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SMNTY Classics: A Snapshot of Women in Photography · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff I've Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio,
0:18
Speaker 2: and today we are bringing back an older Kristen and Caroline,
0:24
Speaker 2: past host founder of Stuff we Never Told You, classic
0:29
Speaker 2: around women and photography. Did you ever get really into photography, Samantha.
0:35
Speaker 1: I did a whole little project which I kind of
0:37
Speaker 1: want to talk about later, called the Purple Balloon Project,
0:40
Speaker 1: in which a lot of it was featuring artistic pictures
0:46
Speaker 1: and stories of women who survived domestic violence situations or
0:49
Speaker 1: assault situations. And yeah, I really thought I was doing something.
0:53
Speaker 1: Going back and look at it, I still think I
0:55
Speaker 1: did pretty good. I think I could have been a photographer.
0:58
Speaker 3: Maybe not, Yeah, yeah, I mean if this was a
1:05
Speaker 3: different podcast, I would wax poetic about how I won
1:09
Speaker 3: this free camera but it had all these limitations. But
1:12
Speaker 3: I found the ways around the limitations. But also for
1:19
Speaker 3: a while, for my job I did, I was a
1:22
Speaker 3: part of my job. I would never say.
1:24
Speaker 2: I I would never say I did anything amazing, but
1:28
Speaker 2: I got pretty good at it.
1:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I would love listeners, if you're into photography,
1:37
Speaker 2: if you have any tips, if you would like to
1:40
Speaker 2: share with listeners. I would love to hear from all
1:42
Speaker 2: of you. I do have a really good friend who
1:44
Speaker 2: is a photographer, and she does great work. And every
1:49
Speaker 2: time I see a picture she's taken. Wow, so good,
1:55
Speaker 2: so good. But yes, in the meantime, please enjoy this
1:59
Speaker 2: class episode. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from
2:07
Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot Com.
2:13
Speaker 5: Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
2:15
Speaker 4: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and.
2:18
Speaker 5: Let's offer a snapshot of Women and photography, a portrait
2:25
Speaker 5: of women's contributions to the field of photography.
2:28
Speaker 4: Caroline filtering the knowledge for you.
2:31
Speaker 5: This won't be an Instagram Wait, okay, I don't have
2:35
Speaker 5: a pun for Instagram. It's too bad. Yeah, we're going
2:39
Speaker 5: to talk about women in photography, which is a huge subject,
2:44
Speaker 5: but we're going to offer some historical highlights and also
2:48
Speaker 5: talk about gender and photography today. More behind the lens,
2:52
Speaker 5: not stuff so much in front of the camera in
2:54
Speaker 5: terms of what people are taking pictures of, but talking
2:58
Speaker 5: about the women behind the camera. So let's go back
3:02
Speaker 5: in history to eighteen thirty nine.
3:07
Speaker 6: Yeah, Frenchman Louis de Guerre perfects his dageriotype, the world's
3:11
Speaker 6: first form of photography, and women were involved from the
3:14
Speaker 6: get go. But let's talk a little bit more about
3:16
Speaker 6: the technology. So in eighteen eighty eight we have the
3:19
Speaker 6: introduction of the mass marketed Kodak box camera, and part
3:24
Speaker 6: of marketing this Kodak camera and this Kodak technology was
3:28
Speaker 6: the Kodak Girl. In eighteen ninety three, the Kodak Girl
3:31
Speaker 6: appears in the company's national advertising, a character embodying independence
3:37
Speaker 6: and travel.
3:38
Speaker 5: And the whole Kodak Girl thing was so significant for
3:42
Speaker 5: women in photography at the time, in the same way
3:45
Speaker 5: that we talked about in the podcast recently on Secretaries
3:49
Speaker 5: of how typewriters were initially marketed to women. It was
3:53
Speaker 5: this brand new technology, and Kodak was like, you know what,
3:58
Speaker 5: women would love, this new handheld, easier to use camera,
4:04
Speaker 5: and their advertising images showed women shooting pictures at home,
4:08
Speaker 5: out with friends, having a great time, just snapping their
4:12
Speaker 5: old timey photographs.
4:14
Speaker 6: You know, you mentioned the Secretary episode and the typewriter,
4:16
Speaker 6: and I actually was thinking the same thing as I
4:18
Speaker 6: was reading this stuff, but in regards to a new
4:22
Speaker 6: industry developing, so there was no precedence for it as
4:25
Speaker 6: far as what gender it was aligned with, because you know,
4:29
Speaker 6: obviously we talked about in the Secretary episode how it
4:31
Speaker 6: was new. The typewriter was new, and so women could
4:34
Speaker 6: just get into those jobs. It wasn't considered a male pursuit.
4:38
Speaker 4: It was kind of the same with photography.
4:39
Speaker 6: Yes, there was technology and you were outside, and these
4:43
Speaker 6: were two things that were not typically associated with women.
4:45
Speaker 6: But as the photography industry really got going, I mean
4:48
Speaker 6: there were a ton of women who got involved.
4:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, And in nineteen hundred, when Kodak released its first
4:54
Speaker 5: Brownie camera, which was lightweight and more inexpensive, this also
5:00
Speaker 5: revolutionized things for women. And I like how Kodak advertised
5:04
Speaker 5: it by saying there's a new pleasure in every phase
5:07
Speaker 5: of photography, whilst showing a woman having lots of pleasure
5:12
Speaker 5: holding a Brownie camera.
5:14
Speaker 6: Just carry it around, like when hipsters wear fake glasses.
5:18
Speaker 6: That's women just carrying brownies around.
5:20
Speaker 5: I'm gonna start carrying around a nineteen hundred brownie Yeah, yeah, sure,
5:26
Speaker 5: Who needs an iPhone and Instagram when you have a
5:28
Speaker 5: camera that won't work.
5:30
Speaker 4: My thoughts exactly?
5:32
Speaker 6: Yes, all right, So you know we're talking about women
5:35
Speaker 6: being outside and following different hobbies and things.
5:39
Speaker 4: In the mid to late.
5:40
Speaker 6: Nineteenth century, we get bicycles and bicycle clubs, and then
5:45
Speaker 6: photography clubs and photography bicycle clubs.
5:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love this. In the mid eighteen nineties, the
5:52
Speaker 5: whole combination of cameras plus bicycles, plus the emergence of
5:56
Speaker 5: the new woman who is more emancipated because she's riding
5:59
Speaker 5: a bicycle and she's taking pictures of things outside that
6:02
Speaker 5: she sees, is like this huge craze for a bit,
6:07
Speaker 5: and it seems a little dangerous because I could imagine
6:10
Speaker 5: that wielding a camera while riding a bicycle.
6:12
Speaker 4: Hopefully they stopped.
6:13
Speaker 5: Yeah, I assume that they stopped, but still. It was
6:16
Speaker 5: kind of a sign of the times, though, that women
6:18
Speaker 5: were wielding this new technology and getting around on their
6:22
Speaker 5: own on bicycles.
6:23
Speaker 6: And people who were debating it at the time were saying, like, well,
6:26
Speaker 6: it seems a little risque, but I guess it's an
6:31
Speaker 6: acceptable form of women getting their exercise.
6:33
Speaker 5: And photography in general exploded. I mean ever since you
6:38
Speaker 5: know dea guare perfected, the Daguerreo type studios were popping
6:42
Speaker 5: up everywhere.
6:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially out west.
6:45
Speaker 6: According to found SF San Francisco dot org, photography became
6:50
Speaker 6: an emancipator of women out on the western frontier, and
6:54
Speaker 6: a lot of times these women would go out there
6:56
Speaker 6: following husbands, brothers, fathers, and pick up the trade from
7:01
Speaker 6: the men in their lives and continue to work the studios.
7:04
Speaker 4: So it really wasn't weird.
7:06
Speaker 6: I mean, it was like, okay, well, it's weird that
7:08
Speaker 6: there's a woman out here on the frontier, but it
7:10
Speaker 6: wasn't necessarily weird that a woman would be working at
7:12
Speaker 6: a photo studio. So women were involved in photography, like
7:16
Speaker 6: we said, from the very beginning, and particularly out west
7:19
Speaker 6: during the gold Rush, they worked in all sorts of
7:22
Speaker 6: related activities, not just shooting the actual photos. They worked
7:26
Speaker 6: as studio photographers, traveling photographers, proprietors, gallery owners, retouchers, colorists,
7:32
Speaker 6: and photo mounters, and they also joined the swelling ranks
7:35
Speaker 6: of amateur art photographers. And these women who worked particularly
7:38
Speaker 6: as like colorists and retouchers, could actually make a lot
7:41
Speaker 6: more money than women could in other traditional female roles
7:44
Speaker 6: at the time.
7:45
Speaker 5: In the same way, again echoing that secretary podcast, in
7:49
Speaker 5: how early typists were earning a lot more money than
7:52
Speaker 5: they could say as garment workers, which was one of
7:54
Speaker 5: the most common ways for women to earn money outside
7:58
Speaker 5: of the home, but in the West, which was mostly
8:02
Speaker 5: dominated by men who were out there for the gold Rush.
8:05
Speaker 5: From eighteen fifty to nineteen hundred, there were seventy seven
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Speaker 5: working female photographers and two hundred and five women earning
8:12
Speaker 5: a living in related trades, along with fifty two women
8:16
Speaker 5: who were documented as amateur or fine art photographers, which
8:20
Speaker 5: sounds like a small group of women, but considering their
8:22
Speaker 5: proportions in relation to the you know, the gold rush
8:26
Speaker 5: population was very sizable.
8:30
Speaker 3: Yeah.
8:30
Speaker 6: And one woman who advertised her services out there was
8:34
Speaker 6: Julia Shannon, who in eighteen fifty put an ad in
8:38
Speaker 6: the San Francisco Alta newspaper notice, dagueriotypes taken.
8:43
Speaker 4: By a lady. Lady is capitalized.
8:45
Speaker 6: Those wishing to have a good likeness are informed that
8:48
Speaker 6: they can have them taken in a very superior manner,
8:51
Speaker 6: and by a real life lady too, in Clay Street,
8:54
Speaker 6: opposite the Saint Francis Hotel, at a very moderate charge.
8:57
Speaker 4: Give her a cul gents.
8:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I can imagine that Julias Shannon did quite
9:01
Speaker 5: well for herself because she probably emphasized the fact that
9:04
Speaker 5: your picture will be taken by a real live lady,
9:07
Speaker 5: because there were not many real live ladies around in
9:11
Speaker 5: gold rush California.
9:13
Speaker 6: Right, you've been panning for gold all day, Come in
9:15
Speaker 6: and see a lady.
9:16
Speaker 5: But why, Caroline, were women able to pursue photography in
9:22
Speaker 5: these early years. It wasn't just because of the Kodak
9:25
Speaker 5: girl's that's that whole fact of the technology being brand
9:30
Speaker 5: new and therefore not gender segregated yet.
9:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, and there was a lack of established schools basically
9:37
Speaker 6: that could deny them admittant. So it's like definition by negative.
9:40
Speaker 6: You know, there was nobody to say no. So they
9:44
Speaker 6: just got involved. And you know, like I said, a
9:47
Speaker 6: lot of them worked in family businesses and inherited the
9:50
Speaker 6: trade from a husband or a father.
9:53
Speaker 4: And it really.
9:53
Speaker 6: Became the case that photography studios were one of the
9:58
Speaker 6: first businesses that were okay for women to own and run.
10:01
Speaker 5: And in the West in particular, in this you know,
10:04
Speaker 5: this frontier environment. It's interesting that photography became acceptable and
10:09
Speaker 5: even desirable for women working in us AY San Francisco's
10:15
Speaker 5: photo industry because social critics at the time argued that
10:18
Speaker 5: adventurous women needed a suitable occupation, like being a studio
10:23
Speaker 5: photographer that offered higher wages so that they wouldn't end
10:27
Speaker 5: up in a life of vice. Keep women busy, or
10:31
Speaker 5: else they will end up selling their bodies.
10:34
Speaker 6: God, that always happens every time I'm bored. It's true,
10:37
Speaker 6: every time I'm bored. So by eighteen ninety there were
10:40
Speaker 6: one hundred and forty one documented women working in the
10:42
Speaker 6: photographic industry, and by nineteen hundred, women composed over twenty
10:47
Speaker 6: five percent of America's professional registered photographers.
10:51
Speaker 5: But just because women were wielding the camera and you know,
10:56
Speaker 5: exploring this new technology, did not mean that it was
10:58
Speaker 5: necessarily easy for women to sell their photos, particularly for
11:04
Speaker 5: the ad industry in the early twentieth century, because in
11:07
Speaker 5: terms of taking portraits, doing studio photography or amateur fine
11:12
Speaker 5: art photography, women were really finding their stride. But in
11:15
Speaker 5: advertising that was something that was already an entrenched, male
11:20
Speaker 5: dominated industry.
