12 June 2012

Reflect what I want, not what I am

What do you see in the mirror?
For girls the mirror is our best and worst enemy. There are those glorious days where it isn't possible that something goes wrong, and every little reflection we find in the street is like a ray of light that highlights the very best of our figure. The bum seems rounder, the tits, though not very large, are shaped so harmoniously that it is inevitable to feel pride, and the silky hair is finely molded by the wind. Everything is perfect. Overflowing with sensuality and self-assuredness gained from what we have seen in the mirror before leaving home, in those days, we are joyous goddesses, delighted to have the body that nature gave us.

But that does not perpetuate. The days are short and the nights sometimes get a bit long. The next day we return with the same enthusiasm to what yesterday was our best friend, but it has lost interest. What it showed to us as something beautiful yesterday, today turns into a visual attrition of contradictory expressions. The skin blemishes are so very present that you even can't see the face just as it really is, but as a set of black dots, some pimples and a pair of dark circles around the eyes. The bum fallen down, the boobs flabby, and you could even say with some extra kilos. Entirely shabby. How can one be plagued by such a betrayal of an object of which we believe it was objective when it showed us something pretty, but then again it also turns to be a sicko that shows us other realities?

Each nude photograph bears a date of packing. The day of the session. When this woman had one of her most beautiful moments she let a photographer freeze it. An image that might travel the world and many people can admire it as a place of discovery of incomparable beauty. In 20 years this same girl, now more women, with other shapes and with a different beauty than in her youth, she'll say proudly that once she had the luck to be a nude model and to see herself like she never saw herself in front of her friend/enemy, the mirror.

Nude photography as we see it on guapamania.com does not transform women into something more beautiful than what they already are. But with light, the angles and poses it shows the particular wonder of each of them. Without changing them, drawing them, color them or exaggerate them. With the same sense of simplicity that shows itself in the morning when waking up, with her personal gestures and movements. To leave her intact just as she is in the view of everybody.

What do you think?