(R7) Food Matters

Q: What Do Models Eat?

A: They don’t :-)



I often get asked this question, not by models of course, but by the general public who see my images and say “Wow, how do you stay so thin and look so good at your age, and after three kids too? What’s your secret?” Well, let’s leave aside the fact that this makes me feel like a geriatric (having children and being over forty does NOT mean you’re about to die of old age) and instead let’s look at the subject of food.

Now this discussion shouldn’t be about size, or weight, which are IMO both irrelevant. It should be about health and nourishment. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. O.K. So here we go again:

With all the modern rumpus about size zero models and the media’s obsession with skinny A-list stars like Victoria Beckham, there is an unnatural preoccupation nowadays with exactly what models shove in their gob. You can’t open a newspaper or magazine without reading about the latest top 10 diet tips, lose 20 lbs in two weeks, look like an A-lister, be a size zero for ultimate happiness, lose fifty pounds on the lemonade diet, lose a hundred pounds on the cardboard diet, get thin with the sex diet (this one actually works incidentally, if you do it enough), you name it and it’s been shoved in women’s faces on a daily basis for the last fifteen years or so. The situation is getting worse. Bulimia and anorexia are on the increase. Women in the UK have even taken to having stomach stapling operations, in a desperate effort to look skinny like their fave celeb. Aargh!!!

I could write extensively about this for magazines. I’ve come across practically every diet and nutrition programme on the planet over the years, so it’s a fair bet I could make a very (financially) healthy living writing articles about how to lose weight, telling women how to get thin by feeding their Western weight obsessions. It’s trivial to write about this sort of thing. Any of you could do it. All you need is imagination. It’s easy to make loadsa money from other people’s insecurities and miseries. (I used to be a lawyer. Trust me on this – I know.)

So why don’t I? Well, I don’t have many principles, but I WILL NOT knowingly contribute to someone else’s eating disorder. I’m happy to talk about photography until the cows come home, I will gladly encourage you to model (regardless of your body size or shape) but teaching people how to look like a skinny supermodel? Pah, count me out!

On the other hand, if you want to know how to extend your life by eating the right foods, if you are interested in mood food, preventing cancer or heart disease, feeling better about yourself, being the best woman (and model) you can ever be, regardless of how much you weigh, then I’m happy to discuss. I am passionate and evangelistic about your health. I am a life-extending zealot. By all means talk to me about how you can use food to extend your lifespan (yes, even by eating chocolate cake), but trust me, you won’t improve it one bit by trying to look like a supermodel. Wanting to be like anyone else does not equal happiness. In fact, it will make you miserable. As I have often said before, the only way you are EVER going to be happy is to accept yourself for who you are, and love your body as well as your personality.

Now if you’re still patiently reading this, let’s go back to the original practical question. What do models eat? Well whereas many models do actually eat proper food because they believe in nourishing their bodies, in my experience there are far too many professional models who either yo-yo diet, where their weight fluctuates wildly over time, or often they don’t eat at all. They should but they don’t. Many will nibble at a little gak (garbage and crap) now and again, but many of the ones I have known simply adopt the nil-by-mouth philosophy if a shoot is coming up, and then binge at McDonalds afterwards. (No I’m not exaggerating – this is based on specific examples.) Unfortunately this practice of starve, shoot ‘n’ binge just feeds the problem (pun intended!)

So maybe women should be asking different questions: How do we improve our physical and mental health? How do we cease our female obsession with size? How do we stop hating and being afraid of food? (Especially those of us who are models, because we act as examples for others to follow.) How do we stop this madness of emotional dependency on what we shove in our mouths?

As for what I eat? Well, let me say that I am passionate about my food. I love to cook my body the proper fuel that it needs to sustain it. Mainly I follow Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." And I make a point to teach my kids that too. I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to let my daughter grow up with an eating disorder because she’s obsessed with looking like Kate Moss.

She’s worth more than that.

And so are you.



All images are of Lilmummy.

I resolve....

Rich’s new year resolution is to lose weight. Again.
As with most people, this is likely to fall by the wayside within the first few weeks of January, especially since our middle son has resolved for the New Year to improve his cake-baking ability (wannabe trainee chef.) I predict that Rich is doomed to failure within a very short time-span.

Making promises to yourself to change is a good thing of course. It’s great to want to improve yourself, to be a better person. But more often than not, these resolutions fail.

Why?

Because we make unrealistic expectations of ourselves. We aspire to dreams that are well beyond our capabilities. We are perfectionists. We dare to dream, but when reality bites, we blame ourselves.

Big-scale change involves deprivation, suffering, adapting to a new regime. And most importantly it involves changing your daily habits. It’s the habit-changing that is the most difficult thing. Humans are animals of routine. On the whole, we dislike change. It’s scary and unpleasant. Unless you have a will of steel, or there’s a gun to your head, then changing your daily habits is going to be extremely difficult and very unlikely to succeed.