11:21
Speaker 6: Yeah, in the early twentieth century, agencies for selling photographs,
11:25
Speaker 6: according to Jermaine Craull, seem to.
11:27
Speaker 4: Have been reserved for men.
11:29
Speaker 6: However, the increase in advertising in Germany, in particular in
11:33
Speaker 6: the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties made it
11:36
Speaker 6: possible for women to make it in the field. The
11:39
Speaker 6: writer lists Ellen Auerback and Gret Stern, who were praised
11:42
Speaker 6: for their quote inborn womanly instinct for the delicate nuances
11:48
Speaker 6: of textiles.
11:49
Speaker 5: Which sounds like a whole lot of benevolent sexism, saying, Oh,
11:53
Speaker 5: you're so good at this because you are a woman.
11:57
Speaker 4: You're so good at knowing what cloth looks like. You're empathetic, but.
12:01
Speaker 5: By that same regard too. As women start making strides
12:05
Speaker 5: in more of the business side of photography, it still
12:09
Speaker 5: took a while for them to be taken seriously. From
12:11
Speaker 5: the nineteen forties on, there were gains in advertising, fashion,
12:15
Speaker 5: and publicity photography, and in a nineteen forty five summary
12:19
Speaker 5: of photography related opportunities for women, one commentator urge women
12:24
Speaker 5: to earn quote unquote pen money by supplying magazines with
12:28
Speaker 5: pictures of domestic subjects at between two dollars and five
12:31
Speaker 5: dollars of print, and speaking of the two dollars to
12:34
Speaker 5: five dollars per print again, same as with secretarial work.
12:39
Speaker 5: Around the same time. Even though those kinds of jobs
12:43
Speaker 5: were allowing women to earn more wages than they would
12:46
Speaker 5: in other industries, they were still being paid about half
12:49
Speaker 5: as much as men doing the same.
12:51
Speaker 6: Thing, right, And another commentator on this nineteen forty five
12:56
Speaker 6: summary of job opportunities for women photographers, it gets worse
13:00
Speaker 6: than saying, well, they can get a little extra money
13:03
Speaker 6: for their bobbles and things. Another guy dismissed women as
13:07
Speaker 6: a handy photo gadget for their photographer husbands. So they're
13:11
Speaker 6: just like an accessory.
13:13
Speaker 5: Yeah. That is One thing that photo historians will point
13:16
Speaker 5: out is that for even the more recognized male photographers
13:22
Speaker 5: of the era, they had often wives with them who
13:27
Speaker 5: were traveling and helping them develop their films, set up
13:31
Speaker 5: their shots, doing all of this very integral work. But
13:36
Speaker 5: during World War Two and that manpower drain as a
13:39
Speaker 5: lot of men left their jobs to go fight, female
13:42
Speaker 5: photographers got improved access to, especially women's magazines such as
13:48
Speaker 5: Better Homes and Gardens, House, Beautiful House and Garden, and McCall's.
13:53
Speaker 6: And after the war, commissions were typically given to women
13:56
Speaker 6: on other women and on minority groups topics that editors
13:59
Speaker 6: consider less important.
14:01
Speaker 5: And that question of are women relegated to shooting women's
14:06
Speaker 5: interest and domestic related subjects is something that we'll talk
14:10
Speaker 5: about today because it's a debate that is still going
14:13
Speaker 5: on for women in photography in twenty thirteen.
14:17
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, so do you want to talk about some
14:20
Speaker 6: early pioneers before we get into the gender discussion.
14:23
Speaker 5: Let's do it.
14:24
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
14:26
Speaker 6: Lady Clementina Howarden is one of Britain's first female photographers.
14:30
Speaker 6: This is coming from her profile on the Telegraph. She
14:33
Speaker 6: started shooting in eighteen fifty seven and in the eighteen
14:38
Speaker 6: sixties some of her images that she shot of her
14:40
Speaker 6: daughters were considered to be some of Britain's first fashion shoots.
14:45
Speaker 5: Yeah. She often shot her daughters Isabella Grace, Clementina and
14:48
Speaker 5: Florence Elizabeth in romantic and sensual poses. She had pretty
14:54
Speaker 5: iconic set dressings that were usually covered with gossamer curtains,
15:00
Speaker 5: a freestanding mirror, a small chest of drawers, and Empire
15:03
Speaker 5: star wallpaper. So she definitely developed a look. But even
15:08
Speaker 5: though the look might seem kind of commonplace, you know
15:11
Speaker 5: you're thinking, oh, curtains in a mirror, no big whoop.
15:14
Speaker 5: Her themes were highly progressive for the time and they included,
15:18
Speaker 5: as reported on in the Telegraph, identity otherness, the doppelganger
15:23
Speaker 5: and here we go female sexuality, which for a Victorian
15:28
Speaker 5: era female photographer, pretty progressive stuff. Yeah.
15:32
Speaker 6: In eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty four she won
15:35
Speaker 6: silver medals from the Photographic Society, and she had admirers,
15:38
Speaker 6: including Lewis Carroll and photography specialist Francesca Spickernell. In recent
15:45
Speaker 6: times has said that the photography recognition she received was
15:49
Speaker 6: a tremendous achievement. She said most photography was very masculine
15:53
Speaker 6: and mostly architectural, so these elegant feminine shots really stood
15:56
Speaker 6: out at that time.
16:07
Speaker 5: Now, a contemporary of Hawardans was Julia Margaret Cameron, and
16:14
Speaker 5: she's been highly praised, more so by contemporary critics than
16:19
Speaker 5: her critics at the time she received her first camera.
16:23
Speaker 5: I thought this was funny when she was forty eight
16:25
Speaker 5: years old in eighteen sixty three and her kids essentially
16:28
Speaker 5: like moved away and were like, here, mom, have a
16:30
Speaker 5: camera to keep yourself entertained. And they all know what
16:34
Speaker 5: happens to women who aren't occupied. Oh yeah, that's right,
16:37
Speaker 5: and this camera might have otherwise ended up on the street.
