The Male Gaze

My first job out of college was as a photographer's assistant. I had an art history degree, and I thought it would be fun and creative, but actually it kind of sucked. A lot of carrying and waiting around. A lot of chasing down clients to get them to sign releases or pay past-due invoices.

It wasn't my boss's fault; it was just the nature of the business. Corinne was a former model who had slid into taking pictures almost by accident. Even through she was approaching middle age, she still possessed a willowy beauty that the camera loved. She was a good photographer too--careful and conscientious, with a good eye for composition.

"The subject wants to reveal itself," she would say. "My job is just to let it happen."

Mostly we did weddings and corporate events--big functions with a mixture of group portraits and candids. My job was to shadow Corinne and handle logistics so she could focus on getting the shots.

And that's how I met him.

We were working a museum fundraiser, lots of rich people in formal wear standing around sipping champagne. Corrinne had sent me back to the van to get a pair of floods. When I came back, I was breathing hard from the long hike up the hill, and she was chatting with one of the guests.

He was tall and lean, with salt-and-pepper hair and a beard. He was wearing a tuxedo, but his collar was open and he wasn't wearing a tie. He had his hands carelessly shoved in his trouser pockets.

Corinne saw me approaching and motioned me over.

"Let me introduce you," she said. "Mark, this is Alyx, my assistant."

I brushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes and stuck out my hand.

"Hey, nice to meet you."

He smiled at me. His eyes were the most brilliant shade of blue. His grip was calm and firm.

"The same," he said. Then he turned to Corrine. "Exquisite taste, as always, my dear."

I must have looked baffled, because Corinne explained.

"I used to model for Mark when I was younger," she said, laughed. "He thinks he has an eye for female beauty."

"Slander!" he barked. "I don't think! I know! And any time you want to pose for me again, my lens is always ready."

Corinne patted his arm.

"You're very sweet, but you know artists' models have a brief shelf-life. No one wants to see sags and wrinkles."

"Sags and wrinkles show a life lived! A beautiful woman is always a pleasure, regardless of her age."

"Flatterer!"

I left the two of them to bicker as I set up the lights.

When Corrinne came back over, she handled me a scrap of paper.

"Mark told me to give you this."

It was a napkin from the reception. When I turned it over there was a phone number scrawled on this back.

"What's this?" I said.

"He said if you were ever interested in modeling for him, you should you should give him a call."

I laughed. "Me, a model? Isn't that more your department?"

"He was totally serious, Alyx. He said you were 'exquisite'."

That made me laugh harder. I folded the napkin and stuffed it in the back pocket of my work jeans.

"Exquisite, huh? Well, that's a new one. Do you want the floods pointed toward the stage or are you going for more a general fill in the seating area?"

"The stage, please. Seriously, you should try it. Mark's a nice guy, very professional. If nothing else, it will be an adventure."

"Ha," I said, rolling my eyes. "An adventure."

I forgot about the note until the weekend when I was doing my laundry. I was standing in my bedroom in my underwear, sorting colors and checking pockets. It took me a second or two to realize what the wadded-up paper was.

"Oh right ... ha ... 'exquisite.'"

I looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror propped against the wall. No one had ever called me "exquisite" before. I had been a jock in high school, tall and gangly. And while I had filled out a little since then, I still barely had any curves. I wasn't even remotely cute--my legs were too long, my feet were too big, and my nose was too large. I tried to strike a sexy pose in the mirror, pelvis thrust out, one hard on my hip, a pout on my lips. I felt ridiculous.

And yet ....

I glanced at the crumpled napkin on the bedspread.

And yet ... what could I hurt? The worst that could happen is that I wasted an afternoon and got a funny story out of it.

I picked up the napkin and reached for my phone.

And that was how a week later I found myself standing outside a large, secluded house in the Hollywood Hills. Corinne had told me Mark had made enough as a fashion photographer to retire in style, and now he was free to explore wherever his creative impulses led him.

I was dressed in my normal street clothes. Tee-shirt, hoodie, jeans, sneakers. My straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and I was wearing a baseball cap. I had thought about dressing up, putting on a skirt or something, but then I thought no, this was how I'd been dressed if when we'd met at the fundraiser. If he wanted glamour, he had the wrong girl.

