for the time and talent of a photographer who's spent a lot of years building up those skills, and you're probably also paying for a makeup artist and hairstylist to help those pictures look as good as they possibly can. The investment is well worth it (really, you do not want to be the one who kicks off the Pinterest Fails of boudoir pics), but it is an investment.
So cover it. If you want the pics, don't ask her to pay for them. More than that, make a gift of the shoot. As I've discussed in prior posts (and there are lots of other accounts on the internet that will back me up on this), doing a boudoir shoot can be a great experience in building up a woman's confidence and helping her explore and embrace herself as an unabashedly sensual, beautiful creature -- but many women don't feel comfortable spending that much money on themselves, and for something that they might perceive as vain or frivolous.
If she doesn't have to pay for it, then she doesn't have to worry about that. Making a gift of the shoot removes both the financial pressure and the emotional pressure of having to worry about whether she's vain for wanting to do such a thing. Instead, her participation -- and the pictures -- becomes her reciprocal gift to you.
The flipside of this, however, is that I don't recommend springing for a shoot before you've discussed it with your partner and cleared it as something she really wants to do. This is not something I'd recommend as a surprise gift. If it's really not her thing, then she's stuck with a choice between doing something that she doesn't really want to do (and, spoiler, the pictures never come out looking great if the woman doesn't really want to be there, because confidence and enthusiasm are pretty key to boudoir), or potentially wasting a lot of money.
I think it's much better to wait until you've talked it over, settled on a photographer, and figured out a reasonable timetable for when she wants to do this (maybe she isn't totally happy with some aspect of her appearance right now and wants to take a couple of months to work on that first; for example, I totally ruined my nails recently by stripping them with acetone polish remover way too often, and it's probably going to be a couple of months before I have anything but stubby finger nubs going). Then you can go ahead and buy the gift shoot. But please, please don't lock her into anything by putting money down before you've talked.
And that concludes today's episode of Unsolicited Relationship Advice from a (Not-Yet-Existent) Romance Writer.
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Monday, February 27, 2017
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Some Thoughts on Valentine's
The other day, a friend of mine -- a relatively recent immigrant from a country where Valentine's Day isn't really a Thing -- asked me what the deal was with this peculiar American holiday.
For a minute I thought about giving him the cynical, flip answer: that it's a fake commercial holiday invented to keep jewelers and chocolate manufacturers afloat. But that isn't what I actually believe (you'll be shocked, shocked! to know that it's a bit wordier and more complicated than that) and also I didn't know that it would really answer his question, so I begged off and said I'd blog about it sometime.
So here is what I really believe: that Valentine's Day is a stress test for relationships, and also that it's an interesting insight into what happens when you ask (mostly) men to perform emotional labor within those relationships.
A stress test, in the medical context, usually means asking the patient to undergo some mild physical exertion in order to put a little extra stress on the heart and thereby reveal problems that might otherwise go unnoticed. If you're healthy, a stress test is nothing. But if you're not, it can be alarming -- and not infrequently, you might have thought you were just fine, only to discover that, if you subject the system to a little extra demand, there's something amiss after all.
That's what V-Day is to relationships. The extra pressure of societal expectations to Do Something Romantic and the near-universal human temptation to compare your situation to your friends' and peers' creates a little extra stress that isn't otherwise there (sure, there are other stereotypical romantic occasions like anniversaries, but they don't all fall on the same day for everyone and thus don't impose the same pressure to compare; you'd never go to a restaurant and know that every other couple at every other table was celebrating their anniversary too).
If your relationship is healthy, your communications are clear, and your expectations are aligned, V-Day is easy, even fun. It's an excuse to do something nice for each other, or to affirm your own relationship by making fun of everybody else doing stuff.
But if your relationship is new and fragile, then it's hard to know how much stress it can withstand. And if you're not in great shape and there are deeper underlying problems, they're likely to buckle and crack under the strain.
It's these uncertainties that make V-Day as profitable as it is. It isn't the people in secure relationships who make V-Day profitable (the ones who like doing stuff spend money on each other anyhow; the ones who don't care about it aren't going to be pressured into dropping dollars on a holiday they perceive as fake). It's the insecure ones. People spend money on V-Day because they're trying to buy strength into their relationship.
This isn't meant to be a criticism, btw. Sometimes it's actually a very good idea, and sometimes it works. Sometimes it's inevitable (if you've only been dating someone for a couple of months, you can't have as strong a relationship as someone who's been happily married for 20 years; you simply don't have that reservoir of shared time). But the fact is, people who only spend money on V-Day are doing that because they're trying to buy what they don't already have, and what is not actually possible to purchase directly.
Which brings me to my second point: V-Day is pretty interesting in what it says about how difficult it is for (some) American men to perform emotional labor in relationships.
The general dynamic in most relationships (and let me underline that it's general, and I know there are plenty of exceptions, but generally I still think this is true) is that the woman does most of the emotional labor, by which I mean that she's the one who is primarily responsible for maintaining social connections, being "fun," and "keeping the romance alive." More often than not, it's women who arrange social plans for the couple, who write the thank-you notes and everyday emails to their friends and family, who stereotypically make the candelit dinners and wear the expensive lingerie and make sure their toenails are painted and don't "let themselves go" and all of that.
(Again: I realize I'm generalizing. I realize that social norms are, however slowly, changing. I realize there are plenty of men, especially young men, who take an active role in these things. That's great! But by and large, for decades, women in This Dumb Society have been conditioned by TV shows and movie rom-coms and well-meaning peers to feel like they have an obligation to be pretty and vivacious and maintain the relationship's romance as part of their feminine role [and if you don't do it, you know you aren't doing it, and you probably made that choice intentionally vs. doing it automatically without a moment's awareness that it was anything other than "normal"], and by and large, men have not been subject to the same pressures in the same way.)
