Dating Confessions by You "I'm wearing sexy underwear while talking to you online so that I feel confident enough to tell you that I'm into you."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Hooksexup's culture blog: We bring you more Dita Von Teese from the German Playboy.
Screengrab by Various Today in Hooksexup's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Sitting in a drawer of my desk, along with some twenty-nine-cent stamps, some stray returned checks and letterhead from my last job, is a white cardboard envelope with my name on it. I almost never think about that envelope, much less dwell on it. But I like to think that one day when I'm in my seventies, and it's a rainy day outside, too rainy to garden, too rainy to teleport myself to a friend's house for some gin rummy, I'll decide, "Maybe today." And then I'll fish through my closet for a box filled with seventy-six-cent stamps to find waiting for me that envelope, and in it, eight naked pictures of myself that I've tucked away.
What I'll make of myself then my body, my vanity, my early millennial haircut I don't know. What I did with them the first time they were in my possession, in a cab ride home from the photographer's studio, was this: flip through them quickly, very quickly, and only once, squinting to see what I could in the dark. There in the taxi, my heart literally thumped with fear, as if they were secret documents I'd secured at great risk. But safely back in my apartment, I felt better braced for what I'd see. I examined each of them closely, cards in a game I wasn't sure how to play.
About half were black-and-white, the others shot in some suitably gentle sepia. I'm remarkably bony in some places, perennially soft in others, and the pictures seemed to exaggerate both extremes to my unguarded eye. Although I flinched as I looked at one or two, I was pleased by a few, admiring the muscle in an arm that stretched out, the sharp line of my collar bone. In almost all of them, I look profoundly aware of my posture, and as if I'm concentrating. I wouldn't say I look relaxed. I'd say I look a touch defensive. I'd say I look about my age, which is thirty. I wouldn't say I look sexy, exactly sculpted, maybe. Naked, definitely. But that fact alone was enough to make me, still in my coat, sitting on my couch, buzzed on the one beer I'd quickly downed, laugh happily out loud.
I suppose the obvious question is why I did it. To me, the more obvious question is why everyone else doesn't. Working as an editor at Hooksexup, I've felt brief flashes of envy as I looked through contact sheets of nude models, some possibly straight out of college, their tattoos still fresh, their skin otherwise unmottled. It wasn't so much their perfection I envied (although sure, there was that) it was more that they would have these playful, celebratory records of their youth for posterity. They made me think of the time a friend, a woman a few years older, laughed as she flipped quickly past a few honeymoon pictures her husband had taken of her in an outdoor shower. His impulse was a small thing, but to me, moving, a reflection of the delight he took in her not just in her sexiness but in her vulnerability, her nakedness, a metaphorical version of her essential self.
I wish I could that say that at thirty, I experienced a sudden surge of confidence that propelled me to go forward with a shoot of my own. No. It was just that I'd recently started running a lot, and lost about ten pounds. It seemed wise to move forward before my knees gave out. I thought about asking the man I'd recently started seeing to do it, but our relationship wasn't yet intimate enough for the project. I could have asked an arty friend, I suppose, but somehow it felt safer to expose myself to a professional, someone I imagined would absorb my strengths and weaknesses without batting an eye, the way a shrink does, or a lawyer. I also liked feeling the experience was private, at the time at least, an indulgent secret. So I called Sean McDevitt, a Hooksexup photographer whose qualifications seemed perfect: He likes women's bodies (is therefore affirming), but takes pictures of himself in lingerie (is therefore probably non-judgmental) and had also photographed the weddings of two of my closest friends (is therefore somehow respectable).
Instructed not to dress the morning of the shoot you don't want to capture the indents of a bra strap on your shoulder for posterity I lounged lazily around the apartment in a nightshirt, drinking coffee, reading the paper. I felt a bit like I was waiting for a john, and really, I didn't mind that; I liked slipping into the role of someone for whom desirability is a basic job requirement. But then Sean walked in. Reverie over: he put me to work lugging every piece of furniture in my apartment around so we could work with the window light.
Once we got started, I was surprised by how instinctively I seemed to know which way to twist, where to place my arm for optimal flattery. There are ways we position ourselves during sex for appeal, or maybe for accessibility, but the experience is too blurry, too sped up, for us even to notice at the time. Now I noticed the positioning of every finger. I had worried I might burst into tears in the middle of the shoot, the way I once did in the middle of a voice lesson, terrified of the new, strange tone ringing out from my mouth. Instead, I felt focused (as the pictures reflected, for better or for worse), absorbed and happy. I wasn't trying to project sex appeal, exactly; I was merely trying to hold my body in a way that felt right, and by right, I mean flattering.
Luxuriating before the camera that day indulged something that I'd apparently long been craving: it was a revelry of attention. But I don't think it was so much the attention of Sean, an attractive man on hand, that was satisfying. Although I felt like an object before him, it wasn't an object of desire, more just an object, one that could be arranged this way or that, moved forward to catch the light or back to obscure it. "Cool," he'd occasionally say in his neutral stoner's voice, or "Move your arm more that way. Right."
And yet, throughout the session, I felt, frankly, beautiful my skin seemed as soft as the brown velvet couch, I imagined myself in high color, my every imperfection erased by virtue of its presentation before a clicking camera. I think in some ways Sean was, if anything, a proxy for myself, a more benevolent self, trying to direct an affectionate gaze my way during a bit of a lonely spell. The relationship I'd just entered with my boyfriend could I even call him that? was terrifyingly uncertain: I was smitten, he was cautious. In that space between single life and committed love, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched, observed, evaluated. I don't think it's a coincidence that Sean was, to me, part pornographer, part wedding photographer. I longed for the stamp of desirability that both professions confer on their subjects, albeit in very different ways. For three hours that morning, I procured that liberating stamp for myself.
I had imagined that I would find the session a trial, but love having the photographs. In fact, the opposite occurred: I loved the photography session, but could take or leave the photographs. Those images are ultimately static, unsurprising, revealing the same body (literally, its up and down sides) that I see in the mirror every morning. The photographs, though beautifully executed, couldn't capture what was most valuable to me about having them taken the experience of exposing myself, and at that moment of exposing myself, realizing that I liked what I found.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