"Alyx! Hello! So glad you could come! Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

We walked to the back of the house. The whole rear of the property was a garden. Or a jungle more like, with tall waving fronds and blooming flowers. Dark curving paths led off into the undergrowth and climbed the cliff behind.

"Oh wow," I said. "This is amazing! I never would have thought this all was back here."

"There was a pool when I bought the place, but I had it ripped out and this put in. Much more restful I think."

We chatted for a while, sitting at a wrought-iron table under the foliage. He bought me hot tea with lemon, and little cookies covered in powdered sugar. He asked me about growing up in the Midwest, and I told him about going to college on a volleyball scholarship, and my father's hangover recipe.

After I while I said "Aren't you supposed to be taking pictures of me?"

"I already am ... in here." He tapped his head, and laughed. "I need to know who you really are before I pick up my camera. Otherwise, I might take pictures of who I imagine you are, and that would be a great crime. But I think I know a little about you now, so if you want we can try a few shots."

"Sure."

I took off my baseball cap and positioned myself in front of a large frond. I didn't know how I should stand or where I should put my hands. I was so self-conscious. Mark came back with his camera and clicked it a few times.

"You look uncomfortable," he said.

"I am uncomfortable. I don't think I'm doing this right."

"There is no right or wrong. If you're uncomfortable, then than that's what I'm taking a picture of. I'm taking a picture of an uncomfortable young woman."

"I don't want to be an uncomfortable young woman."

Mark lowered his camera.

"Then stop thinking about posing. Stop trying to be someone for the camera. Just let yourself be. I'll take care of the rest."

I tried doing what he told me. I stopped paying attention to the camera and tried focusing on the flowers behind me. I talked about silly random stuff. I walked back and forth on the patio. I played with the zipper on my hoodie. I made myself laugh remembering something funny I'd seen on the internet.

And gradually, it worked. The sound of the camera shutter receded. Gradually I forgot about the camera entirely. I was just having fun hanging out with Mark in his private jungle.

"Ok, whew, that's great," he said. "Let's take a break."

I came over and peered at the back of his camera as he paged through the shots.

"Any of them worth keeping?" I said

"Some are better than others, but all of them are worth keeping. You're a wonderful subject."

"Let me see."

He pulled the camera away. "Not until I've had a chance to crop and edit them. I'll send you digital proofs in a few days. But you had fun, right? Eventually at least?"

"I did! It wasn't what I expected."

"Are you interested in coming back?"

"I am. That is ... if you want me ...."

He looked at me with his piercing blue eyes.

"Absolutely," he said.

It took three days for the proofs to arrive. I opened them on my phone while I was on a job with Corinne. I wasn't expecting much. Probably a competent collection of professionally-lit snapshots. Maybe a nice portrait I could to use as a profile picture.

I wasn't expecting art.

I paged through the pictures with increasing astonishment.

I was ... beautiful.

Not classically pretty. I would never be that. But Mark had captured a side of myself never seen before. Everything that I felt on the day of the shoot was there--curiosity, self-consciousness, boredom, laughter--but transformed into something deeper and more subtle. I was like the platonic ideal of those emotions, and my lack of physical perfection only made the images more real and grounded.

Corinne was looking over my shoulder.

"He really is good, isn't he?"

"I feel like I'm looking at a stranger who just happens to look like me."

Corinne laughed.

"Mark would say the Alyx in the picture is the real you. You just haven't figured out how to inhabit her yet. Are you going to let him shoot you again?"

"I have an appointment this Friday."

"And you're okay with the nudity?"

I blinked.

"Nudity? Wait ... what?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?"

She put her hand on my arm.

"Oh honey. Since he retired from the fashion business, Mark has focused almost entirely on artistic nudes. I assumed he told you."

"Oh my God. No, he didn't tell me! So, when he was asking you to pose ...."

Corinne nodded, amused.

"I'm already in his portfolio somewhere. The younger me, that is. If you go to his website, you can probably find the images. As I recall, he made me look angelic. He really knows how to photograph women."

That evening I found Mark's website and paged through it. Corinne had been telling the truth. There were a few landscapes and still lifes, but mostly it was screen after screen of female nudes. They ranged from mildly titillating to shockingly explicit.