V-Day is the one day a year where that expectation is reversed. The expectation on V-Day is that the man will be the one who does the primary romantic gesture, whether that's taking his girlfriend out on the town or bringing home a box of chocolates or surprising his wife with a diamond necklace or whatever. It's pretty explicit in the way this holiday is marketed that the man is supposed to do something romantic on Valentine's.
And that is really interesting to me, because the main thing you see as a result is that lots and lots of men have no idea how to be romantic. They just don't have the emotional vocabulary for it. They don't have any independent conception of what this is supposed to mean or how you would even articulate it.
So, lacking a real ability to express themselves on a deeper level, they buy the pre-packaged sentiment. They let greeting cards do their talking, and they let chocolates do their courting, and they let more expensive presents stand in for any deeper sentiments that they might want to share. And what should be a thoughtful and individualized expression of a unique and special relationship with a unique and special person instead gets transmuted, literally, into a mass-produced commodity. Whatever you wanted to say is trammeled and limited by the options available on the shelf, and many men never even consider that they might want to express themselves in some other way.
And then -- and this is really interesting to me too -- there's a certain resentment, half joking but half not, about doing even that, because doing emotional labor is hard (it's work! that's why they call it "labor"!) and it's frequently not something guys are accustomed to doing, and when you have to do something hard and unfamiliar on cue because Society Says So, then the natural unexamined reaction is to look for a way out of it.
It's so common to hear guys joking about how they "have to" do something for Valentine's that I think even guys who want to do things often feel obligated to shrug it off, like they're only doing it because they have to. There's a lot of joking about how much money you have to spend, or how you totally almost forgot about it because lol who pays attention to Valentine's, or how you forgot and your girlfriend never let you hear the end of it and women, so emotional and needy, amirite?!
The upshot of all this is that men often go to their significant others with some version of "honey, V-Day is a fake commercial holiday anyway, you don't really need a dumb card and a box of drugstore chocolates, do you?" And women feel a pressure to be agreeable, to not be emotional-and-needy, to signal that they're easy to get along with and not shrewish or demanding, so plenty of them will laugh and shrug it off and say "no, of course not!"
Some of them mean that. Some of them don't. Lots of them say it and think they mean it and then wonder, later, why they feel unappreciated when everybody knows that Valentine's is a fake holiday and they genuinely don't care for flowers or diamonds. And then their boyfriends or husbands might wonder why they're being frozen out when they talked about this and everybody agreed not to do anything for Valentine's.
The answer is that it isn't about the cards or the chocolates. It's about signifying to the woman that she's appreciated, and that the relationship is worth putting time and effort (and, yes, sometimes money -- but money is the paradoxically cheapest option here; time and effort count for more) into. It's about recognizing that this holiday is an externally imposed social ritual of no significance in and of itself (so by all means, skip out on it if that's what you both want to do), but it is also and because of that a stress test for your relationship, and ignoring it may mean ignoring a valuable early warning that something deeper and more serious is at risk.
For a minute I thought about giving him the cynical, flip answer: that it's a fake commercial holiday invented to keep jewelers and chocolate manufacturers afloat. But that isn't what I actually believe (you'll be shocked, shocked! to know that it's a bit wordier and more complicated than that) and also I didn't know that it would really answer his question, so I begged off and said I'd blog about it sometime.
So here is what I really believe: that Valentine's Day is a stress test for relationships, and also that it's an interesting insight into what happens when you ask (mostly) men to perform emotional labor within those relationships.
A stress test, in the medical context, usually means asking the patient to undergo some mild physical exertion in order to put a little extra stress on the heart and thereby reveal problems that might otherwise go unnoticed. If you're healthy, a stress test is nothing. But if you're not, it can be alarming -- and not infrequently, you might have thought you were just fine, only to discover that, if you subject the system to a little extra demand, there's something amiss after all.
That's what V-Day is to relationships. The extra pressure of societal expectations to Do Something Romantic and the near-universal human temptation to compare your situation to your friends' and peers' creates a little extra stress that isn't otherwise there (sure, there are other stereotypical romantic occasions like anniversaries, but they don't all fall on the same day for everyone and thus don't impose the same pressure to compare; you'd never go to a restaurant and know that every other couple at every other table was celebrating their anniversary too).
If your relationship is healthy, your communications are clear, and your expectations are aligned, V-Day is easy, even fun. It's an excuse to do something nice for each other, or to affirm your own relationship by making fun of everybody else doing stuff.
But if your relationship is new and fragile, then it's hard to know how much stress it can withstand. And if you're not in great shape and there are deeper underlying problems, they're likely to buckle and crack under the strain.
It's these uncertainties that make V-Day as profitable as it is. It isn't the people in secure relationships who make V-Day profitable (the ones who like doing stuff spend money on each other anyhow; the ones who don't care about it aren't going to be pressured into dropping dollars on a holiday they perceive as fake). It's the insecure ones. People spend money on V-Day because they're trying to buy strength into their relationship.
This isn't meant to be a criticism, btw. Sometimes it's actually a very good idea, and sometimes it works. Sometimes it's inevitable (if you've only been dating someone for a couple of months, you can't have as strong a relationship as someone who's been happily married for 20 years; you simply don't have that reservoir of shared time). But the fact is, people who only spend money on V-Day are doing that because they're trying to buy what they don't already have, and what is not actually possible to purchase directly.
Which brings me to my second point: V-Day is pretty interesting in what it says about how difficult it is for (some) American men to perform emotional labor in relationships.
