Solicitation: How to Get What You Want from Women in Their Underwear Without Pissing Them Off

Late last year, I was approached by the editor of a magazine and asked if I would consider submitting some photos.  This editor and I have a number of mutual acquaintances, one of whom is a good friend of mine so, on the strength of that, I happily agreed.

Thus began an ongoing communication, during which I shot not one but two sets for the magazine, both of which I agreed to keep exclusive until after they had been published, and made sure I kept the editor apprised of the progress of both shoots as progress was made.  No specifics beyond general themes were ever discussed, but since this editor came to me based on the work in my portfolio that he had already seen, he knew my style.  The photos were submitted well before the deadline for the issue, and when emails were sent out to let contributors know which high-resolution images needed to be sent, I found out that one image from one set would be published, and the submission of the second set was not even acknowledged.

Flash forward a few months, and a dear friend of mine finds herself in an almost identical situation, with a different magazine; approached by the editor, asked to submit a photo set based on the strength of her portfolio with only a very general description of what they’d like to see, time and money spent on the shoot, photos kept exclusive and submitted well within the required timeframe and, after several attempts to find out the status of publication, finally given only a lukewarm “maybe” as to whether they’ll ever be used.

I’m not going to say, now or ever, that any editor is obligated under any circumstances to guarantee publication of unseen work, regardless of who initiated the contact.  The editor’s job is to make sure all work published is in keeping with the quality and overall image of the magazine and, until you’ve seen the pictures, you can’t know they meet the criteria.  So my issue with the above mentioned situations is not that the photos asked for weren’t used.  My issue is with the communication, or rather lack thereof, from the editors’ sides.

In both of the above situations, the burden was on those editors to let me and my friend know as soon as possible that the work submitted was not what the magazine was hoping for.  A simple “you know, I appreciate you taking the time to do this, but it isn’t quite what we’re looking for” would have been fine.  A simple “you know, we’d love to see a set from you in a bar-type setting with mood lighting and a sheer black robe” prior to the shoot actually taking place would have been even better.  What is not at all even a little bit okay is “just send something Christmas-y” or “we’d like photos of you wearing red lipstick” and then leaving the model hanging for an answer, or ignoring the submission altogether.

I do not consider myself the be-all and end-all of magazine editors, far from it.  But I know what I want and I know the only way I’m ever going to get it is to ask for it, clearly and concisely, from the people I think are most likely to be able to provide it.  Case in point: I received a cover art submission for an upcoming issue that was almost what we want.  I emailed both the model and photographer and said “can you redo this same concept, making these changes and adding this?”  They said “hell yes we can!” and I have no doubt that we’re going to have an amazing cover that is exactly what we want.

Communication.  Is.  Key.

And it’s not actually all that painful.  Editors don’t like sending out rejection emails any more than contributors like receiving them, but you know something weird?  I’ve lost count of how many emails I’ve received over the past year from people who have sent work that is not in keeping with what we publish, thanking me for taking the time to let them know we wouldn’t be using their submissions.  They’re not thanking me for turning them down, because that would be silly and masochistic, but they are thanking me for not just letting their hard work vanish into a black hole of sent-and-never-answered emails.

To anyone who takes the bullshit line of not having time to reply to all submissions, no.  Just... no.  If you have time to ask for submissions, and time to profit from other people’s work, you have time to create a form letter that you can cut and paste as a reply to work that you don’t want to use.

Rejections are like band-aids.  A quick and clean rip that stings for a second is far better for everyone than ignoring it until the adhesive rots and it falls off on its own and lands you don’t even know where until it gets caught in the vacuum cleaner belt and starts to smoke and stinks up the entire room.

Unsolicited submissions to open calls deserve at least the token formality of a standardized rejection notice.  Solicited submissions?  Yes, those deserve considerably more.  If you ask someone for something, you are placing two burdens of responsibility on yourself.  First, that you communicate your requirements clearly.  Second, if you do not communicate your requirements clearly, and leave the details up to someone else, that if the end result is not what you had in mind, you at least have a big enough pair to let the person who did the work know you won’t be using it.