I even found Corinne--she was 20 years younger and had her hair cut tomboy-short, but it was unmistakably her. She was lying on her back in a beam of sunlight, with her arms outstretched and her eyes half-closed. It wasn't a sexy pose, but it was definitely erotic. Her small breasts lay flat against her narrow ribcage, her nipples startlingly erect. In one corner, right at the edge of the frame, her tangled mess of pubic hair was partially visible. Cropped more generously, the image would have been pornographic. As it was, it was merely intriguingly suggestive.

It was strange seeing my boss naked. I experienced a sudden frisson, a vicarious thrill that ran from the top of my head to the souls of my feet. I pictured the scene--him fully dressed, circling her, shutter clicking. Her completely naked, lying still, watching him work. In the photograph, Corinne was slightly smiling. I wondered what she had been thinking about. Was she amused? Excited? Aroused?

Mark hadn't asked to me to take off my clothes ... yet. But I had to assume that he would. What answer would I give? If he'd asked when we'd first met, I would have laughed in his face, but that was before I'd seen his work. Now I wasn't so sure.

I agonized over what to wear to the next shoot. Sloppy or sexy? Eventually I settled on neither. What had Corinne said? That the woman in the photographs was the real me--I just hadn't figured out how to inhabit her yet. So I dressed how I thought the real Alyx would dress. Elegant and sophisticated ... a little distant and aloof. If Mark wanted me to take my clothes off for him I would, but I wasn't going to make it easy for him.

I wore a trim little suit I'd found in a secondhand store on Melrose. It had been chic once, sixty years ago. Low heels. I left my legs bare. Just a touch of make-up--enough to make my eyes dramatic. I put my hair up in a messy bun. felt like I was playing dress up, which I suppose I was. Pretending to be someone worthy of being turned into art.

I parked my Mini Cooper on the street and climbed the steep steps to Mark's house, heart pounding with trepidation.

He met me at the door and it was largely a replay of our previous encounter--his effusive greeting, the perfunctory offer of a drink. We went out back to his garden like before, and that was where things began to diverge.

"There's a robe whenever you're ready," he said, with an offhand wave toward a green silk robe draped over the back of a wrought-iron garden chair.

A robe? Why a robe? And I was struck by his casual assumption that I was going to undress--as though my eventual nudity was a foregone conclusion.

"We need to give your skin time to recover," he said. "Otherwise, there will be underwear lines in the photographs."

It made sense. So I went over to the chair with the robe and kicked off my heels. The paving stones were damp and cool and under my bare feet. He had clearly washed the deck in preparation for my arrival.

Nervously I unbuttoned the jacket of my retro suit. I didn't meet his eyes, but I could tell he was looking at me. The more clothes I shed, the more awkward and self-conscious I felt. Would he still want to photograph me when he saw what I looked like naked? My knobby knees? My bony butt?

I flashed back to the pictures I'd seen on his website. All those nubile young women with their perfect tits and pert little bottoms. This was a mistake. I didn't belong here. I never should have come.

"Alyx, you're lovely," Mark said reassuringly. It was like he had been reading my mind.

He was openly staring at me now, appraising me, sizing me up. I felt a sudden urge to cover myself with my hands, to hide my bare tits and hairy crotch from his gaze. Which was silly of course because he was going to see everything eventually. So instead of covering myself with my hands, I snatched up the green robe and threw it over my shoulders, pulling the front tightly closed.

"Would you like some tea while we wait for the marks to fade?" Mark said.

Just like last time, he served me tea with lemon at the wrought iron table. But what a difference it made to be nearly naked! I was acutely conscious of my hard nipples poking through the thin silk. I played with the little wisps of hair at the nape of my neck and shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I was sitting with my ankles crossed and my thighs pressed together--very demur. But nevertheless, I could feel myself getting wet, which only added to my embarrassment. What would Mark think of me if he noticed? That I was a slut? Or some kind of pervert?

But he wasn't paying attention to me. He was over at the other side of the patio, checking his camera.

"What do you think?" He said casually. "Should we get started?"

"Where do you want me?"

"Over by the trees. The light is better and the green makes a nice contrast with your skin tone."