16:40
Speaker 5: But she was deeply religious, well read, and eccentric and
16:44
Speaker 5: had some pretty famous friends such as Charles Darwin, Alfred
16:48
Speaker 5: Lloyd Tennyson and Robert Browning, and Cameron immediately started taking
16:54
Speaker 5: all sorts of pictures, especially portraits and figure studies on
16:58
Speaker 5: literary and biblical themes, which was something that was unprecedented,
17:03
Speaker 5: and she quickly became one of the most highly admired
17:06
Speaker 5: Victorian photographers.
17:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, she was a very quick learner. Within a year
17:12
Speaker 6: and a half she'd sold eighty prints to the Victorian
17:14
Speaker 6: Albert Museum. But she also went about in an entrepreneurial fashion,
17:19
Speaker 6: rapidly copyrighting her work, exhibiting her work, and she even
17:23
Speaker 6: established her own two room studio.
17:25
Speaker 5: But she did get snubbed, as I said, from some
17:28
Speaker 5: of her critics of the time. In the Photographic Journal
17:33
Speaker 5: in eighteen sixty five, someone commented that missus Cameron exhibits
17:38
Speaker 5: a series of out of focused portraits of celebrities. We
17:42
Speaker 5: must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at
17:45
Speaker 5: the expense of all other photographic qualities. And not surprisingly
17:50
Speaker 5: such criticism infuriated Cameron. But she pretty much got the
17:54
Speaker 5: last laugh because, for instance, a lot of her information
17:56
Speaker 5: about hers coming from the website of the Metropolitan Museum
18:00
Speaker 5: of Art, so she certainly put her stamp on art
18:04
Speaker 5: history at large.
18:06
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
18:07
Speaker 6: Moving forward just a little bit, we have Francis Benjamin Johnston,
18:10
Speaker 6: who's one of America's first and foremost women photographers. She
18:15
Speaker 6: trained in Paris in art and in photography at the
18:19
Speaker 6: Art Students League in d C. And opened her own
18:21
Speaker 6: studio around eighteen ninety. And what really helped her out
18:25
Speaker 6: is Johnson's family's social status that gave her access to
18:29
Speaker 6: the First Family and leading Washington political figures. She actually
18:33
Speaker 6: that helped her launch her career as a photojournalist and
18:36
Speaker 6: a portrait photographer.
18:38
Speaker 5: Yeah. For instance, thanks to a letter of introduction from
18:41
Speaker 5: Teddy Roosevelt, no big deal, Johnston boarded Admiral Dewey's flagship
18:46
Speaker 5: and interviewed him en route to the Philippines, Which I mean,
18:50
Speaker 5: this is going on in the late eighteen hundreds, early
18:53
Speaker 5: nineteen hundreds, and Johnston was a pretty pioneering woman in
18:57
Speaker 5: general to be hanging out on a sh ship like that.
19:01
Speaker 5: And there's this great iconic picture that she took. It's
19:04
Speaker 5: a self portrait of her and she's sitting in a
19:08
Speaker 5: chair hunched forward and she has her skirt pulled up
19:13
Speaker 5: to reveal her petticoat, which is very risque at the time.
19:16
Speaker 5: I want to see she's smoking a cigarette two and
19:19
Speaker 5: she just it's a very masculine post. But you can
19:23
Speaker 5: just tell from it that she gave no hoots about
19:29
Speaker 5: what people thought of her.
19:30
Speaker 4: No hoots were given.
19:32
Speaker 6: And in nineteen hundred, Johnston was chosen as one of
19:35
Speaker 6: two American women delegates at the International Congress of Photography,
19:39
Speaker 6: where she spoke out on behalf of women photographers and
19:41
Speaker 6: displayed pictures from thirty female colleagues around the US.
19:45
Speaker 5: Yeah, and she was really promotional of women getting into photography.
19:51
Speaker 5: She wrote a series of articles, for instance in the
19:53
Speaker 5: Ladies Home Journal, and there was one eighteen ninety seven
19:57
Speaker 5: article she wrote called what a Woman Can Do with
19:59
Speaker 5: a Cam in which she talks about the qualities that
20:02
Speaker 5: you need to be a solid photographer, and she says,
20:05
Speaker 5: the woman who makes photography profitable must have as to
20:09
Speaker 5: personal qualities, good common sense, unlimited patients to carry her
20:12
Speaker 5: through endless failures, equally unlimited tact good taste, a quick eye,
20:18
Speaker 5: a talent for detail, and a genius for hard work.
20:21
Speaker 5: And I think that that advice is probably still the
20:25
Speaker 5: advice that would be given to women looking to pick
20:27
Speaker 5: up the camera today. But the thing is in Johnston's
20:32
Speaker 5: story points to one of the reasons why we wanted
20:35
Speaker 5: to highlight women in photography is that even though at
20:38
Speaker 5: the time she was this very important pioneer and had
20:43
Speaker 5: a pretty high public profile, the first significant monograph of
20:46
Speaker 5: her work didn't come around until nineteen seventy. She's one
20:51
Speaker 5: of many female photographers who were making great strides during
20:55
Speaker 5: the time, but who have been pretty much ignored in
21:00
Speaker 5: photo history up until recent decades.
21:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, one woman who made a lot of waves was
21:05
Speaker 6: Margaret Burke White, who's actually one of the most famous
21:08
Speaker 6: photojournalists of the twentieth century. And she has a saucy quote,
21:12
Speaker 6: if anybody gets in my way when I'm making a picture,
21:15
Speaker 6: I become a rational I'm never sure what I'm going
21:17
Speaker 6: to do, only that I want that picture. And so
21:21
Speaker 6: she was born in the Bronx in nineteen oh four
21:22
Speaker 6: and began work after college as a commercial photographer, but
21:26
Speaker 6: she made rapid, exponential strides later in life, and in
21:31
Speaker 6: nineteen twenty nine she became the first photographer for Fortune magazine,
21:35
Speaker 6: and in nineteen thirty six, a black and white photo
21:39
Speaker 6: of hers made the cover of the first issue of
21:41
Speaker 6: Life magazine.
21:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was an image of the construction of the
21:44
Speaker 5: Fort Peck Dam, which was a Public Works Administration project
21:48
Speaker 5: to build the largest earth dam in the world during
21:51
Speaker 5: the Great Depression. And in getting that gig, she was
21:55
Speaker 5: the only female Life magazine staffer, and she invented the
22:00
Speaker 5: photo essay for the magazine, and her work became very
22:05
Speaker 5: famous at the time. And she began as a commercial
22:08
Speaker 5: photographer documenting the achievements of corporation and then applied that
22:12
Speaker 5: dramatic style that she owned with industrial and architectural subjects
22:16
Speaker 5: to photo essays in places all around the world, including Germany.
