Sexuality Happens

Photo by Michael Barone

HHNT everyone.

This was not the picture I intended to put up. However, I’m on my mother’s computer until this weekend, and can’t access my laptop pictures, so it’ll have to do.

It may be one of my favorite pictures of me…ever. I love the contrast of the texture of the rope, and the smooth expanse of my skin. I love the look in my eyes…something between a look of fear towards whatever is coming, and a look of asking for it to come to me, to hit me, to hurt me, to tie me up more.

I used to (back in high school and most of college) choose my favorite pictures by which ones made me look the thinnest and (conventionally) prettiest. The ones where my arms didn’t look fat, my shoulders didn’t look too broad, my breasts looked even and perky (ha!), I didn’t look chubby/no rolls of fat were showing, I didn’t have a double chin or exceedingly full face, etc.

As this was before digital camera came around, and you had to wait until the film was printed to see it, you can understand how much it severely limited me in pictures I really loved.

However, as I gained a positive body image, and began to love my body more and more, I realize that my favorite pictures were becoming not the ones in which I was the most socially beautiful, and looked the skinniest, but the ones in which I was the most emotive. Whether it was an expression of happiness, amazement, love, fear, saddness, anger, etc, for the most part (a few exceptions that don’t involve my face), my favorite photos of me are ones where I’m really getting across whatever emotion I feel (or else incredibly obscure, like me with a giant kangaroo and joey sculpture, or with a fake pirate, or dressed up crazy for some event).

I think emotion makes pictures. That’s one reason (of many) I really am not into fashion, fashion magazaines, etc. They’re trained to be non-emotive. To be stoic, stone, emotionless, so that the clothes stand out more. I find them boring…cutouts of themselves, not true people posing on those pages or stages.

I like to think my eyes show emotion well. When I was C, and was upset, yet told her I was fine, she looked at me and said “I don’t believe you. Your eyes say otherwise.” It was dark, and I didn’t think she could see them, but even in that room, dark and in the middle of the night, my eyes brought across the emotion.

The man who took this photo (and a variety of the other which have been up) told me that my eyes made the photos, that I somehow conveyed something through them. I can’t convey an emotion without really thinking about it; modeling is truly hard work, but less so physically (although I’ve had issues with joints popping out, etc), but because there is so much change emotionally to go from one place to another, just so that my eyes put out the emotion the photographer is looking for.

I make eye contact as much as possible with people. Sometimes, especially in this day and age, this bothers them. I have to, not only to look and them, and see what their eyes are telling me, but with the hope that they are looking into mine, and understand the truth and emotion in what I’m saying. It’s the main reason I look away when I’m upset; I don’t want that person to see the hurt streaming through my eyes, whether or not there are tears. I can’t look someone in the eye and tell them I’m fine when I am not; the lie shows through…I can’t will myself (for the most part) to just suddenly feel fine…so I break eye contact.

So I love this photo, because of my eyes. They seem to be saying so much, in just one expression. Now, I don’t look thin (in fact, my ass looks quite big…I’m not sure if it’s actually that bountiful in real life, but I wish it was!), my skin isn’t perfect (it was right after I came back from Florida…ugh, I hate being tan), my fat is showing, my hair isn’t flawless…it doesn’t matter. I freaking love this picture…it goes to show (to me) that beauty isn’t always in the body, but often in the soul. And we all know that eyes are the window to the soul, right?

Essin’ Em