I stood up and shed the robe, draping it neatly over the back of the chair. Oh my god, I was naked. We were really doing this. Mark looked at me sideways. He was holding his camera ready, but he didn't lift it to take pictures yet. He was waiting until I was comfortable.

"Hair down or up?" I asked.

"Down I think."

I undid my bun and spread my hair loose over my shoulders. Then I walked over to the trees, keeping my chin high and my spine straight, trying to look statuesque, trying to project an air of insouciance I didn't feel. In reality, my heart was thundering in my chest. I was so nervous I was practically shaking.

"Is this okay?" I asked. "How do you want me?"

"Just like last time, don't try to pose. Just be yourself. Just concentrate on inhabiting your body."

He lifted his camera and took the first shot. The lens was like an enormous eye, staring straight at me. In my art history classes we'd discussed the concept of the male gaze--the tradition in Western art of presenting the naked female body as a locus of desire, erasing the personhood and agency of the model and turning her into a thing.

I experienced a weird bifurcation. On the one hand, I was still the person I'd always been. I was still Alyx. But on the other, I was an aesthetic object. It was like I was seeing myself through the lens of the camera, through Mark's eyes, through the male gaze. I wasn't a person. I was a composition in shadow and light. I was a female nude.

The really weird thing was--it was kind of hot. I had never thought of myself as sexy. Other girls were sexy, you know the type--girly girls. I was just a gawky tomboy. Even after I grew up and fucked a few guys it always unnerved me when men were attracted to me.

But now in front of Mark's camera lens I felt more than just attractive. I felt like I was dripping sex. Oozing it from every pore. Which I suppose I literally was--dripping I mean. Oh my God ... my pussy was so wet. I badly wanted to touch myself, but I suspected that would be crossing a line, violating the unwritten model's code. Instead, I arched my back and stuck my titties out, offering my hard little nipples to the camera. To Mark.

"How are you doing?" He asked

"Ok I guess. Is it normal to get turned on?"

"It varies from model. Some women do, some don't. Whatever you're feeling--just go with it. You look amazing."

I went with it. I stretched my arms up over my head and rose up on my toes, pivoting slowly so he could shoot me from every angle. Then I sat down on the ground and casually let my legs fall open. It was such an immodest position. I had been taught as a girl to never show my crotch, so doing it for Mark's camera made me feel like the biggest slut on the planet. Mark pointed his lens straight at my spread beaver and snapped away, capturing everything--my pouty lips, the dark wedge of my pubic hair.

There's a famous 19th century paining by Gustave Courbet titled L'Origine du monde -- the Origin of the World. It's a close-up of a woman lying on a bed with her legs open. Her face is hidden. All you can seen is her lower abdomen and her genitals. It's so raw and explicit that it still has the power to shock over 150 years after it was painted. I had seen it once in person during a trip to Paris with my boyfriend. It had been such a strange experience--standing fully dressed in a crowd of French tourists, staring at a painting of a cunt. The male gaze distilled.

That evening back at the hotel I deliberately mimicked the posture of Courbet's anonymous model when I opened my thighs for my boyfriend to eat me out. Clever boy, he caught the allusion instantly. "The origin of the world" he muttered under his breath as he lowered his head in supplication.

The memory of that night in Paris came flooding back when I spread my legs for Mark in his garden in L.A. My boyfriend's warm breath on my labia. The sudden thrill as he ran his tongue along my slit. His soft lapping sounds mingling with the male voices filtering in through the open window. As I cried out in pleasure I wondered if the men down on the street could hear me.

My boyfriend had had such a pretty dick. Very sleek. Very elegant. That night he fucked me so hard. He was desperate to get as deep as possible.

Did Mark have a nice dick I wondered? I tilted my head trying to catch a glimpse of his bulge, but I couldn't tell.

"Do you want to fuck me?" I asked.

"I want to fuck all my models," he said evasively.

"Did you fuck Corinne?"

"We slept together a few times, but that was ages ago. A lifetime."

"Show me your cock," I said.

He lowered his camera, unzipped his trousers, and took it out. It was as big and thick as I had hoped. Heavily veined, with a pronounced upward curve. And shockingly erect. I guess he really did want to fuck me.