22:20
Speaker 5: She actually took pictures from one of the concentration camps
22:24
Speaker 5: that was being liberated at the time, and those pictures,
22:27
Speaker 5: I mean just shocked audiences around the world. She also
22:32
Speaker 5: took pictures in the Soviet Union. She was I think
22:34
Speaker 5: the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union.
22:39
Speaker 5: She also documented the Midwest during the dust Bowl and
22:44
Speaker 5: took pictures of these harrowing pictures of families who were
22:47
Speaker 5: suffering at the time. And she was known for her
22:51
Speaker 5: fearlessness in doing all of this.
22:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, she was definitely no shrinking Violet. She was the
22:57
Speaker 6: first female war correspondent and the first to be allowed
23:00
Speaker 6: to work in combat zones during World War Two.
23:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I wish that there was some way. This
23:05
Speaker 5: is an audio podcast, and so trying to describe photography
23:09
Speaker 5: in a very meaningful way is a bit challenging. I
23:12
Speaker 5: wish there was some kind of visual maybe with Google glasses,
23:16
Speaker 5: maybe we could see a slide show right now of
23:18
Speaker 5: all of this photography. And there are so many more
23:21
Speaker 5: important female photographers that we aren't even able to touch
23:25
Speaker 5: on in depth. I mean, they're women like Dorothea Lang,
23:28
Speaker 5: Tina Badotti, image In Cunningham, Diane arbus Helen Levitt, Anny Leeboitz,
23:34
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. And those are only a few
23:36
Speaker 5: of the women that we ran across. But we only
23:38
Speaker 5: had time to offer, like we said, a snapshot of
23:42
Speaker 5: women's photography. But we really want to now dig into
23:46
Speaker 5: the issue of gender because we've established that women in
23:51
Speaker 5: photography history have remained underrepresented, even though you have you know,
23:56
Speaker 5: the Margaret Burke whites, but she and I would say,
23:59
Speaker 5: in today's term, someone like Annie Leebwitz, or even like
24:02
Speaker 5: Cindy Sherman. You know, we have these big names, but
24:05
Speaker 5: it's just a handful of them, and some wonder whether
24:10
Speaker 5: the industry still remains male dominated, because we've tried to
24:14
Speaker 5: kind of go back and correct the record and give
24:17
Speaker 5: women their due, but there's still more progress that needs
24:21
Speaker 5: to be made.
24:22
Speaker 6: And as long as women have been in photography, women
24:25
Speaker 6: have also been involved in trying to draw recognition to
24:30
Speaker 6: their female colleagues.
24:31
Speaker 4: In the industry. This starts really early.
24:34
Speaker 6: In eighteen eighty nine, Katherine Weadbarnes, a New York amateur photographer,
24:37
Speaker 6: petition for the Special Photography.
24:39
Speaker 4: Awards for women to be eliminated.
24:42
Speaker 6: She said, and I might you know that might seem counterintuitive,
24:44
Speaker 6: but she says that if the work of men and
24:46
Speaker 6: women is admitted to the same exhibition, it should be
24:49
Speaker 6: on equal terms.
24:51
Speaker 5: And that is a question that does come up with
24:54
Speaker 5: not just in photography, but you can name any other industry.
24:57
Speaker 5: It's this question of whether calling out women for doing
25:01
Speaker 5: work in a specific field kind of undercuts progress because
25:07
Speaker 5: are we saying that, oh, well, this is wonderful photography
25:12
Speaker 5: by women, or should we just say, as Catherine Weed
25:16
Speaker 5: Barnes would advocate for, oh what a wonderful photograph and
25:21
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. But the question is, then doesn't matter?
25:25
Speaker 5: I mean, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, in the
25:27
Speaker 5: wake of feminist political action, gender absolutely mattered. There was
25:32
Speaker 5: a newfound interest that sprang up in women's photography, both
25:36
Speaker 5: contemporary and historical, and some feminists sought to resituate the
25:41
Speaker 5: work of women photographers within that larger history of photography
25:46
Speaker 5: and rescue women photographers who had disappeared from the historical records.
25:51
Speaker 5: So you probably did for that reason see things like
25:54
Speaker 5: that nineteen seventy monograph of France's Benjamin Johnston's work, And
25:59
Speaker 5: so in that regard you can argue that, yes, having
26:02
Speaker 5: exhibitions that focus solely on work produced by women is
26:07
Speaker 5: important because of a legacy of sexism.
26:11
Speaker 6: Well yeah, I mean, it's not that you look at
26:13
Speaker 6: a photo and you say that was taken by a
26:15
Speaker 6: woman or that was taken by a man. I guess
26:16
Speaker 6: it doesn't matter if a great photo was taken by
26:18
Speaker 6: one or the other. However, we can't forget that there
26:21
Speaker 6: are very important women contributing to the field like that.
26:25
Speaker 6: I think that matters more than knowing that a photograph
26:27
Speaker 6: was taken by a woman or a man.
26:29
Speaker 5: Right, it's more of that educational aspect, and that's why,
26:32
Speaker 5: you know, there was a movement in the seventies to
26:35
Speaker 5: to highlight that kind of art. For instance, in nineteen
26:37
Speaker 5: seventy five, there was at the San Francisco Museum of
26:41
Speaker 5: Modern Art an exhibition called Women a Photography, a historical
26:45
Speaker 5: survey with fifty women photographers. In nineteen seventy nine, the
26:49
Speaker 5: International Center for Photography sponsored recollections ten Women of Photography,
26:54
Speaker 5: which was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
26:59
Speaker 6: And it was around the time too, in the seventies
27:01
Speaker 6: and moving into the eighties, that media savvy artists like
27:03
Speaker 6: Barbara Krueger and Cindy Sherman did a lot of work
27:06
Speaker 6: to undermine the authority of the male gaze and commercialism
27:10
Speaker 6: and all that stuff. For instance, Krueger's Your Body is
27:13
Speaker 6: a Battleground. She actually interpreted a lot of photography like
27:17
Speaker 6: advertisements to sort of undermine the way that media looked
27:20
Speaker 6: at women at the time.
27:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we don't have a lot of time to
27:23
Speaker 5: delve into feminist photography, but they definitely did spring up
27:28
Speaker 5: in the seventies, eighties, nineties and a lot of it
27:33
Speaker 5: was more political and examining like the women's female body
27:38
Speaker 5: and the whole thing of the male gaze and sort
27:41
Speaker 5: of playing with all of those concepts, sort of infusing
27:45
Speaker 5: feminism with photography. And speaking though of Cindy Sherman, I
27:50
Speaker 5: think it's pretty notable that in twenty eleven she sold
27:53
Speaker 5: the most expensive photograph in history. It was a nineteen
27:56
Speaker 5: eighty one self portrait called Untitled, and it's sold for
28:01
Speaker 5: almost three point nine million dollars.
28:04
Speaker 2: Geez.
28:04
Speaker 5: But in response to, oh, you know, someone's buying this
28:08
Speaker 5: female produced piece of art, what does this mean? And
28:11
Speaker 5: essentially art critics were like, it just means that art
28:14
Speaker 5: is funny money. You know, you just plunk down a
28:17
Speaker 5: lot of money. There's a weird kind of competition among
28:20
Speaker 5: art collectors, and it's really no big deal that it
28:23
Speaker 5: was produced by Cindy Sherman, as opposed to say, man
28:27
Speaker 5: ray yeah.
28:30
Speaker 6: Moving forward to today, a photographer Paul Melcher started a
28:35
Speaker 6: debate on the Black Star Rising blog when he was
28:38
Speaker 6: talking about the importance or the unimportance of calling out
28:42
Speaker 6: photographers genders and how that affected anybody. He says that
28:48
Speaker 6: it seems that political correctness has now started to reach
28:50
Speaker 6: the shores of the previously sexless island of photography. It
28:54
Speaker 6: appears that some people with a highly developed social conscience
28:57
Speaker 6: want you to know the gender of a photographer whose
28:59
Speaker 6: picture you would as if it made any difference.
29:02
Speaker 5: And then Melissa Golden, who's a photographer who we actually
29:05
Speaker 5: worked with at our college newspaper we did, made a
29:09
Speaker 5: public response to Melcher saying, you know, like, essentially the
29:15
Speaker 5: idea that the gender shouldn't matter is true. He's got
29:19
Speaker 5: a good point. But she talks about how when she
29:22
Speaker 5: was fighting her way into the often boys club of
29:26
Speaker 5: professional photography, especially if you look at more veteran figures,
29:30
Speaker 5: it is dominated by men, and she said, it took
29:32
Speaker 5: me too long to figure out the drinking massive amounts
29:35
Speaker 5: of alcohol and putting up with sexual harassment. We're not
29:38
Speaker 5: the tests I had to pass to join the club.
29:41
Speaker 5: And she said, I now know it took me so
29:42
Speaker 5: long because I didn't have a strong senior female photographer
29:45
Speaker 5: or editor willing to take me in and tell me
29:48
Speaker 5: there's another better way. And this kind of brings up
29:51
Speaker 5: the whole question of you know, like, is feminism still useful? Well, yeah,
29:56
Speaker 5: it is, because we don't live in a society that's
29:58
Speaker 5: free from sexism, and we're not living in this gender
30:01
Speaker 5: equal utopias. So unfortunately, gender does still matter. I mean,
30:07
Speaker 5: I wish that Melcher was right and that it is
30:09
Speaker 5: just a sexless island, as he says, no.
30:14
Speaker 6: But the debate, it seems like the debate on whether
30:16
Speaker 6: gender matters has been going on forever and it will
30:19
Speaker 6: continue to do so because you have people like Princeton
30:21
Speaker 6: Women's Studies and Art and Archaeology professor Carol Armstrong, who
30:25
Speaker 6: says that male and female photographers have always ventured into
30:28
Speaker 6: the same territory, but women do so with more empathy
30:31
Speaker 6: for the subject. Then you have British writers slash critics
30:35
Speaker 6: Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolf who asserted that there is
30:38
Speaker 6: no intrinsic feminine or masculine essence, only complex networks of
30:43
Speaker 6: culturally conditioned markers that construct what superficially appears to.
30:48
Speaker 4: Be coherent gender identity.
30:49
Speaker 5: So essentially, what they're saying in the book Photography, a
30:52
Speaker 5: Cultural History by Mary Warner Marian is that there are
30:56
Speaker 5: no gender differences in how men and women approach photography right,
31:02
Speaker 5: and that is echoed in a blog post on the
31:06
Speaker 5: News Photographers Association of Canada blog by Renee Blackstone. She
31:12
Speaker 5: interviewed a number of female photojournalists on the question of
31:16
Speaker 5: whether gender differences exist because you do that issue of oh, well,
31:20
Speaker 5: women have more empathy with their subjects. Women might be
31:23
Speaker 5: able to approach a situation, a more sensitive situation, better
31:29
Speaker 5: than a male photographer could. And some of the photojournalists said, yeah,
31:34
Speaker 5: women might be better in situations where quote unquote a
31:36
Speaker 5: kind of intimacy is required and a certain woman to
31:40
Speaker 5: woman trust can be developed. But a lot of them said,
31:43
Speaker 5: you know what, there's really no difference. Men and women
31:46
Speaker 5: are both doing social documentary work and in the same
31:50
Speaker 5: way that women can go into places that men can't.
31:53
Speaker 5: I would say that men can probably go into plenty
31:55
Speaker 5: of places that women can't. And I don't know, I
31:59
Speaker 5: have a little bit of hesitation just saying that, you know,
32:04
Speaker 5: what women bring to the table are more finely tuned emotions.
32:09
Speaker 5: I think that while, yes, your emotions will influence your
32:12
Speaker 5: art and your work, I don't know that that should
32:15
Speaker 5: be you know, the platform on which we call for
32:20
Speaker 5: equality or progress. Yeah, well, simply because I would think
32:25
Speaker 5: that veteran male photographers would give no hoots to quote
32:30
Speaker 5: myself about your emotion, especially in the workplace. Yeah, and
32:35
Speaker 5: I'm also I mean, like we're sitting here speaking as
32:38
Speaker 5: not experienced photographers or photojournalists. But you know, it does
32:43
Speaker 5: make me wonder whether that's really a useful argument. And
32:48
Speaker 5: I think that's one reason why if you do talk
32:50
Speaker 5: to a lot of women about this, that there, at
32:52
Speaker 5: the end of the day, there aren't really gender differences
32:55
Speaker 5: in how women and men take pictures what we see
32:57
Speaker 5: and don't see.