And yet…we continue to make resolutions. We are eternal optimists. We believe we can do it. High hopes are hard to give up, which is why we repeat the same old resolutions year after year. We set ourselves up for failure, for the guilt trip. And for what?

You’ll note that older folks don’t bother to make New Year Resolutions any more. With age comes wisdom, and older people have either achieved ultimate perfection already, or they have realised that beating themselves up for constantly falling short of their expectations, simply doesn’t work and isn’t worth the energy.

My suggestion? Don't make any new year's resolutions at all. If you want to change, just do it. Doesn’t matter what day of the year it is. Just stop smoking, don’t drink so much, stop pigging out on the wrong food and lose that weight. But follow your dream in a way that works for you. Be real. Realise your limitations, and take it slowly. Set yourself short term goals, change your habits gradually. Get support from your friends and family.

And if life gets in the way, and you screw up and you can’t keep to your resolutions at all, then do not under any circumstances beat yourself up about it. Forgive yourself. You are not a failure. It just means that your original resolutions were a little over-optimistic. Or maybe the time just wasn’t right to follow that particular dream now. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try that dream again some day. It just means that you should keep your feet firmly on the ground whilst doing it.



Lilmummy, taken last year. I resolve for Rich to shoot more nudes than last year...it IS O.K. to make resolutions on behalf of your partner, right?

The skies are falling! The skies are falling!

There’s a reason I don’t blog about work, money and economics. Generally after I’ve been talking about money, people decide they want to jump off the nearest bridge. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.


A big black thunderstorm is looming over the world’s economy.

Last week the IMF cut its predictions for world growth, and slashed its US forecast to a six year low. It warned of “a major risk to the global outlook.”

Things are getting worse in many differing types of markets. September housing starts in the US have slumped to a fourteen year low. Oil prices are off the scale. Corn prices are rising, as are those cheap Chinese imports which are no longer so cheap as Chinese workers cotton on to the fact that they should be paid a decent income. There are reports of several industrial market sectors already being in recession. Strong rumours are circulating that both US and UK banks are trying to hide their debts. Balance sheets are looking very poorly, profits are shrinking, and earnings are heading south. No it’s not just me being melodramatic - anyone who follows modern economic or business bulletins will receive new global-doom reports on a daily basis.

Everyone knows that US and Western consumption has powered the world for the past decade, but now the party’s over. The majority of US and UK consumers have run up huge debts, mainly by borrowing against increasing property prices. It’s been a classic case of “Buy now, worry later”. But now the burst of the US property bubble (and the new UK credit crunch) means that bank lending has tightened, and folks have simply run out of money. After all, they can’t keep spending forever. As Paul Krugman said, “unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.”

Both the US and Britain are in a mess. Sure, the UK is a year or two behind the US, as our property boom is currently at its peak, but the recent credit crunch has turned the tide. UK property prices (currently 40% overvalued) fell last month for the first time in years. Businesses are strapped for cash, and can’t borrow from the banks. UK banks are now no longer lending recklessly to companies or individuals - and so people just can’t borrow any more. Rising interest rates, plus huge taxes and runaway inflation over here (the unofficial "real" inflation, rather than the government figures, which mean diddly-squat because they are manipulated) mean that people simply can’t afford to manage their debt, and they can’t afford to pay their monthly bills.

The UK is on a precipice - it’s only a matter of time.

As for the US, many economists say it’s already too late, and a recession is inevitable.

There’s a storm brewin’ folks. Next year, most likely.

Time to batten down the hatches.

Anyone wanna jump of that bridge yet?
I really should stick to talking about art ‘n’ nekkid chix huh?



Lilmummy, after talking to me about the economy.

Rainy Day Blues

Harry Potter was great. SERIOUSLY GOOD ENDING! I read it within 24 hours, and it was nice to immerse myself in witchy stuff for a bit. Being a reasonably able witch, it’s nice to mix with one’s own kind a little. Weird needs weird, every so often, just to keep sane.

So what else is happening? Well, for one thing, England is drowning.
Literally.
For those that don’t watch the news, the UK has had the worst rain for a generation. Nearly everywhere is flooded and the UK infrastructure has ground to a halt.

We’re O.K. here in our little Eastern pocket of the country. This area is already a giant swamp, and heavily irrigated with dams and dykes, which means that areas are much less prone to flooding. But the fact that the rest of the country is drowning is affecting everything, including our day-job. Kinda difficult to pimp your software when there’s no-one left to sell it to. But mustn’t grumble. At least my house is intact, even if it IS full of rowdy kids who are shut in on their summer hols, cooped up and bored senseless. So who came up with the bright idea of inviting other people’s bored kids around, in the hopes it might cheer them up ? (Sometimes I’m not the brightest Smartie in the packet). Guess the house won’t be intact for very long.

