our future first lady

As a photographer and as someone who has modeled a little (and taken a lot of self-portraits), AND as someone who has lost work and friends (in the arts!) because of the nature of some of my photography, I take it personally when people get “nude-shamed”. (Yes, I just made up that term.)

I haven't gone to any effort to view Melania Trump’s nude photos. This topic surfaced a while back, but apparently it’s having a post-election revival. I’ve seen two posts about it on facebook tonight. What I did see of her photos from past posts (and perhaps places like The Daily Show? – I don’t know, wherever), appeared to be a type of nude &/or implied nude photos that I'm not especially interested in: the stereotypically “sexy” young woman - “hot chick” - don’t you wish you could bang her - light porn sort of thing. There’s way too much of that in the world these days, and mostly, I’m not that interested.

Anyway...

If you think the act of posing nude is bad or shameful or necessarily naughty, something that no one ought to do, or at least no one respectable, here's what I say:
You desperately need to get over your Puritanical nonsense about the human body, and probably about sex. I hope you don't have children, because I can only assume you are passing on your damaging attitudes about perfectly normal, healthy, natural, human functions, and about the fact that we human beings have physical bodies. We do! We have bodies. Wonderful, horrible, fascinating, boring bodies. There's nothing wrong with having a body, nor with letting other people see it, if that’s what you want to do with it.

As a matter of fact, we as a “people” would probably be much better off if we became accustomed to seeing normal, non-hyper-sexualized human bodies. We’d end up much healthier. 

Gah!

The Church of Trump

During and after last night’s election debate (which I hesitate to call “presidential”), I’ve seen a lot of fact-checking, particularly of things that Trump said. 

I worry that fact-checking someone like Donald Trump will have little or no effect. Trump himself will just tell another lie and keep telling it until that lie becomes inconvenient. And his supporters seem to exhibit a sort of religious attitude toward him and whatever they think he said or did or didn’t do. 

Actual, verifiable facts don’t really matter when your attitude is “Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.” The Trump-isms that complement the believers’ attitudes and hopes for ‘Murica, they quote and fetishize, while either ignoring or being ignorant of the inconsistencies and the morally problematic history. And anyone who is not one of the faithful is a tool of evil, trying to replace the Messiah-Trump with Lady-Satan (or, as she’s known in her human form, Hillary Clinton). 

For me, just like with religions, perhaps the saddest part is that not all Trump supporters are ignorant hillbilly-types whose critical thinking skills only extend as far as what to order from the value menu and who to vote for on American Idol. There are reasonably well-educated people who will twist and turn and do all manner of mental gymnastics to defend the idea that Trump can actually do any of the things he talks about doing as president, and making America great again. I think we should start calling these people “Trump apologists”. Just like with religious apologists, I am confused when otherwise intelligent people put so much effort into trying to craft an intellectual defense of something that is inherently anti-intellectual.