Why Small Boobs Are Awesome

Among other endeavors in the pinup community, I am part of a panel that judges a monthly photo contest.  There are five of us, and our group goes by the name Tits On A Unicorn.  We run a page on Facebook that has two regular features, the Daily Unicorn and the Daily Bazoombas.  The Daily Bazoombas feature is open to any woman who wants to submit a photo, and the photos are, well, boob-emphatic.  The lady who handles the scheduling for the feature wanted a St. Patrick’s Day-themed photo, so I sent her this one to have on hand in case no others were submitted.

In the email, I told my dear uni-sister that if another photo were sent in that she would prefer to use, to please go ahead and use it, this was a just-in-case submission so we’d have the holiday covered.  I am well aware and will be the first to admit that I am not a boob pinup.  I can pad, push up, lean and bluff my way through boob shots when necessary, but they’re not my real strength.  I am a leg & butt pinup, and am perfectly fine with that, in fact rather proud of it.

This is what I do best

The photo was posted on the page, and received the following comment:

“Humm... are a bit small, but I like them”

A bit of a kerfuffle followed and was quickly smoothed over, when one of the ladies on the panel jumped to the defense of my girls and the original commenter stated that he hadn’t meant any offense, just that we usually post larger-breasted women in the feature.  Which is true, we do.  We post every photo that is submitted, and encourage women of all shapes and sizes who are of a mind to share their boobs for appreciation in our boob-friendly community.

But here’s the problem; it isn’t that smaller-breasted women don’t want to celebrate their boobs, it’s that most of them feel they don’t have a pair worth celebrating.  The majority of the submissions we receive for this feature are from large-breasted women because “bigger is better” is accepted as the standard by which boob worth is measured, and those women have been made aware from the time they developed them that their large breasts are great.  Comments like the one posted above, while not intended to be offensive, in truth intended as a compliment, are part of the problem.  It’s not that he pointed out the obvious, that I have small boobs.   It’s the inclusion of the word “but”, implying that liking small boobs is somehow exceptional.

It is not.  At least, it shouldn’t be.  Because small boobs are awesome, and here are just some of the reasons why:

1 – SMALL BOOBS ARE EASIER AND LESS EXPENSIVE TO CLOTHE

I hear large-breasted women complain constantly about the difficulties they have finding bras that fit and, when they do find them, they’re seldom the pretty lacy girly ones.  I wear a 36B.  I doubt there is a bra manufactured on this planet that isn’t available in my size.  I have never had a problem finding bras, and I’ve never had to deal with the price bump that seems to be integral to purchasing anything larger than a D cup.

And sports bras?  I am golden.  I can buy those in the children’s department.

2 – SMALL BOOBS ARE FAR LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE EFFECTS OF GRAVITY

It is rumored that, over time, all boobs eventually find themselves doomed to show the effects of constant downward pull, and there is only so much that good muscle tone and underwires can fight.

Or is there?  These are my boobs, from the age of 19 to the age of 43.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any appreciable difference in the distance between them and my bellybutton over the course of almost 25 years.

Small Boobs: The Decades-Spanning Non-Sagging Saga

Maybe when I’m 50, that will change.  Or maybe it won’t.

3 – SMALL BOOBS ARE MORE COMFORTABLE IN HOT WEATHER

No matter how you arrange them, large boobs are going to have skin-on-skin contact somewhere, it’s just a matter of whether it’s between or beneath, and that means a higher likelihood of sweat and irritated skin.  Unless you put them in a serious lift & separate sling, which just creates a larger ratio of skin-to-fabric contact and doesn’t help matters much when you’re already dealing with being overheated.  We small-boobed women don’t have this problem nearly as much, and most of us have the option of going braless on particularly hot days.

4 – MEN ACTUALLY LOOK AT YOUR EYES AND LISTEN TO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

Okay, not all the time, but the likelihood is greater that they might.

It’s really easy to find reasons to not like your body, to think you’re too heavy or too skinny or your boobs are too small or your ass is too big or your legs are too short or or or or or.  There will never be a day when you will have difficulty finding something to dislike about yourself if you want to try.  The good news is, with the same amount of effort, you can find something to like, and a damn good reason to like it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go organize my collection of $9 sports bras.