The general dynamic in most relationships (and let me underline that it's general, and I know there are plenty of exceptions, but generally I still think this is true) is that the woman does most of the emotional labor, by which I mean that she's the one who is primarily responsible for maintaining social connections, being "fun," and "keeping the romance alive." More often than not, it's women who arrange social plans for the couple, who write the thank-you notes and everyday emails to their friends and family, who stereotypically make the candelit dinners and wear the expensive lingerie and make sure their toenails are painted and don't "let themselves go" and all of that.
(Again: I realize I'm generalizing. I realize that social norms are, however slowly, changing. I realize there are plenty of men, especially young men, who take an active role in these things. That's great! But by and large, for decades, women in This Dumb Society have been conditioned by TV shows and movie rom-coms and well-meaning peers to feel like they have an obligation to be pretty and vivacious and maintain the relationship's romance as part of their feminine role [and if you don't do it, you know you aren't doing it, and you probably made that choice intentionally vs. doing it automatically without a moment's awareness that it was anything other than "normal"], and by and large, men have not been subject to the same pressures in the same way.)
V-Day is the one day a year where that expectation is reversed. The expectation on V-Day is that the man will be the one who does the primary romantic gesture, whether that's taking his girlfriend out on the town or bringing home a box of chocolates or surprising his wife with a diamond necklace or whatever. It's pretty explicit in the way this holiday is marketed that the man is supposed to do something romantic on Valentine's.
And that is really interesting to me, because the main thing you see as a result is that lots and lots of men have no idea how to be romantic. They just don't have the emotional vocabulary for it. They don't have any independent conception of what this is supposed to mean or how you would even articulate it.
So, lacking a real ability to express themselves on a deeper level, they buy the pre-packaged sentiment. They let greeting cards do their talking, and they let chocolates do their courting, and they let more expensive presents stand in for any deeper sentiments that they might want to share. And what should be a thoughtful and individualized expression of a unique and special relationship with a unique and special person instead gets transmuted, literally, into a mass-produced commodity. Whatever you wanted to say is trammeled and limited by the options available on the shelf, and many men never even consider that they might want to express themselves in some other way.
And then -- and this is really interesting to me too -- there's a certain resentment, half joking but half not, about doing even that, because doing emotional labor is hard (it's work! that's why they call it "labor"!) and it's frequently not something guys are accustomed to doing, and when you have to do something hard and unfamiliar on cue because Society Says So, then the natural unexamined reaction is to look for a way out of it.
It's so common to hear guys joking about how they "have to" do something for Valentine's that I think even guys who want to do things often feel obligated to shrug it off, like they're only doing it because they have to. There's a lot of joking about how much money you have to spend, or how you totally almost forgot about it because lol who pays attention to Valentine's, or how you forgot and your girlfriend never let you hear the end of it and women, so emotional and needy, amirite?!
The upshot of all this is that men often go to their significant others with some version of "honey, V-Day is a fake commercial holiday anyway, you don't really need a dumb card and a box of drugstore chocolates, do you?" And women feel a pressure to be agreeable, to not be emotional-and-needy, to signal that they're easy to get along with and not shrewish or demanding, so plenty of them will laugh and shrug it off and say "no, of course not!"
Some of them mean that. Some of them don't. Lots of them say it and think they mean it and then wonder, later, why they feel unappreciated when everybody knows that Valentine's is a fake holiday and they genuinely don't care for flowers or diamonds. And then their boyfriends or husbands might wonder why they're being frozen out when they talked about this and everybody agreed not to do anything for Valentine's.
The answer is that it isn't about the cards or the chocolates. It's about signifying to the woman that she's appreciated, and that the relationship is worth putting time and effort (and, yes, sometimes money -- but money is the paradoxically cheapest option here; time and effort count for more) into. It's about recognizing that this holiday is an externally imposed social ritual of no significance in and of itself (so by all means, skip out on it if that's what you both want to do), but it is also and because of that a stress test for your relationship, and ignoring it may mean ignoring a valuable early warning that something deeper and more serious is at risk.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Boudoir vs. Porn
So I know I said this time I was going to do a walkthrough of a boudoir shoot, but actually I want to knock this post out first because I feel like doing some Abstract Philosophical Discussion right now.
Every now and then somebody asks me whether boudoir photography is the same as "porn." I don't think there's anything inherently bad about porn (its accompanying features, sure, but not the porn itself), but I do think boudoir is a very different thing, and in today's post I want to talk about why.
The reason, fundamentally, comes down to this: boudoir is about empowering women. Porn, by and large, is not. (I wrestled with the question of "is doing porn empowering to women?" for several years before concluding that generally the answer is no, at least not right now, not in This Dumb Society. There are a few narrow exceptions, but by and large I think the answer is mostly "no.")
That is the issue -- who holds the power, and what the ramifications of that are -- that distinguishes boudoir from porn.
It's not about artistic merit. There are boudoir photographers who produce beautiful works of art and others who just take pictures. There is pornography that has artistic merit (yes, there is; we can fight about this if you want) and there's a whole lot more that doesn't.
It's not about how revealing or explicit the pictures are, either. Boudoir tends to be softer (there's rarely full nudity and almost never anything beyond that), but that's not the decisive factor. There are plenty of "art nudes" and softcore sites that really aren't a whole lot more explicit.
The key distinction is about power. In boudoir, the woman has it. In porn, she generally doesn't. So, literally, one is empowering and the other is not.
Here's my argument for why:
1. Boudoir removes the element of money-as-coercion.
This is the big one. In boudoir, the woman is not being paid for the pictures. In porn, the actress/model is working for money, whether that's from a producer/studio or directly from fans.
In theory you might think this is a good thing (money should flow to the model! the women in porn are higher paid than the men!). In practice, that money often operates as coercion.
