call for models
I had the equipment now, my vision of where this was headed, and reasons why it had to be done. I was ready.
I sent an email to every woman I knew, announcing that I was doing a vagina book and looking for participants. Actually, what I sent was a Call for Models. It was blunt, and freaked a few women out. I thought I was being frank, but what I did was slap this sensitive, confronting topic down on the table without context, challenging women to step up.
There’s a problem, and we can fix it. You in?
It’s not as though anyone was necessarily thinking that there was a problem to solve, nor ready to talk about it. I wonder whether I would have answered it.
The Vagina Monologues were out (Thank you, Eve Ensler!³), but even I had not seen the play at that point.
Back then4 vagina conversations were surprising, discomforting, embarrassing, totally taboo, unacceptable, strange, and definitely not something I should have sent to office email addresses. I learned this when I received a frantic call minutes after I hit <send> from a woman I hardly knew, but who was on my list, who was sure she would be fired for having an email with the word “vagina” addressed to her in her inbox.
In spite of this, a few women were up for participating.
I had previously spoken to them about the project, and I’m sure they were responding to that more than my call for models, which really was so badly done. If I can find it, I’ll include it.
Meanwhile, the first woman was coming over to make a v-portrait!
As it happened, she had only enough time that evening to do a quick v-portrait and go, but
she definitely wanted to do it, so I could I make it in fifteen minutes?
My studio was my bedroom. I set up the lights and the camera and was ready to go when she arrived.
Focused on her needing it to be quick, and relieved that someone had actually shown up, I framed her vagina through the lens as if it were any object any time, not the first vagina that I had ever seen. I was mechanical. I positioned the lights; they were crazy-bright and way too close, but that was all the space I had. I moved the tripod in close and clicked off a bunch of shots without really looking at it. Fifteen minutes later, she was out the door.
So, I was alone when loading the images to my computer. And, now, I was actually going to see it.
The file took a bit to open up and then: there it was. HUGE on the 21” screen. I had never seen anything quite like it. It bugged me out.
I shut down my computer, and backed away.
How was I going to do this?? That was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.
While I was on the other side of the room now and somewhat freaked out, my conviction that this needed to be done and my commitment to doing it, hadn’t wavered. There needed to be a visual vagina reference for women. That was clear and unchanged in me. It was absurd that we didn’t have intimate relationships with our vaginas, what with sexuality being so integral to being human, the routine and significance of the menstrual cycle, the amazing act of giving birth…Vaginas were important! An unrecognized emblem of power in fact! My commitment to doing the book hadn’t budged. I was in. On the other hand, what I saw on that screen made me totally uncomfortable. I went to bed.
I would keep going and see where it took me, deal with my reactions on the way.
A few weeks later, vagina model number two came by, and again it was to be a quick shoot; she had to run right after. Again, I was alone for the screening, and—this time: I was captivated.
It was nothing like the first one. They were completely different, totally unique. I put the first one up on the screen next to it. Yep, they were both fascinating. This is what we look like. The shapes, colors, textures and hair styles were very different: deeply different expressions of the same thing.
Seeing our uniqueness and sameness simultaneously like that had a transforming effect on me. This was it, the image I had been looking for: frank, unabashed—proud.
Until that moment, a photograph of a vagina was situated in either a pornographic or medical context for me—not that I was seeing them anyway, but if I was to see them, that’s where they’d be. But on my screen there, it was just us women. That’s what we looked like. Well, two of us anyway. Totally unique. Like everything else about us.
I definitely wanted to see more.