The 12 Worst Movies I’ve Ever Seen

The other day, I commented on Facebook that I did not like Blade Runner.  This surprised a lot of people, particularly when I went on to say that I would rank it among the 10 worst movies I’ve ever seen, and possibly in the bottom 5.  Which got me thinking about other terrible movies I’ve seen.  Which brings us to today.  It was going to be a list of 10, but I just kept thinking of more.

Before I proceed with the countdown, I would like to say two things.  First, I have learned over the years to differentiate, as much as possible, between movies I don’t like and movies I consider bad.  For example, I did not like Snatch, at all, even a little, but I can look at it for what it was and say that, despite my personal feelings about it, it was a good movie.  I hate capers, but I can still appreciate the effort behind a well-prepared Chicken Piccata.  I just won’t eat it.

Second, there are few things in this world so bad that I can’t find at least one nice thing to say about them.  So I will make every effort to find at least one point of redemption in each of these movies.

And now, to the countdown.

#12 – Session 9

There is a place for subtlety in horror, and a time to let the viewer’s imagination take them places no visual ever could.  However, when your attempt at subtlety drops to the level of being nothing more than the movie equivalent of dead air, and your attempt to nudge the viewer’s imagination in s specific direction just makes absolutely no fucking sense, and you realize these things three-quarters of the way through and suddenly try to make up for them by beating the audience over the head with all the things you were previously only hinting at, you end up with a movie like Session 9.

Point of redemption: David Caruso

#11 – Pulp Fiction

Draping a series of random violent events and catchy dialog over a loosely-built framework of coincidence and casting Samuel L. Jackson as the motherfuckingest motherfucker any fucker ever mothered does not make a great movie.  It makes a movie that people talk about, and quote a lot, and feel very badass for so doing.

Points of redemption: Uma Thurman is always nice to look at, and the soundtrack was good.

#10 – One for the Money

Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is one of my most treasured guilty pleasures, and there are so many things that pissed me off about this movie I hardly know where to begin listing them.  The original book was an almost perfect balance of really scary stuff and really funny stuff.  The movie managed to straddle both of those things and completely fail to capture either.  It also broke what I consider a cardinal rule of moviemaking: I don’t care if you’re filming Star Wars 7: It’s the Great Baby Jesus in Oz, Charlie Brown!, you never use the assumption of audience familiarity with the original source material as an excuse to leave out large chunks of crucial plot and character development.  The people who are not familiar with the source material are going to be lost in the overwhelming WTF of it all, and the people who are will view even the slightest deviation from the original as a betrayal.  Oh, and then they cast an Irishman as Joe Morelli, the quintessential Italian cop from Jersey.

Point of redemption: Considering what she was given to work with, Katherine Heigl was very good as Stephanie.

#9 – Blade Runner

Yes, I know.  This is considered one of the best movies ever made.  Which is why I felt compelled to detail on my original Facebook post the reasons for my dislike of it.  I thought the music was atrocious, disjointed and completely unsuited to scenes it was backing, but not so incongruous that the juxtaposition would actually add another layer to the action and emotion of those scenes, and it was bad enough to distract from any other redeeming qualities. I found Harrison Ford's character completely unbelievable as the one guy who was so good that he had to be forcibly recalled to active duty, and I also found Ford's performance to be surprisingly lacking. I always have a problem with the "I've only met you twice but I love you" plot device.  The dialog at times bordered on ridiculous.  Nothing about the character of Leon made the slightest bit of sense to me.  And I’m sorry, apparently this is considered an incredibly moving piece of cinematic history, but when Rutger Hauer came out with that “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears... in rain” line, I actually laughed out loud, it was so completely over the melodramatic top.

Points of redemption: Sean Young’s performance was exemplary, and Rutger Hauer was running around in shorts.

#8 – The Terror

I probably would have ranked this one much lower if not for one thing; when you see the name Boris Karloff, your expectations are automatically adjusted.  Even taking that into consideration, though, this movie was just awful from beginning to end.