Porn models and actresses tend to be young; they tend to be less educated (in part because they're young); they frequently have limited options for supporting themselves financially outside porn. If you're dependent on that money for a living, then the promise of more money, or the threat of losing it, can be used as a cudgel to make you do things you wouldn't otherwise choose to do. It's like every long-suffering and short-skirted cocktail waitress who's forced to put on a smile and play along with a skeevy customer, but ramped up 100x.
In boudoir, because the woman isn't being paid for what she does, that element of coercion is gone. The absence of a financial incentive means that the woman has full artistic freedom. She can do exactly as she pleases, revealing as much or as little as she likes. She can walk away whenever she wants. All the power is hers.
2. In boudoir, the woman controls her own image.
Another aspect of power and coercion in porn is that the actress/model does not control her own image. Her pictures and/or videos go up on a website where they can be displayed, advertised, and manipulated without her input. She has little or no ability to take them down, and little or no ability to bury her past if and when she ever decides to try shedding it.
That doesn't happen in boudoir. The woman owns and controls her image. She might choose to grant permission for the photographer or makeup artist to use her pictures, but the pictures are hers, so she gets to choose. If she wants to limit those permissions, she can. If she wants them to never be on the internet at all, she can -- many boudoir photographers, like Lori Mann, transfer images via flash drive and good old-fashioned prints on paper, which means they're never stored or transmitted online (unless you choose to do that yourself) and can never be hacked.
Thus, in boudoir, your privacy is yours and, if you choose, inviolable. Of course if you want to make your images public, you can choose to do that, but nobody is going to force you.
3. Boudoir celebrates the woman as a person, and intimacy rather than anonymity.
This one is, I guess, more about the psychology and romance of it than hard dollars-and-cents economic coercion, but I think it's important and also goes to empowerment: boudoir is a deeply personal experience, a creation and celebration of the individual woman.
Her pictures might just be for herself, or they might be shared with someone very close to her, but they aren't meant for the faceless public and they aren't about turning her into a product. It's about her. No one else on earth could stand in her place or carry the same value as that individual woman.
In (most, not all, but most) porn, a woman is a widget: she is depersonalized, pushed into a more-or-less uniform mold, and put out for consumption. She is seldom her own person, and never known in great depth; most often she's a canvas for the viewer to project their own fantasies onto, and if there's any semblance of personal warmth or friendliness, it's as professional and superficial as an airline stewardess's smile.
Some of that's inevitable: that asymmetry exists between any performer and her audience. And it need not always be a bad thing; there are some women for whom that exhibitionism has its own thrill. But by and large, my perception is that porn churns through new faces and new bodies with little regard for them as anything other than novelties, and that it tends to evaluate women strictly for how profitably their bodies can be monetized, and that this is damaging rather than bolstering to women's self-esteem.
(I should note that this is mostly a criticism of the economics behind porn rather than the porn itself, but the effect's still there and it still exploits young women's uncertain self-esteem to pay them less, regardless of the damage that might do to their self-worth and sexuality. Coupled with the rampant misogyny that runs through the industry, the upshot is that they generally leave with little money and less pride.)
In porn, by and large, you're replaceable. You're processed and presented to a largely indifferent audience as one of many. There's no real relationship, and you're not particularly special.
In boudoir, it's the opposite. You are irreplaceable. You are the only one of you, and you are presented to a very tiny audience (maybe just yourself and your photographer). The privacy, exclusivity, and relationship between woman and viewer (if any) change the dynamic considerably.
It isn't about strangers gawking at a body. It's about the close and unique connection between people.
And that's why I think boudoir photography can be extremely empowering for women, and why I don't think it's much like porn at all.
Every now and then somebody asks me whether boudoir photography is the same as "porn." I don't think there's anything inherently bad about porn (its accompanying features, sure, but not the porn itself), but I do think boudoir is a very different thing, and in today's post I want to talk about why.
The reason, fundamentally, comes down to this: boudoir is about empowering women. Porn, by and large, is not. (I wrestled with the question of "is doing porn empowering to women?" for several years before concluding that generally the answer is no, at least not right now, not in This Dumb Society. There are a few narrow exceptions, but by and large I think the answer is mostly "no.")
That is the issue -- who holds the power, and what the ramifications of that are -- that distinguishes boudoir from porn.
It's not about artistic merit. There are boudoir photographers who produce beautiful works of art and others who just take pictures. There is pornography that has artistic merit (yes, there is; we can fight about this if you want) and there's a whole lot more that doesn't.
It's not about how revealing or explicit the pictures are, either. Boudoir tends to be softer (there's rarely full nudity and almost never anything beyond that), but that's not the decisive factor. There are plenty of "art nudes" and softcore sites that really aren't a whole lot more explicit.
The key distinction is about power. In boudoir, the woman has it. In porn, she generally doesn't. So, literally, one is empowering and the other is not.
Here's my argument for why:
1. Boudoir removes the element of money-as-coercion.
This is the big one. In boudoir, the woman is not being paid for the pictures. In porn, the actress/model is working for money, whether that's from a producer/studio or directly from fans.
In theory you might think this is a good thing (money should flow to the model! the women in porn are higher paid than the men!). In practice, that money often operates as coercion.
Porn models and actresses tend to be young; they tend to be less educated (in part because they're young); they frequently have limited options for supporting themselves financially outside porn. If you're dependent on that money for a living, then the promise of more money, or the threat of losing it, can be used as a cudgel to make you do things you wouldn't otherwise choose to do. It's like every long-suffering and short-skirted cocktail waitress who's forced to put on a smile and play along with a skeevy customer, but ramped up 100x.
