As a photographer, I can confirm that, yes, she did. Or she was friends with a photographer. In the days before digital photography caught on, if you had a darkroom and a reputation for discretion, women would come to you to develop their film or take the actual pictures. And, let me tell ya, when a woman shows up and says “take pictures of me naked”, most people who are sexually attracted to women say “Sure!”
I’m pretty sure I’ve replied to this post before, but I am doing it again suddenly confronted with a Random Memory.
There was a movie called “Punch Line”, starring Tom Hanks as a comedian (and Sally Field as a housewife learning to be a comedian). At one point, Tom Hanks is being heckled on stage, and he asks the guy “Hey, do you have any naked pictures of your girlfriend? No? Would you like to buy some?” And for a (thankfully short) period of time, this entered popular culture as a thing guys said to degrade other men.
At this particular point in time, I was male-passing enough that nobody (even me) questioned it, but not perfectly male-passing, so I was the kind of person guys would build themselves up by tearing down. That’s how I found myself having the following conversation:
“Hey, man, you got any pictures of your girlfriend naked?”
“Would you – wait, what?”
“Yes, I have pictures of my girlfriend naked.”
“I’m a photographer. Wait a second. Aren’t you Kevin?”
“I have photos of your girlfriend naked.” (To be clear, I wasn’t outing her. She had the photos on the wall of her apartment and had given copies to practically everyone she knew.)
The last time I responded to this post, I think I did a bit about how the women I photographed in the 90s are now approaching 50 and are glad they did it. But there’s another point.
In the 1990s, I probably took photos of a hundred different women in varying stages of undress. And the thing that would surprise you most is who those women were. Yes, there were the exhibitionists like Kevin’s girlfriend, and yes, some of these were the girls who were known with sleeping with everyone. But… also, like, just… women.
I was not the only photographer who had two portfolios– one I could show to anyone, and one that I had to sift through before showing it to a given person because I was allowed to use them only if I was showing them to people who didn’t know them. (And a whole mess of photos I wasn’t allowed to show ANYONE because they were just for the model and/or her partner.)
And, I must stress, this was the 1990s, when naked selfies required either risking a photomat (where they would be in the hands of a complete stranger who could make copies easily) or talking to someone like me.
The advent of digital photography did not cause women to lose modesty. It just made it easier for them to control their own sexual expression.