Point of redemption: The very young and very pretty Jack Nicholson.

#7 – Hudson Hawk

Camp is good thing.  Over-the-top ridiculousness is another good thing.  Those two when well combined are a third good thing.  Those first two when not well combined, but when backed by some big names and a substantial budget, are a fourth thing, an engraved invitation to crash and burn in a spectacular flame of failure.  I wanted to like this movie.  I tried.  I failed at liking it just as much as they failed at making it likable.

Point of redemption: The soundtrack.

#6 – Cool World

Another movie I really wanted to like.  Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt are each strong enough on their own to salvage just about any salvageable movie.  When you have both of them, and still manage to produce an unmitigated shitpile, that is the sign of a project that was just fundamentally broken from the get-go.  And to all the supporters of this movie who insist that the critics just don’t “get” what they were doing, I “get” it just fine.  They just did it very badly, with the “OMG huge coincidence heretofore unmentioned or even hinted at as a possibility but that solves everything in favor of the good guys!” ending being the rancid cherry atop this truly abominable cupcake.

Point of redemption: Gabriel Byrne, Gabriel Byrne, and yet more Gabriel Byrne.

#5 – Waterworld

A classic case of budget poisoning.  Contrary to what people with lots of money to throw around seem to think, high production values can not and will not make up for a bad story, bad dialog, and Kevin Costner.

Point of redemption: Nobody does big and loud and crazy like Dennis Hopper.

#4 – Showgirls

I know.  I could just stop typing and go back to pretending I didn’t actually pay real money to see this in a theatre because you already know how bad this movie is.  But when it first came out, we didn’t know that yet.  There was a chance that it would be what it claimed to be, a raw edgy look at the grot behind the glam in Vegas.  We know better now.  Oh yes.  We know better now.

Point of redemption: Kyle MacLachlan is awesome.  Not in this movie, particularly, just in general.

#3 – Scared to Death

This was almost so bad it was good.  It stopped about 12 feet short of that crucial turning point, and ended up just being terrible.  Really really really terrible.  And not because they were at all shy about throwing more crap into the mix in the hope that something might actually work.  They had Bela Lugosi.  They had Mysterious Strangers with even more mysteriouser pasts.  They had dancers.  They had a deaf/mute little person who communicated primarily by kicking people in the ankle.  They had phantom reflections in conveniently moonlit windows. They had, in the midst of what was supposed to be an incredibly tense and dramatic situation, an idiot cop with chronic foot-in-mouth, in love with a maid who wanted nothing to do with him.  And they had a corpse narrating the whole thing.  But not narrating for the sake of imparting any useful information, just stating clearly what the next five minutes of action would show, right before they showed it all.

Point of redemption: The last spoken words in the movie were the title of the movie.  I guess they get cheeseball points for that.

#2 – Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama

I know what you’re thinking.  “With a title like that, what did you expect?”  I’ll tell you exactly what I expected.  I expected this to be so incredibly bad it would loop around and become awesome.  I expected over-the-top silliness with lots of fake blood and hot chicks in skimpy outfits saying ridiculous things, I expected expendable characters to be expended with great dispatch and the “good” guys to triumph, I expected a terrifically bad movie.  What I got was just plain bad, and if there is any decency and justice in this world, the people who made this movie will relinquish any rights they may have to that title, and give it to someone who will make Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama what it should have been.

Point of redemption: Nothing.  I’m sorry, I’ve got nothing.  The hot chicks weren’t even that hot.

#1 – Swamp Thing

I should qualify my listing of this as the worst movie I’ve ever seen, because I actually haven’t seen the whole thing.  It is the only movie I have ever paid money to see and walked out of 30 minutes in because it was so bad I literally could not watch another minute of it.  32 minutes in, it may have become amazing.  I don’t know.  Somehow, I doubt it.

Point of redemption: TBD

Do You Exist?