In boudoir, because the woman isn't being paid for what she does, that element of coercion is gone. The absence of a financial incentive means that the woman has full artistic freedom. She can do exactly as she pleases, revealing as much or as little as she likes. She can walk away whenever she wants. All the power is hers.
2. In boudoir, the woman controls her own image.
Another aspect of power and coercion in porn is that the actress/model does not control her own image. Her pictures and/or videos go up on a website where they can be displayed, advertised, and manipulated without her input. She has little or no ability to take them down, and little or no ability to bury her past if and when she ever decides to try shedding it.
That doesn't happen in boudoir. The woman owns and controls her image. She might choose to grant permission for the photographer or makeup artist to use her pictures, but the pictures are hers, so she gets to choose. If she wants to limit those permissions, she can. If she wants them to never be on the internet at all, she can -- many boudoir photographers, like Lori Mann, transfer images via flash drive and good old-fashioned prints on paper, which means they're never stored or transmitted online (unless you choose to do that yourself) and can never be hacked.
Thus, in boudoir, your privacy is yours and, if you choose, inviolable. Of course if you want to make your images public, you can choose to do that, but nobody is going to force you.
3. Boudoir celebrates the woman as a person, and intimacy rather than anonymity.
This one is, I guess, more about the psychology and romance of it than hard dollars-and-cents economic coercion, but I think it's important and also goes to empowerment: boudoir is a deeply personal experience, a creation and celebration of the individual woman.
Her pictures might just be for herself, or they might be shared with someone very close to her, but they aren't meant for the faceless public and they aren't about turning her into a product. It's about her. No one else on earth could stand in her place or carry the same value as that individual woman.
In (most, not all, but most) porn, a woman is a widget: she is depersonalized, pushed into a more-or-less uniform mold, and put out for consumption. She is seldom her own person, and never known in great depth; most often she's a canvas for the viewer to project their own fantasies onto, and if there's any semblance of personal warmth or friendliness, it's as professional and superficial as an airline stewardess's smile.
Some of that's inevitable: that asymmetry exists between any performer and her audience. And it need not always be a bad thing; there are some women for whom that exhibitionism has its own thrill. But by and large, my perception is that porn churns through new faces and new bodies with little regard for them as anything other than novelties, and that it tends to evaluate women strictly for how profitably their bodies can be monetized, and that this is damaging rather than bolstering to women's self-esteem.
(I should note that this is mostly a criticism of the economics behind porn rather than the porn itself, but the effect's still there and it still exploits young women's uncertain self-esteem to pay them less, regardless of the damage that might do to their self-worth and sexuality. Coupled with the rampant misogyny that runs through the industry, the upshot is that they generally leave with little money and less pride.)
In porn, by and large, you're replaceable. You're processed and presented to a largely indifferent audience as one of many. There's no real relationship, and you're not particularly special.
In boudoir, it's the opposite. You are irreplaceable. You are the only one of you, and you are presented to a very tiny audience (maybe just yourself and your photographer). The privacy, exclusivity, and relationship between woman and viewer (if any) change the dynamic considerably.
It isn't about strangers gawking at a body. It's about the close and unique connection between people.
And that's why I think boudoir photography can be extremely empowering for women, and why I don't think it's much like porn at all.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Choosing a Boudoir Team
I'll probably be posting about boudoir photography a lot in the next
few days or weeks; for various reasons I've been thinking about it a
fair bit, and since this is my blog I can just ramble about whatever I
want AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME AHAHAHAHAAA.
But before I launch into all of that, I want to preface it by saying: it's not just vanity. I think that sometimes, for some women, it's hard to conceive of spending that much time and money on pictures of yourself. It can feel like a frivolity (which, sure, it kinda is; certainly I'd never argue it's a necessity), or like a needless vanity.
I'd like to gently push back against that idea. First, as I said earlier, I think a gift of boudoir pictures can be a deeply romantic gesture: it's a symbolic and literal giving of the self, and an expression of both intimate confidence and intimate vulnerability. It isn't all about you; in the context of a relationship, it can be a significant gift to share.
But also, I'd argue that vanity can sometimes be a good thing.
You should be proud of yourself. You should consider yourself worth admiring. Few of us suffer from too much self-confidence, and taking a measure of pride in yourself is, in my view, a good thing. If it motivates you to get a little more exercise, eat mindfully, and avoid self-destructive habits, then I am all for vanity. And I feel pretty strongly that women who own their sexuality and are possessed of solid self-esteem are more likely to assert themselves in relationships and less likely to settle for partners who don't afford them the respect they're due, so I'm all in favor of whatever helps strengthen that, too.
YOU CAN BE VAIN. IT'S OKAY. I GIVE YOU PERMISSION.
So! With that out of the way, I'd like to start walking you through the process, with some thoughts on how you might maximize your chances of having a good experience and getting some nice pictures.
In my previous post on boudoir photography, I talked a little about what I think the overarching goals of the art form can be: empowerment, exploration, and capturing a sense of one's unique sensibility, whether that's playful or sultry or anything else you like. But I didn't really say much about how you actually do that.
First (and foremost!): Find a boudoir team that is experienced, approachable, and versatile.
The best teams have a gift for bringing out each woman's individual personality, rather than trying to airbrush them all into the same artifice.
In Philadelphia, I opted to work with Lori Mann and Aleksandra Ambrozy in part because I saw that talent for showcasing diverse beauties demonstrated in their portfolios. Lori's blog post Rockin' Her Curves celebrates a plus-sized model -- but more than just the complimentary words and pretty pictures, I appreciated how the set was put together. It shows a team that knows how to bring out the lady's best features and portray her with poise and confidence.
