you have eye contact, but there's no emotion in your eyes. the question is though, why modeling?

I can't tell if this is the same person who initially commented on my modeling or not, but regardless, I'm both disconcerted by your comment/question and compelled to thank you for bringing it up. It forces me to deal with something uncomfortable in several ways. I thought about what my answer to this question was before I even went to type it out. My initial thought response felt a bit jarring to me.

1. "Because emotion doesn't have a place in modeling." 2. "Because then I'd be vulnerable."

I'll address number 2 first.

I think why I've always preferred writing is how emotion can remain so recklessly contained. I could control it while simultaneously feeling untamed. For years I hated myself for my intense emotions, until a person stepped into my life and really made me realize the value of them. Until then, I found that I always felt the need to wrangle them back in. And I have no trouble expressing them in personal relationships, as I once did. I suppose, though, it doesn't however remove the sentiment that I have trouble expressing emotions physically, confessing them in a way that could be captured and viewed or heard (singing). It triggers something deeper. Because I know I'm a landmine. And if I were to show my emotions lately, it'd be more hurt and anger more than anything else - the emotion lining the double-edged sword of my delusional amount of hope for myself and this world.

Within the past year, I grew more distanced from my emotions due to the fact that as I became more engrossed in academia, as I tried to fight for what I believed in - the more I held myself out there hopefully, the more the world sought to shoot me down. For every "delusional" burst of hope I provided, backed even with statistical facts, people sought to tell me all the reasons I'd fail. While trying to repeatedly tell myself that those who have failed at their dreams will attempt to make me fail at mine (because misery loves company and there are too many jealous people who don't want to see others succeed when they can't), I began tucking the most intimate parts of myself deep inside myself. I stopped reading for months and months, I stopped writing creatively, I became afraid to sing - I kept waiting, apprehensively, for people to continue to take away from me what I loved. I've learned time and time again how making your emotions open lends you to vulnerability and manipulation. So, I've been hibernating and growing stronger and am slowly emotionally unraveling, now setting all the building blocks to take the world by storm.

So, you're right, perhaps I should find some more photographers to explore a range of emotions with. Especially because that's how I ended up getting into modeling to begin with.

"Why modeling?"

You could call it an exercise in physical therapy honestly. I began Rolfing sessions (structural integration) the same summer in order to due with the strong disconnect I had with my body due to prior trauma. My dissociation was beginning to infest all the areas of my life - I couldn't make it to classes some morning because my knee would randomly give out, or my shoulder would allocate so much pain from taut muscles I thought I'd dislocated it, or I'd get triggered and curl into the fetal position; my love life would splinter as I'd splinter out of my body from one intimate touch from a guy; and it was brought to my attention I was routinely starving and dehydrating myself without realizing it. I began to realize how frequently and severely I was tuning my body out, how I was treating it as just a means to an end, a vessel. I used modeling as an excuse and an exercise to pay more attention to my body and take care of it further.

However, this brings me to the other disturbing thought - thought number 1. I didn't realize I'd gotten so wayward in the year of modeling I've done that I didn't even realize my thoughts were morphing. While my thought certainly does not apply to all forms of modeling, it applies to one of the types I'd gotten sucked into - fashion modeling. An intriguing jump from the "nude in nature" modeling which I started out with. I could go on a rant about typical fashion modeling in society, but I'll save it - because it's all very obvious and has been said before. But if you really want to get into my thoughts on modeling - personal versus societal, I suppose you could always ask me.

Ask me anything