Last week, as I was putting the finishing touches on the August issue of The Poetic Pinup Revue (which, by the way, is now available for pre-order here), I noticed the continuation of what I consider a rather disturbing trend.  One of the things we list in our index of contributors is the URL of each artist’s website so that our readers, when overwhelmed as they so often are by the magnificence of the talent contained in our humble publication, can find more of each contributor’s work and be even more overwhelmed by their magnificence.

And for the third issue in a row, roughly half of the contributors had either left blank or written “N/A” in the section of the release form where they were to provide a URL.

There’s a saying in the data backup business; “If it isn’t in three places, it doesn’t exist.”  To all artists, the aspiring, the well-established and the everywhere in between, the same applies.  You need to be in three places.  There is you, live and in person, at whatever events you choose to appear.  There is your work, on paper or canvas or in clay or an 8-foot tower of cleverly sculpted dryer lint.  And there is your presence on the Internet.

In this day and age, you can’t NOT have one.  It’s as simple as that.  And your personal social networking profile doesn’t count.  You don’t want people who really liked your last poem stopping by and leaving bizarre comments on photos from your mom’s birthday party.  You need a professional presence solely for your creative endeavors.

So, to everyone who left blank or “N/A”’d the Artist Website field on their release form, I really truly deeply urgently wish you would go establish a professional Internet presence.  A Facebook page is free, and relatively easy to set up.  Same with a Google blog, or a basic Wordpress site.  Even if the content consists of nothing but a stock photo banner and a bunch of links to other places on the Internet where your work can be found, you need at least that.

And to the artists who did complete the website field, but with “www.facebook.com/MyAwesomePage874398572048750824705827458738057”, you really need to go rename your pages.  For online publications where that URL can be embedded, not a problem, but print is not so dead a medium that you can start ignoring it completely, and NO ONE flipping through a magazine is going to type all of that out just for the sake of learning more about you.

People who like your work will want to like more of your work.  You need to make that as easy for them as possible.

Before You Go On the Food Network…

Before you go on any Food Network program, it would serve you well to learn how to properly pronounce some commonly-used words in the culinary field.  While you’re at it, you could have a go at learning to pronounce “culinary” as well, but I’ve given up holding my breath on that one. 

However, there are some things I’m not quite ready to give up the fight on yet.  And I am really fucking tired of hearing so-called culinary “experts” constantly mispronounce the following:

Mascarpone – There are days when I swear if I hear one more person say “MARZ-ka-pone”, I will just douse my television in truffle oil, set it on fire and throw it out of a ninth-floor window.  It is pronounced “mas-kar-PO-nay”.  Why is this so difficult?  Why do I hear twelve people pronounce this incorrectly for every one that gets it right?  If you need a helpful hint, LOOK AT WHERE THE ‘R’ IS IN THE WORD.  Last time I checked, rules of Italian pronunciation did not include “if ‘r’ follows the second vowel, it should be sounded before the preceding two consonants”.  Those rules do, however, include pronouncing all vowels.  I know it’s not always easy for an English-trained brain to see an ‘e’ at the end of a word and think it’s there for anything other than garnish, but in Italian, there are no silent letters.  So say your ‘nay’.

Chipotle – If Jack-in-the-Box commercials can get this right, all you fine dining experts have no excuse.  It’s “cheh-POHT-lay”.  Not “chee-POL-tee” or “cheh-POL-tay”.  Again, a none-too-subtle hint, LOOK AT WHERE THE ‘T’ IS IN THE WORD.

Mozzarella – The most common, and to me least understandable, mispronunciation of this word is people simply forgetting that it ends with an ‘a’.  Was the final number at that concert you went to the other night performed a capell?  Is that bone in your knee a patell?  When it looks like rain, do you grab your umbrell?  Do you cringe every time your toddler insists yet again on watching her DVD of Cinderell?  Then why do you think you’re cooking with mozzarell?

Quinoa – I’m willing to cut people a bit more slack on this one just because it is kind of odd looking to an English-trained brain; however, it’s still not that difficult.  It’s pronounced “keen-wah”, slight emphasis on the first syllable.  I won’t throw a flaming truffle oil-soaked television at you if you don’t get it right all the time, but please at least make the effort.