The poses flatter the model: the first is soft and reflective, framed to emphasize her upper body, while the second (reposted above) arches her body, pulling her back and arms upward in a series of curves that elongate her figure. The lingerie is thoughtfully selected: that black lace garter has a broad band which wraps around the model's hips instead of cutting in, and the leopard-print motif (brief, blanket, and heels) suggests a fierce and sassy air, which the model's facial expression and black gloves accentuate.
Put together, what you see is a plus-sized lady whose pose and outfit indicate a retro-kitten playfulness, but with an underlying fierceness; whose clothes, framing, and positioning flatter her figure without hiding or making excuses for anything; and whose makeup, softly smoky but not hard-edged or overwhelming, completes the overall picture of a woman who's firmly in charge of herself but more than ready to have fun.
That's a lot to pack into two pictures, but it's there, and it celebrates a lady with an ever-so-slightly untraditional look. She doesn't look like every other model on the internet. She looks like herself.
I was similarly impressed by Aleksandra's blog post on a fall wedding where the bride wanted a classic look that didn't compromise her freckles. I can't think of a truer expression of "letting your natural beauty shine through" than, literally, letting your natural beauty shine through instead of covering it under a thick layer of makeup -- and that's exactly what Aleksandra did, and the effect was absolutely beautiful. Again and again on her blog, I saw a great talent for finding just the right blend of color and texture to bring out each woman's natural beauty, and an impressive fluency with lots of different looks and complexions.
Based on that, I was pretty confident they'd be able to do whatever wackiness I wanted to try. Ideally, your prospective photography team (and "team" is important; a big part of this is having professional makeup and hair, not just the photographer) will be able to do the same.
Next time, we'll talk about settling on a look and planning out a set.
But before I launch into all of that, I want to preface it by saying: it's not just vanity. I think that sometimes, for some women, it's hard to conceive of spending that much time and money on pictures of yourself. It can feel like a frivolity (which, sure, it kinda is; certainly I'd never argue it's a necessity), or like a needless vanity.
I'd like to gently push back against that idea. First, as I said earlier, I think a gift of boudoir pictures can be a deeply romantic gesture: it's a symbolic and literal giving of the self, and an expression of both intimate confidence and intimate vulnerability. It isn't all about you; in the context of a relationship, it can be a significant gift to share.
But also, I'd argue that vanity can sometimes be a good thing.
You should be proud of yourself. You should consider yourself worth admiring. Few of us suffer from too much self-confidence, and taking a measure of pride in yourself is, in my view, a good thing. If it motivates you to get a little more exercise, eat mindfully, and avoid self-destructive habits, then I am all for vanity. And I feel pretty strongly that women who own their sexuality and are possessed of solid self-esteem are more likely to assert themselves in relationships and less likely to settle for partners who don't afford them the respect they're due, so I'm all in favor of whatever helps strengthen that, too.
YOU CAN BE VAIN. IT'S OKAY. I GIVE YOU PERMISSION.
So! With that out of the way, I'd like to start walking you through the process, with some thoughts on how you might maximize your chances of having a good experience and getting some nice pictures.
In my previous post on boudoir photography, I talked a little about what I think the overarching goals of the art form can be: empowerment, exploration, and capturing a sense of one's unique sensibility, whether that's playful or sultry or anything else you like. But I didn't really say much about how you actually do that.
First (and foremost!): Find a boudoir team that is experienced, approachable, and versatile.
The best teams have a gift for bringing out each woman's individual personality, rather than trying to airbrush them all into the same artifice.
In Philadelphia, I opted to work with Lori Mann and Aleksandra Ambrozy in part because I saw that talent for showcasing diverse beauties demonstrated in their portfolios. Lori's blog post Rockin' Her Curves celebrates a plus-sized model -- but more than just the complimentary words and pretty pictures, I appreciated how the set was put together. It shows a team that knows how to bring out the lady's best features and portray her with poise and confidence.
The poses flatter the model: the first is soft and reflective, framed to emphasize her upper body, while the second (reposted above) arches her body, pulling her back and arms upward in a series of curves that elongate her figure. The lingerie is thoughtfully selected: that black lace garter has a broad band which wraps around the model's hips instead of cutting in, and the leopard-print motif (brief, blanket, and heels) suggests a fierce and sassy air, which the model's facial expression and black gloves accentuate.
Put together, what you see is a plus-sized lady whose pose and outfit indicate a retro-kitten playfulness, but with an underlying fierceness; whose clothes, framing, and positioning flatter her figure without hiding or making excuses for anything; and whose makeup, softly smoky but not hard-edged or overwhelming, completes the overall picture of a woman who's firmly in charge of herself but more than ready to have fun.
That's a lot to pack into two pictures, but it's there, and it celebrates a lady with an ever-so-slightly untraditional look. She doesn't look like every other model on the internet. She looks like herself.
I was similarly impressed by Aleksandra's blog post on a fall wedding where the bride wanted a classic look that didn't compromise her freckles. I can't think of a truer expression of "letting your natural beauty shine through" than, literally, letting your natural beauty shine through instead of covering it under a thick layer of makeup -- and that's exactly what Aleksandra did, and the effect was absolutely beautiful. Again and again on her blog, I saw a great talent for finding just the right blend of color and texture to bring out each woman's natural beauty, and an impressive fluency with lots of different looks and complexions.
Based on that, I was pretty confident they'd be able to do whatever wackiness I wanted to try. Ideally, your prospective photography team (and "team" is important; a big part of this is having professional makeup and hair, not just the photographer) will be able to do the same.
Next time, we'll talk about settling on a look and planning out a set.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
On Inclusive Beauty
Lately, in thinking about romance and boudoir and trying not to think about current events (any more than I have to), I've been mulling over the inclusiveness of beauty.