32:58
Speaker 6: I mean when I worked at the news paper, I
33:00
Speaker 6: mean half of our staff, half of our pheto staff
33:03
Speaker 6: was men, half was women, and.
33:04
Speaker 4: They were all brilliant.
33:07
Speaker 6: But they weren't Maybe it's because we were in a
33:09
Speaker 6: metropolitan newspaper and we weren't sending people to Iraq or
33:11
Speaker 6: anything to take dangerous pictures.
33:13
Speaker 4: But it's like, you know, they went to.
33:15
Speaker 6: Their various fair county fair assignments and you know, criminal
33:19
Speaker 6: trial assignments and took pictures and I mean, they were
33:22
Speaker 6: all brilliant. It wasn't a case of like we need
33:24
Speaker 6: to send Jackie to this one because she's a girl,
33:26
Speaker 6: and we need to send you know, Mike to this
33:28
Speaker 6: one because he's a boy.
33:29
Speaker 5: Jackie is going to the baby judging contest, Jack's going
33:33
Speaker 5: to the NASCAR race. Go but numbers wives though there
33:37
Speaker 5: are more men involved in photography. According to the National
33:43
Speaker 5: Endowment for the Arts Artists in the Workforce survey from
33:47
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety to two thousand and five, forty two point
33:50
Speaker 5: eight percent of all the people who listed themselves as
33:53
Speaker 5: professional photographers were women, so less than half, but this
33:57
Speaker 5: was also a compelling statistic. Sixty percent of those women
34:01
Speaker 5: were under thirty five, meaning that men comprise a majority
34:05
Speaker 5: of the veteran successful photographers. So photography is also one
34:11
Speaker 5: area where you know, women are wondering whether or not
34:13
Speaker 5: there is some kind of off ramp. Maybe it has
34:16
Speaker 5: to do with, like Melissa Golden talked about, not having
34:19
Speaker 5: you know, the senior editor to encourage her onward a
34:23
Speaker 5: female mentor there's a question of why in a lot
34:27
Speaker 5: of art schools, women might be out numbering men in
34:32
Speaker 5: the student body in terms of who's studying photography, but
34:35
Speaker 5: once they get out there seems to they seem to
34:38
Speaker 5: thin out.
34:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, what really thins out is pay for women,
34:43
Speaker 6: because according to this report, there's a major pay gap
34:46
Speaker 6: the median income for a male photographer is thirty five
34:49
Speaker 6: five hundred dollars, for a woman it's sixteen three hundred.
34:54
Speaker 5: And I think maybe as a result of those of
34:56
Speaker 5: a huge pay gap like that women photographers have, I've
35:00
Speaker 5: really been honing in on certain areas like wedding photography
35:05
Speaker 5: and the family portraiture, to which there was an article
35:10
Speaker 5: over at The Grindstone talking about the ghettoization of female
35:14
Speaker 5: photographers in weddings, saying, all, we can shoot our weddings,
35:18
Speaker 5: it's all people tosses their weddings.
35:19
Speaker 6: Well, I don't think that's true, but you can. I
35:21
Speaker 6: also know that you can make boku de bucks or
35:24
Speaker 6: ok he as a wedding photographer.
35:25
Speaker 5: Well that's what I'm saying, in order to close up
35:27
Speaker 5: that income gap, get into wedding photography. But but I
35:32
Speaker 5: am curious to hear from female photographers out there whether
35:35
Speaker 5: they are instantly assumed to be you know, if you're
35:39
Speaker 5: a woman walking around with a camera around your neck,
35:42
Speaker 5: you know, are you just assumed to be on your
35:44
Speaker 5: way to a wedding?
35:45
Speaker 6: Well, you know, you talked about whether there were female
35:48
Speaker 6: role models or mentors in the industry. Feon a Rogers,
35:52
Speaker 6: who started the Firecracker Photographic Grant in twenty eleven to
35:56
Speaker 6: support women photographers, says that well, there seems to me
35:59
Speaker 6: to be an abundance of way and studying photography. Would
36:01
Speaker 6: appear that a large percentage leave education and take on administrational,
36:06
Speaker 6: organizational or nurturing roles within the visual arts. And she
36:10
Speaker 6: goes on to say that Firecracker was established as a
36:12
Speaker 6: way of supporting women photographers and linking them with a
36:16
Speaker 6: wider public and industry audience.
36:17
Speaker 5: Which is good. I mean it sounds like within the
36:19
Speaker 5: industry there is a greater effort to link women up
36:22
Speaker 5: with other women to offer more support. Women are also
36:26
Speaker 5: making strides on their own. This is coming from the
36:29
Speaker 5: British Journal of Photography. It was an article talking about
36:33
Speaker 5: how women are really coming into their own with social portraiture,
36:38
Speaker 5: which was traditionally male dominated, and they've been scooping up awards. Recently,
36:44
Speaker 5: the Master's Photographers Association awarded its sole fellowship to photographer
36:49
Speaker 5: Joe de Banzi, and that's such a big deal when
36:53
Speaker 5: you consider that out of the sixty five fellowships ever
36:57
Speaker 5: awarded by MPa, only eight have gone to women. And similarly,
37:03
Speaker 5: Lisa Visser was awarded the British Professional Photographer of the
37:06
Speaker 5: Year or in two thousand and eight. So I mean they're,
37:09
Speaker 5: you know, obviously like women are doing very well at
37:14
Speaker 5: their jobs and climbing up through the ranks. But it
37:17
Speaker 5: seems like maybe it's just we're catching up from such
37:21
Speaker 5: a long legacy. And by we, I mean female photographers,
37:25
Speaker 5: not myself.
37:27
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, I'll take pictures of my iPhone.
37:29
Speaker 6: But there have been a lot of sources, not just
37:32
Speaker 6: this British Journal of Photography piece, but a lot of
37:35
Speaker 6: other areas on the Internet are talking about how digital photography,
37:40
Speaker 6: the ease of use, has made it possible for more
37:43
Speaker 6: women to get into photography, and that makes my eyes twitch.