Jews vs. Omnivores: No, Actually, It’s Not On

The other night, I was poking around the Internet looking for a good recipe for vegan buttercream frosting.  I’m not a vegan, and don’t do much vegan baking, but I’m going to try a new cupcake combo that features avocado frosting and, if I’m topping my cupcake with a vegetable anyway, it just seems silly to not make the whole thing vegan.  I found one that sounded pretty good, so I took the logical next step in the online recipe screening process and started reading the reviews and comments.

And that’s when I discovered, much to my surprise and sorrow, that apparently I hate Jews, and have all my life.  Which not only sucks for me as a person, but has the potential to make the holidays really awkward.  My sister is Jewish and, honestly, I’ve always thought I liked her a lot.

This recipe calls for sugar, as many recipes for sweet things do.  One of the commenters stated that it should specify beet sugar, because every time someone uses cane sugar, terrorists burn down an orphanage full of baby seals.  Or something to that effect, I don’t recall the exact phrasing but it was something very much to that effect.

Which prompted another commenter to say “Hey now, how about you calm down, of course you use cruelty-free ingredients whenever possible, but come on.  I’m a raw food vegan and I don’t have to make it everyone else’s problem.”  A comment and a way of thinking I appreciate; I have my thing, other people may have different things, nobody has to force their thing on anybody else.

The original commenter then rebutted with irrefutable evidence that I and many people just like me who may, like me, have spent their whole lives thinking otherwise, must in fact hate all Jews.  Because if you consume animal products, or even if you don’t consume animal products but take the incredibly irresponsible path of not trying to force your beliefs down the throat of every omnivore you encounter, that is exactly the same as the Holocaust.

(Which of course had nothing to do with anyone trying to force his belief system on everyone else.  But I digress.)

You have no idea how much I wish I were making this up.  You also have no idea how much I wish I had just called any one of my vegan friends and said “hey, email me a recipe for butterless buttercream.”  However, since I can’t unsee this exchange, I’ll do the next best thing; present one very large fact, and a few equally large opinions.

The Fact: Until you figure out a way to glean adequate sustenance from rocks, every time you eat, something is dying so that you can live.  Suck it up, Betty Sue Beetsugar, because there is no getting around that.  Welcome to our exothermic existence, where we’ll thank you to stop comparing omelets to Auschwitz.

Now for the opinions.

Many vegans cite the desire to never harm another sentient creature as the basis for their lifestyle choice and I absolutely respect that, it is an admirable way to live, every day of your life making a conscious effort to not do harm.  However, where our thinking diverges most sharply is the place where “sentient” is defined because I consider plants to be every bit as much sentient creatures as animals are.

I am what is known as a crazy plant lady.  I talk to them and they talk back the only way they can; through movement.  They lean toward me when I walk out with the watering can.  I’ve had flowers open in just the time it takes me to refill that watering can and walk back to the garden.  I used to have a patio that was edged on three sides by planter boxes and, when I sat out there to read, all of the plants would lean toward where I was sitting.  Yes, 270 degrees of plant life, all leaning toward my chair.  They were as aware of my presence as I was of theirs.

And do I eat them?  Yes, I do.  For the same reason and in the same way that I eat animals and animal products; because I will die if I don’t eat something, and with awareness of and appreciation for the fact that a living thing has ceased to live so that I can continue to do so.

So while I respect that desire behind the vegan lifestyle, I see unavoidable flaws in the execution.  Nothing anyone can do anything about as long as we’re all enjoying the previously mentioned exothermic existence.  And not a problem as long as everyone is willing to respect everyone else’s thing.

What I can and will do something about is blog the ever-loving fuck out of anyone who tries to tell me that I am an immoral, heartless, conscienceless waste of space and oxygen because I don’t share their objection to the consumption of animal products.  You know what I object to?  Embalming fluid.  I object to human remains being turned into masses of highly toxic matter that aren’t fit to be returned to the ground to nourish the very plants that we all rely on for survival, vegan or not.