In modern romance writing, there's been a real push toward including different types of characters. Old-school romances typically centered around impossibly gorgeous (and always white, and always able-bodied) women, with chiseled hunks for heroes and giant showers of money raining down upon them from the heavens. And you can still find some of those stories here and there, but they're nowhere near as common as they used to be.
Modern romances, more often than not, feature heroines who probably wouldn't feature as Maxim cover models. Lots of them have to work for a living, and they aren't always financially secure, let alone rich. They tend to represent a broader swath of ages, races, and physical and psychological traits. (In particular, because it pushes back against a common crutch, I want to commend Courtney Milan for including a black heroine in her Regency historical "Talk Sweetly to Me." It's such a common misconception that historicals can't have minority characters that this excuse even gets trotted out to "explain" why fantasy worlds can't have minorities in pseudo-medieval settings, because that wouldn't be "historically accurate." In actuality, of course, true historical accuracy would include characters from cross-cultural exchanges [all these historicals include exotic silks, teas, and spices, so why never any people from their cultures?], and it's good to see cracks starting to appear in the old whitewashed wall that artificially excluded them.
Plus it's just a good story with smart dialogue and witty, appealing characters. None of the rest would matter a bit if the story weren't any good. But it is!)
I think this is good, and I also think it's maybe uniquely important as it comes to romance.
Representation in fiction is always important. It's important that people get to see versions of themselves reflected on the page and on the screen, and that these versions be recognizably human, not just Morgan Freeman as Long-Suffering Saintly Martyr Mk. 239872394. (There's a time and a place for that too, but the time and place was "the '80s.")
But it's uniquely important as it comes to romance, I think, and the reason for that is bound up with the fraught and confusing thing that it is to be a woman in This Dumb Country, where you are bombarded from a very young age with images of an idealized and unattainable beauty that most of us never begin to approach. With conflicting and impossibly complicated messages about sexuality, with varied stripes of shame for having a female body, with -- if you're lucky -- the conscious awareness of all the ways in which you're expected to Perform Being a Woman, and the penalties that society is more than ready to impose if your performance falls the slightest bit short.
And then, maybe, a nagging sense that pretty clothes and painted nails and all of that might be frivolous and restrictive and hearkening back to prescriptive femininity, sure... but they're also kind of fun, at least once in a while, and is that so wrong?
So there's all this stuff about how having a female body is shameful and gross and weird, but also you should put it on display because it's beautiful, but also you can't put it on display because that would be attention-seeking and/or playing into the hands of the Patriarchy, and also it's not perfect enough to be displayed anyway, and and and. And then on top of that, when it comes to sex and relationships, you have to consider how the other party reacts. What does your partner find sexy? Because that's all shaped by cultural influences too, and very few people are willing to speak frankly about it (especially early on in a relationship), so pretty much you get to run through that whole entire maze again, but this time wearing somebody else's glasses.
No wonder all my female friends -- yes, every single one of them -- go a little bit crazy about this stuff. No wonder every teen and 20-something woman I know, no matter how gorgeous, is secretly and agonizingly self-conscious about some perceived flaw. Some of us grow out of that with time and experience, but I think every woman goes through it in youth, and many stay in it forever.
In this context, the inclusivity of representation in romance is invaluable. Because what it says is that you don't have to be conventionally beautiful to be desirable. That's the true heart of the fantasy: not that you can be cookie-cutter beautiful (which no one would believe, because we all know it isn't true; standard beauty definitions are about exclusivity, not inclusivity), but that you can be uniquely and irresistably desired. That in the eyes of at least one lover, you can be wanted, and you can be wanted as nothing else in the world is.
What romance is really about is not beauty. It's about desire. It is that sense of wanting, of being totally accepted and appreciated even after revealing all your weaknesses. And when that comes as a celebration of individuality, then I believe it's enormously empowering to women, because it says that you are not inadequate, but unique. That you are not a lesser version of some other thing, but a whole version of yourself, and that what you are is worth wanting.
So how does this tie into boudoir photography? At its best, I think, boudoir photography reaches for the same goals: celebrating uniqueness, appreciating difference, and reassuring women that they are attractive and desirable because of their own individual selves. At its best, it allows women to express their personalities and explore their sexuality in a controlled setting, where they can try out different visions of sensuality and have final say over which, if any, of those images they want to be lasting. The choice is yours and the control is yours.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that boudoir photography doesn't always achieve that lofty goal. There are some boudoir photographers who seem, judging by their portfolios, to push every woman into playacting the same porno-doll role, which is in my opinion not great. (NB: If that's what you want to do, do it! More power to you! But if every woman in the portfolio is made up the same way and wearing the same outfit and posed in the same position then I start to think that maaaybe what I'm seeing is less the women's vision than the photographer's, and that I'm not so into.)
But there are others who have a great talent for bringing out and showcasing the uniqueness of their subjects, and if you can find one of those teams, then I think it can be a really worthwhile experience in (literally!) getting to see yourself as a creature of desire. In stepping out of your own skin and looking through different eyes and seeing your own kind of beauty.
And I also think that's why it can be a profoundly romantic thing: because if you choose to put yourself before the camera's eye, and if you choose to keep those images, then you're memorializing the flaws as well as the beauty. Should you give those images away, you are (again, literally) making a gift of your self, and there is bound up in that a level of trust and vulnerability. Maybe a lot, maybe just a little, but always something.
Next time I'll talk in more concrete terms about some of the ways in which I think you can (hopefully) achieve some of those goals, but that's more or less my mission statement for what I think they are: empowerment, exploration, and the celebration of individual beauty in the manner and extent that each woman chooses for herself.
