Ella Rose Muse: the story: Notes on Vanity

Thursday, 14 April 2011

Notes on Vanity

On my website, I list a number of things I'm not interested in doing in terms of my modelling. It's the closest I have to 'terms and conditions', I suppose. For example, I won't knowingly wear real fur. I won't take part in anything I deem potentially offensive (religiously or politically). I won't pose in ways I feel are overtly sexual or gratuitously explicit. It's a pretty standard little list (I realise these things are quite subjective, but that's largely the point), except for one thing I include: 'vanity'.

Here is something you might not know about me: despite the fact that my images are often described as 'pretty', 'soft', 'romantic', 'lovely', etc, and despite the fact that I recently responded to a flattering comment on my facebook page with the words 'Don't forget I only show the pretty ones!', I am not scared of looking unpolished, 'imperfect' or unpretty. This is what I mean by saying that I don't want to do 'vanity'. I am interested in emotion and expression - and HONESTY, which means I'm not afraid to explore the areas of humanity which aren't so pleasing to the eye. (I'm rarely taken up on this, but that's OK too. :-) ) I'm also happy to be completely unphotoshopped in photos (and often am). I'm totally happy with my body, which is a completely different feeling from subscribing to the idea that it is 'perfect'; it isn't - my bones are such that I will always be pearshaped (apart from perhaps, as my Mum used to promise me, when I get pregnant and my breasts grow to balance things out...). Which brings me to...

Awareness. Awareness is the thing. I'm aware of my strengths and my weaknesses. I'm aware of angles which make me look hot and angles which make me look definitely not. I have a massive amount of body awareness. I can isolate muscles most people don't know they have. One of the things recommended to new models who want to 'learn to pose' is to practise in front of a mirror. I confess I've actually never ever done this, but I usually have a good idea of exactly what a pose is going to look like. I think this is to do with my dance background more than anything, and then also from noticing what works and what doesn't when I've looked at the images after a shoot. It's always fun to see the images on the back of the camera during a shoot anyway, as you can see how the lighting is working for what you're doing, what kind of crops/compositions are happening and what's going on in the background! But what I mean is this: I generally have a good idea of how to work with my strengths. I'm aware that I'm not perfect, but I'm also aware that I can look good, and that I'm lucky to have a healthy body which functions well and does what I ask of it, so I think it would be a bit hideous of me to complain or worry. I think this realisation, along with my modelling, has made me completely comfortable and happy in my own skin, so much so that vanity isn't even an issue.

I'm also much more aware of what my face looks like than I used to be... This is going to sound bizarre, but for the first 12-18 months of my modelling (I've been doing it for just over 2 years now), I kinda thought that a lot of the nice shots were slight flukes; that I didn't look like that in real life and that I was essentially getting lucky or even 'getting away' with things a bit. I thought I must be - it made me giggle. I was just 'me' and I was getting people piling on huge compliments.... 'Beautiful', 'stunning', 'gorgeous'.... all that stuff. By contrast, I can accept now that the camera doesn't lie and most likely never did - a nice shot of my face is a nice shot of my face, whether due to flattering lighting or what, and without magic or trickery (except the sort that shows your face the wrong way round by way of left-to-right hocus pocus!), therefore, I might have an alright face.

In some ways, I am probably less vain now than before I started modelling. I wasn't massively vain then either, but I worried more about what people thought of my appearance, which in my opinion is closer to the true definition of vanity. Today I got on a train with zero make up on (as I only had time to do it on the train, in order to not miss it!). My younger self would have found this perversely exciting, a sort of thrill but mostly terrifying, since people would see my ACTUAL FACE. I now realise that a. I really don't look different without make up on, it's just that my features aren't 'enhanced', and b. even if I did look rough, gross, half-dead, etc (although see 'a'), absolutely no one would care or even notice. It's silly to think that they would. I'm just another stranger in the street, not out to impress anyone, and that's fun.

I have always thought that most people are beautiful if you look at them properly. What's beautiful to me is character and a person's story, and if you can see that in the way they hold themselves, in little details about their manner and in the movements they make with their unique features and structures - if they have grace, kindness, un-self-conscious openness, an endearing awkwardness, stress, fear, vulnerability, humour; slight hints of emotion, history, the things which make up a life and leave traces on their physicality, then a person holds massive interest for me.

It's possible to pose so much, for example for 8 full days in a row, that when you get home you find yourself noticing the way your cat is sprawled out on the grass outside and think, 'Oh, good pose; nice shape; good leg angle.' At these times, you wonder if you're more than a little mad, but that's OK. I know at least two people who pose in their sleep. (Incidentally, I always appreciate people who, like me, sit weirdly without noticing, just because it's comfortable, with legs stretched or curled in unexpected possibilities. I get particularly creative in the cinema.)

Possibly, an ultimate compliment in the art world is calling someone a 'goddess'. I see this a lot - I've had people using the word when commenting on some of my images, and I've used it myself in relation to other images of models I think conjure up something mythological and timeless, womanly and powerful. It's a great word. However, I sometimes find it a little awkward; it seems so extreme and worshipful, like there is a pedestal for the model put up by mere mortal onlookers. It's meant as a positive thing, of course, and it's hugely flattering, but it's also a little uncomfortable. I don't know if anyone will agree with me or know what I mean, especially as, like I say, I have been known to use the word myself.

Hhhm. I was thinking yesterday, when I felt guilty after being booked through an agency for a 2-hour shoot but was sent home after 10 mins (as the art director was happy they'd got the shot they wanted), maybe I need to learn to be more of a diva...

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Thursday, 14 April 2011

Notes on Vanity