That is an area that, to my way of thinking, seriously needs improvement.  Cruelty-free agriculture, and the economic feasibility of it, is an area that seriously needs improvement.  Being more aware of where our food is coming from is an area that, for just about everyone, seriously needs improvement.  But there is a difference between “areas that need improvement” and “Nazi Germany”, and those of us who really are making an effort to be good people and not completely screw up the world will thank you to recognize that difference before you start with the finger-pointing.

Maybe I’m Not As Shameless As I Thought

Anyone who has known me for longer than five minutes has most likely heard me say “I am completely shameless when it comes to promoting a good cause” or something very similar.  And it’s true, I am.  If I want your money to go somewhere, I will walk right up to you and ask you to send it there.

Like right here, where I’m saying you should go donate to my fundraiser for the American Lung Cancer Partnership.

See?

When you have something the very survival of which demands attention being called to it, if you don’t do it, no one will.  And I have learned over the years that one of the best ways to be as shameless as is necessary to market effectively, without turning people off, is to not even pretend you aren’t behaving like an attention whore.  Embrace your shamelessness.  Flaunt it.  Turn it into an asset.  Make it so shameless it’s funny.

I have some friends over on Facebook who market their modeling pages with posts along the lines of “You should go like my page, then tell all your friends to like my page, for no better reason than there are boobs.  Huge boobs.  Boobs just for you and your friends, over on my page, just go like it”.   That’s the right kind of shameless.  Self-deprecating boob-intensive marketing shamelessness.  And it works.  Because it’s so shameless it’s funny.

However, today I was on the receiving end of a completely different type of shamelessness, and I have to say I found it a bit offensive.

Over on another social networking site, I received a friend request from someone whose name I recognized and work I am vaguely familiar with.  I assumed it had been sent because this person also was vaguely familiar with my work, so I accepted the request and followed up with my usual “Hi, nice to meet you!” comment on that person’s profile.  The response I got to that comment?

“Go like my Facebook page!”

Um... wow, really?

I might have let it go, and not let it drive me into a fit of enraged blogging, had it been left at that.  It was not.  Following that comment was a message from this person, asking for me to go vote for a photo they had entered in a contest.

A contest in which I also have a photo entered.  A photo it never even occurred to me to go around asking random people with whom I have no previous connection to go vote for.  A photo this person seems to have completely overlooked in their quest to garner votes from complete strangers.  And not once in this entire exchange was there any mention of boobs.

This person may in fact be a really nice person, and not have any clue how offensive this whole thing was, but you don’t just walk up to people you don’t know and start asking for things, that is just not the way it’s done.

Or is it?  Is that the way it’s done now?  Am I really old-fashioned, to think there should be some sort of connection, or at least hint of reciprocity, before you start asking for favors?

There should at least be some mention of boobs, right?

(Seriously though, you should go like Naomi VonKreeps and Veronica Virgo.  For the boobs.)

Freakish! Shocking! And, oddly enough, A Crock of Crap!

Along my Facebook travels the other day, I happened across a photo and article posted by a woman who has quite a knack for posting things that will start discussions.  This post was no exception.  It was about a Romanian model named Ioana Spangenberg, her “freakish” figure and “shockingly” small waist.  According to the article, Spangenberg’s freakishly shocking measurements are a 20” waist and 32” hips.  And this is the photo circulating with the article:

The comments on FB ranged, predictably, from “eww OMG gross!” to “everyone is beautiful in their own way and you’re going to Hell if you think otherwise”.  I couldn’t even get to that part of the discussion.  Because I couldn’t get past my disbelief that people were A) accepting those numbers without question, and B) accepting them as shocking and freakish, also without question.

My contribution to the discussion consisted of pointing out that, in order for the photo in question to be showing a woman with a 20” waist above 32” hips, those numbers would translate to a flat 10” over 16”, and her hips in the photo would only be wider by 3” than her waist on either side.

My contribution to the discussion was resoundingly ignored as people carried on with their OMG-gross-ing and you’re-going-to-Hell-ing.  So, for those of you who think common sense and math are tools The Man is using to keep The People down, I will revert to what The People seem more receptive to believing: pictures.

