Enough Paulina …
Young. Lovely. Clueless.
I just found these photos. I utterly forgot that we ever made them. “We” was me and a photographer who I guess back then I called a “friend.”
I am so coy here. And very, very young. You know the drill — it was the '70s, I was new in New York, met him at a Soho party. He was dressed in a disco white flaired suit. The suit I remember. The face? Naaa. He did me lots of “favors.” Shooting pics of me, pals, family. The favor I paid back was — no — I didn’t f*** him — but when I see the look on my face here — faking the you are AMAZING with a side of completely unfaked PLEASE don’t touch me — deeply uncomfortable then and now. In fact, that mutherfucker was a pig throughout the shoot. And every shoot. The price I paid for mediocre pictures.
You just put up with it. THEN. It was invisible, something we didn't even realize we could speak up about. Good riddance to that bullshit.
And speaking of invisible, Paulina Porizkova is talking a lot about this on Insta these days — no expiration on sexy and the whatnots. I LIKE a lot of what she does, what she says. But — I mean — you win — you're a bloody model. You're posting jaw-dropping gorge photos TOTALLY looking for “am I f***able” outside validation at 50. Don’t put that shit on us. Fitness, sure, but fuckable is overfuckingrated.
“You just put up with it. Then. It was invisible, something we didn’t even realize we could speak up about.
Good riddance to that bullshit.”
In my family of 5 sisters, the eldest one was, without a doubt, the GODDESS. THE sex bomb. Too much emphasis on this in our clan, but she was worshiped — the Liz Taylor type. She came up in the '50s. Mad Men territory. And that was the business she was in. She WAS Joan.
I remember fishing with her, decades later, solidly in her 60s, a bad-ass broad, with her body — well — she looked like a bumblebee and she loved it. I asked her if she missed being the babe — the sexy young thang — her response: "Hell no. I was absolutely tortured for it …."
I'm NOT saying here accept being “invisible.” HELL NO. But being young and being attacked on the streets or creeped on at photoshoots makes who you are invisible. In her bumblebee stage, my sister was more visible than ever. We all get to be visible for who we absolutely are. If we own it. And today? I would have clocked that asshole right in the crotch for messin' with me.
So let's do it — be VISIBLE as the older, powerful Glorious Broads that we are. Nobody else’s idea of “f***able” — OUR OWN idea. Get botox if you want to. Do whatever the hell you want. But recognize. Decades change you. And that's OK. In fact, it's better.