King of Disrespect

On a cold rainy day last May, Paula agreed to roll around in the mud for me. She was a great sport, we had fun, and we finished the evening by scarfing down some Taco Bell.

Fast forward five months. I’m chatting online with my friend Marigold (not her real name), and we’d discussed shooting together for well over a year. Marigold is a sometimes-model and just graduated a college photography program, so was familiar with both sides of the industry. She showed me a photo of hers online and asked me to photograph her in a similar “natural artsy” style.

Whoa, nelly!

Natural? Artsy?

Said I:

“i don’t know if you’ve ever noticed or not, but most of my photos usually have a girl wearing not-too-much-clothing”

Marigold scurried off to look at my website at this point, though she’d seen it a dozen times before. Her reaction:

“ok im having second thoughts…. i need to think about it a little more. i suddenly have become very nervous”

When I asked her to expand on that thought, she was vague:

“i dont really like how some the girls are portrayed”

I questioned how the hell she conveniently forgot the way I portrayed girls. After a little more prodding, we got to the meat of the issue:

“i just really dont like the girls with dirt on their faces. i dont like it when women are portrayed disrespectfully”

And there it was. Curious, no? She took no issue with the nudity, had no problems with women as sex objects. But — dirt on the face? God forbid. Oh, and did I mention that a short time previous, she created a series of photos featuring female models covered with splattered paint?

I stopped the conversation at that point since I knew the online medium wasn’t best for the sort of heated back-and-forth that was about to ensue. We haven’t spoken since.

What do the blog readers think? Is my photograph above disrespectful? Or is Marigold batshit crazy? Sound off in the comments.