The dashes are the same size font.  If the numbers in the article were accurate, the 10 dashes at her waistline would line up with her actual waistline, wouldn’t they?

I posted this line of reasoning on my own FB page, along with the photo below as a basis for comparison, taken of me when I first started modeling back in the late 80’s and I too had freakish and shocking measurements of a 20” waist and 32” hips.  Except where I come from, that’s not called “freakish and shocking”.  It’s called “your dad’s people were a bunch of short large-assed tiny-waisted Italian women”.

The comments that photo received were all extremely flattering, along the lines of my shape looking more natural and being more attractive, and before I continue, I would just like to say thank you.  Seriously.  How much you all love my ass means the world to me.  So thank you very very much and, in case you didn’t know, there is a black & white graphic of that photo available as a poster in my shop.  Just sayin’.

However, flattering as those comments were, the comparison I was trying to make wasn’t between what’s attractive and what isn’t, or even between my late 80’s body and Spangenberg’s body.  The point I wanted to make was two-fold.  First, a 20” waist is hardly freakish, nor are 32” hips.  Second, there is just no way the article’s numbers matched the article’s photo, and it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure it out.  Simple arithmetic and a dash of common sense are all that’s required to spot that, if you’re willing to look.

The photo of Spangenberg being circulated is one where her waist is cinched.  There’s nothing wrong with that, if she wants to do it.  There’s also nothing wrong with a newspaper reporting that Spangenberg is able to cinch her waist down to a “shocking” mere 14” or 15”, which is my guess as to about what’s shown in that photo.  That is definitely unusual, because when I had that waistline, I could only cinch it down to about 18”, there was just nothing more to pull in.  So that’s impressive, and worth some ink on an otherwise slow news day.

But to quote the great Judith Sheindlin, don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.  Don’t tell me smaller than average measurements are freakish and shocking, and don’t tell me I’m looking at something that I can easily figure out is not what I’m looking at.  And next time you see something like this, please take a minute to question what you’re looking at, and compare it to what you’re being told you’re looking at.  Maybe if we all start calling bullshit often and loudly enough, people will stop trying to feed it to us.

Hot Woman with Great Boobs Needs Your Help

Veronica Virgo, contributor to the first issue of The Poetic Pinup Revue and all-around stellar human being, needs our help.  She has a photo entered in a contest to win a shoot with Roy Varga.  The winner of the contest will be determined by the number AND QUALITY of persuasive comments left on each photo.

This is Veronica

This is what she has to say about the contest: 

"I'm BROKE! I'd love to win some free photos! You don't have to vote for me, but please vote for someone! There are LOTS of deserving ladies!"

See, that right there is indicative of why she deserves to win.  Even when she's trying to garner votes for herself, she acknowledges that she is not the only vote-worthy option and is supportive of the entire contest.

Here's what I had to say:

"There is not enough room on FB for all the reasons I think Veronica should win. There may not even be enough room on the Internet. But I will try. Yes, she has beautiful eyes, fantastic boobs, and a smile that could light up a small country, but it's when you look past those things that you really find what makes her as special as she is; the warmth, the humor, the strength, the grace, the very rare and very real human being that she is. If Jane Russell, Grace Kelly, Indira Ghandi and Mae West each threw a dash of DNA in a test tube which was then left in the thick of a wild rose bramble to develop with nothing more than its wits and the occasional spring rainfall to help it along, the end result would be something very like Veronica Virgo. This is a woman who either needs to be cloned numerous times or captured on film as often as possible, it's the only way for there to ever be enough of her to go around."

And I meant every word of it.

Support the arts, the boobs, and the broke pinups.  Please go HERE, like the photo and say something nice about why you think she deserves to win.

Then go HERE and like her page.

Then, while you're clicking links anyway, you may as well go HERE and pick up a copy of that magazine she's in...

The Poetic Pinup Revue - Simply Artful. And Really Frikkin' Exciting

Yes, it's here.  The first issue of The Poetic Pinup Revue is now in our hands, still warm from the printer's warehouse, and ready to ship.

Go here to read all about it, order & subscribe.