37:47
Speaker 6: There was one comment on a blog I read where
37:49
Speaker 6: this man who was like, look, you know, I'm young
37:51
Speaker 6: and i don't have a lot of experience, but I'm
37:53
Speaker 6: just saying that maybe from the early days of photography,
37:56
Speaker 6: where cameras were highly technical and it was difficult, maybe
38:00
Speaker 6: women just weren't interested. And now that things are digital,
38:02
Speaker 6: women are interested because they just want to take pictures
38:05
Speaker 6: of their kids. And I mean I pushed my computer
38:06
Speaker 6: out the window after I read that, but that digital
38:09
Speaker 6: photography discussion is something that's going on, and I think,
38:15
Speaker 6: knowing some of the amazing female photographers that I do,
38:19
Speaker 6: I think that's crap.
38:21
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean again that it does bring up
38:23
Speaker 5: I mean, that's kind of not so benevolent sexism saying
38:27
Speaker 5: that since it's easier now, women want to do that.
38:30
Speaker 5: And I feel like we could do and listeners, if
38:32
Speaker 5: you have an idea of how we could do this,
38:34
Speaker 5: I think we could do a whole episode on Instagram
38:37
Speaker 5: because because it is so female dominated, women love it
38:43
Speaker 5: and it is becoming this huge social media force and
38:46
Speaker 5: I think it'd be interested interesting to look into that more.
38:50
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean I arguments like that make me
38:54
Speaker 5: cringe that oh now we're now we're interested just because
38:57
Speaker 5: it's simple men, you enjoy ease of use well and
39:00
Speaker 5: a good user experience. Okay, So anyway, I want to
39:06
Speaker 5: get riled up here, but I hope that we have
39:10
Speaker 5: photographers listening. And again, I know that there were so
39:14
Speaker 5: many notable women behind the camera that we did not
39:18
Speaker 5: have time to talk about. Hopefully I can do like
39:20
Speaker 5: a big blog round up maybe. Unfortunately, the challenging thing
39:24
Speaker 5: about setting up galleries for photography to show women's work
39:28
Speaker 5: is copyright issues, right, and we ain't going to violate them,
39:32
Speaker 5: but I'll do my best to try to find pictures
39:35
Speaker 5: that we can show of these women's incredible work. And
39:38
Speaker 5: we haven't even talked very much to about younger contemporary
39:42
Speaker 5: women who are climbing through the ranks as well.
39:44
Speaker 4: Right, So yeah, if you know any of that, please
39:46
Speaker 4: give us a shout.
39:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, and shout out to photographer Lizzie if she's listening
39:50
Speaker 5: to this podcast, your photos are amazing.
39:53
Speaker 4: And Melissa Golden, yeah, if you're listening, what up?
39:57
Speaker 5: And all the all the photographers out there, send us
40:00
Speaker 5: emails though. Moms Stuff at Discovery dot com will be
40:03
Speaker 5: curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and of course
40:05
Speaker 5: you can find us on Facebook if you'd like to
40:07
Speaker 5: send us a message that way, or tweet us at
40:10
Speaker 5: Mom's Stuff podcasts. And before we get to a couple
40:14
Speaker 5: of your letters, let's take a quick break, Caroline, and
40:17
Speaker 5: then we'll come back. And now back to our letters.
40:33
Speaker 6: I have one here from Madeline talking about cleanliness and
40:36
Speaker 6: same sex households. She says, I totally agree that men
40:40
Speaker 6: and women don't have innate differences in cleanliness just culturally
40:44
Speaker 6: impose differences. I am a bisexual woman and I've been
40:47
Speaker 6: in monogamous relationships with men and women. In my experience,
40:51
Speaker 6: there is just as much variation within men and women
40:53
Speaker 6: in terms of how clean people are. I have been
40:56
Speaker 6: with clean men, filthy men, clean women, filthy women, et cetera. However,
41:01
Speaker 6: in my relationships with the opposite sex, there has been
41:03
Speaker 6: that unspoken assumption that I will be cleaning up. This
41:07
Speaker 6: can easily be remedied by dividing chores and letting your
41:10
Speaker 6: boyfriend dude whatever do his chores in his own time.
41:13
Speaker 6: With my same sex relationships, chre delegation has been smoother
41:17
Speaker 6: since we have both been trained to constantly be.
41:19
Speaker 4: Thinking about how we look.
41:21
Speaker 6: Luckily, my fiance and wife to be is in the
41:23
Speaker 6: healthy middle ground of the slob OCD continuum.
41:27
Speaker 4: Congratulations, Madeline, and thank you well.
41:30
Speaker 5: I've got an email here from someone who would like
41:33
Speaker 5: to remain anonymous because she's writing in about her labia plasty.
41:38
Speaker 5: She writes, I had a labia plasty at the age
41:40
Speaker 5: of fifteen, and it dramatically changed my life for the better.
41:44
Speaker 5: I was born with an enlarged labia minora that hung
41:47
Speaker 5: out of my vagina, and it never bothered me until
41:49
Speaker 5: dreaded puberty hit. The skin got longer and larger and
41:53
Speaker 5: would rub on the inside of my underwear and become irritated.
41:56
Speaker 5: So I got to the point to where I could
41:58
Speaker 5: no longer do any vigorous exercise or pants that were
42:00
Speaker 5: tighter than sweatpants. Noticing a drastic change in my life,
42:04
Speaker 5: my mother asked what was going on, and I finally
42:06
Speaker 5: admitted my problem, and she took me to the gynecologist.
42:09
Speaker 5: I was booked for my Labiya plastis soon after and
42:12
Speaker 5: was deeply satisfied with the results. I understand that most
42:15
Speaker 5: women who go through the surgery do it simply for
42:17
Speaker 5: cosmetic reasons, but I thought you should know that some
42:20
Speaker 5: of us out there have done it out of necessity.
42:22
Speaker 5: We don't just talk about it because it can be
42:24
Speaker 5: quite embarrassing and require us a long backstory about our
42:27
Speaker 5: misfit vaginas. I certainly don't share this at parties or
42:31
Speaker 5: even with my closest friends. However, the anonymity of the
42:34
Speaker 5: Internet has inspired me to share my surgery story to
42:36
Speaker 5: let you know that I wasn't trying to please some man,
42:39
Speaker 5: I was only horrified by the prospect of wearing sweatpants
42:42
Speaker 5: and walking like an old lady for the rest of
42:44
Speaker 5: my life. So thanks for sharing, because I think that
42:47
Speaker 5: you know. It's stories like these that are important to
42:51
Speaker 5: help drive home the point that every vagina is a
42:54
Speaker 5: little bit different. And with that song, I think you Carol.
43:00
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