In modern romance writing, there's been a real push toward including different types of characters. Old-school romances typically centered around impossibly gorgeous (and always white, and always able-bodied) women, with chiseled hunks for heroes and giant showers of money raining down upon them from the heavens. And you can still find some of those stories here and there, but they're nowhere near as common as they used to be.
Modern romances, more often than not, feature heroines who probably wouldn't feature as Maxim cover models. Lots of them have to work for a living, and they aren't always financially secure, let alone rich. They tend to represent a broader swath of ages, races, and physical and psychological traits. (In particular, because it pushes back against a common crutch, I want to commend Courtney Milan for including a black heroine in her Regency historical "Talk Sweetly to Me." It's such a common misconception that historicals can't have minority characters that this excuse even gets trotted out to "explain" why fantasy worlds can't have minorities in pseudo-medieval settings, because that wouldn't be "historically accurate." In actuality, of course, true historical accuracy would include characters from cross-cultural exchanges [all these historicals include exotic silks, teas, and spices, so why never any people from their cultures?], and it's good to see cracks starting to appear in the old whitewashed wall that artificially excluded them.
Plus it's just a good story with smart dialogue and witty, appealing characters. None of the rest would matter a bit if the story weren't any good. But it is!)
I think this is good, and I also think it's maybe uniquely important as it comes to romance.
Representation in fiction is always important. It's important that people get to see versions of themselves reflected on the page and on the screen, and that these versions be recognizably human, not just Morgan Freeman as Long-Suffering Saintly Martyr Mk. 239872394. (There's a time and a place for that too, but the time and place was "the '80s.")
But it's uniquely important as it comes to romance, I think, and the reason for that is bound up with the fraught and confusing thing that it is to be a woman in This Dumb Country, where you are bombarded from a very young age with images of an idealized and unattainable beauty that most of us never begin to approach. With conflicting and impossibly complicated messages about sexuality, with varied stripes of shame for having a female body, with -- if you're lucky -- the conscious awareness of all the ways in which you're expected to Perform Being a Woman, and the penalties that society is more than ready to impose if your performance falls the slightest bit short.
And then, maybe, a nagging sense that pretty clothes and painted nails and all of that might be frivolous and restrictive and hearkening back to prescriptive femininity, sure... but they're also kind of fun, at least once in a while, and is that so wrong?
So there's all this stuff about how having a female body is shameful and gross and weird, but also you should put it on display because it's beautiful, but also you can't put it on display because that would be attention-seeking and/or playing into the hands of the Patriarchy, and also it's not perfect enough to be displayed anyway, and and and. And then on top of that, when it comes to sex and relationships, you have to consider how the other party reacts. What does your partner find sexy? Because that's all shaped by cultural influences too, and very few people are willing to speak frankly about it (especially early on in a relationship), so pretty much you get to run through that whole entire maze again, but this time wearing somebody else's glasses.
No wonder all my female friends -- yes, every single one of them -- go a little bit crazy about this stuff. No wonder every teen and 20-something woman I know, no matter how gorgeous, is secretly and agonizingly self-conscious about some perceived flaw. Some of us grow out of that with time and experience, but I think every woman goes through it in youth, and many stay in it forever.
In this context, the inclusivity of representation in romance is invaluable. Because what it says is that you don't have to be conventionally beautiful to be desirable. That's the true heart of the fantasy: not that you can be cookie-cutter beautiful (which no one would believe, because we all know it isn't true; standard beauty definitions are about exclusivity, not inclusivity), but that you can be uniquely and irresistably desired. That in the eyes of at least one lover, you can be wanted, and you can be wanted as nothing else in the world is.
What romance is really about is not beauty. It's about desire. It is that sense of wanting, of being totally accepted and appreciated even after revealing all your weaknesses. And when that comes as a celebration of individuality, then I believe it's enormously empowering to women, because it says that you are not inadequate, but unique. That you are not a lesser version of some other thing, but a whole version of yourself, and that what you are is worth wanting.
So how does this tie into boudoir photography? At its best, I think, boudoir photography reaches for the same goals: celebrating uniqueness, appreciating difference, and reassuring women that they are attractive and desirable because of their own individual selves. At its best, it allows women to express their personalities and explore their sexuality in a controlled setting, where they can try out different visions of sensuality and have final say over which, if any, of those images they want to be lasting. The choice is yours and the control is yours.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that boudoir photography doesn't always achieve that lofty goal. There are some boudoir photographers who seem, judging by their portfolios, to push every woman into playacting the same porno-doll role, which is in my opinion not great. (NB: If that's what you want to do, do it! More power to you! But if every woman in the portfolio is made up the same way and wearing the same outfit and posed in the same position then I start to think that maaaybe what I'm seeing is less the women's vision than the photographer's, and that I'm not so into.)
But there are others who have a great talent for bringing out and showcasing the uniqueness of their subjects, and if you can find one of those teams, then I think it can be a really worthwhile experience in (literally!) getting to see yourself as a creature of desire. In stepping out of your own skin and looking through different eyes and seeing your own kind of beauty.
And I also think that's why it can be a profoundly romantic thing: because if you choose to put yourself before the camera's eye, and if you choose to keep those images, then you're memorializing the flaws as well as the beauty. Should you give those images away, you are (again, literally) making a gift of your self, and there is bound up in that a level of trust and vulnerability. Maybe a lot, maybe just a little, but always something.
Next time I'll talk in more concrete terms about some of the ways in which I think you can (hopefully) achieve some of those goals, but that's more or less my mission statement for what I think they are: empowerment, exploration, and the celebration of individual beauty in the manner and extent that each woman chooses for herself.
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