No models either. It’s very difficult for models to get here at the best of times, let alone in this weather, so no photography (I’m still broken, so unable to model), which makes the man very blue. We have a shoot planned next week and I’m keeping everything crossed that she can get here somehow, and that this won’t get cancelled as well.

In addition, the media’s coverage of the floods is really annoying me. Instead of relying on professional photographers to get decent footage of the floods, every single newspaper and t.v. station is inviting readers to “send in your photos” from digital cameras, mobile phones and so forth. Of course, once you upload them to the t.v. station, you lose all your copyright to the pictures, but who cares? The t.v. station certainly doesn’t . It has free piccies and it can do what it likes with them. No need to pay for decent photographs when you can get grotty ones for free from the public eh? How do the media expect professional photographers to eat? This is the death of photo-journalism in the UK, and it really sucks.

Eventually this obsession with “free” will drive everyone out of business. Why pay for something when you can have it for free? Sod the quality and the fact that the photographs are really bad. Doesn’t matter, because hey! It cost nothing! Thus being excellent value for money!

Sorry for the moan chaps, but it’s difficult to stay positive when it’s raining constantly…and I mean torrential rain, ALL of the time, for months on end. No sunlight, no vitamin D, no sparkle. Just water, water everywhere. Must dig out my thermal socks (sexy, Lin, that’s real sexy!) and hunker down under a blanket until this British summer is over…

Good job I don't live on the western coast of North America eh? I'm definitely a sun worshipper :-) Better move to Florida instead!



Lilmummy, looking yummy

Let the boobies fly wild 'n' free!

The UK bra industry is worth £500m UK pounds per year. The “over-shoulder-boulder-holder” is a necessary evil in many women’s lives…but who do we have to blame for this often uncomfortable, but ever-so-sexy piece of clothing?

The first modern bra was invented by a New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob way back in 1913, in order to find a way to squeeze into her evening gown. Since then the bra has gone from strength to strength, literally as well as figuratively. Despite the brief bra-burning episode in 1968, the bra has endured. Millions of women in the Western world have used it ever since, to contort themselves into ever more youthful and gravity-defying shapes.

Let’s face it girls - breasts are heavy, cumbersome things. When you run to the shops, providing you’re not completely flat-chested, if you go without a bra then the little buggers bounce and swing all over the place, resulting in male admirers with eyes out on stalks and tongues hanging out. Not a pretty thought.

And all this fuss over a pair of udders. Yep, that’s right, udders. Why-oh-why are men obsessed with udders? There’s a whole industry grown out of photographing these mighty mammaries. They are worshipped, adored, obsessed about, lusted after, and generally drooled over.

This sexualisation appears to occur only in humans. When did you last see a bull eyeing up a pretty young cow in the field, and saying to his mate, “Ay Caramba Hank, that’s a mighty pert set of udders that pretty young heifer’s got, don’t-cha think ?”
And yet humans, supposedly way more civilised than our bovine friends, find this type of behaviour perfectly acceptable. The sex industry thrives on the mammary obsession, you photographers make (hopefully) a decent amount of money at it. So why the attraction?

Personally I think it all stems back to the Goddess/Mother earth mythology. The Goddess has been worshipped throughout human history for her fertility and her power. Without sounding too “Da Vinci Code” about it, throughout most religions from Mayan mythology through to modern Christianity, the Goddess has been venerated as the founder of mankind. The milk of her breasts is seen as the source of all life in the world. Every woman is derived from the Goddess, so the wisdom goes. So why corrupt the Goddess by covering up her very symbols of life-force? When was the last time you saw an Egyptian statue of a priestess in a bra?

In modern society, breasts must be kept hidden. Baring your breasts is a big taboo of course, and going without a bra (with clothes on) is equally frowned upon - I have to put a bra on when I pick the kids up from school, otherwise you should just see the looks I get!
Sagging and jiggling breasts (such as mine) are seen as unattractive in the Western world, whereas in the Kalahari Bushmen, for example, they are seen as proud representations of motherhood – nudity is nothing to be ashamed of there, nor are age or the effects of gravity. And it’s religious repression and fear of aging which are the key to this difference. In Western Society breasts must be young, firm and youthful, in order to be considered fertile and attractive by men and women. Hence the invention of the bra, which holds them up, clamps them in, and makes them appear much younger and firmer than their true age and shape.

Western society also generally forgets that breasts are primarily designed for one thing – food. I have been asked many times to be a breastfeeding counsellor. I’ve been doing it for 12 years, and I’m pretty darn good at it. But I’d be a terrible counsellor, because I’d have no patience with young new mothers, who think that feeding their baby for three weeks is acceptable, instead of the four years that human young are biologically designed for. I’d tell these women to burn their bras because even nursing bras cut off the milk supply and cause mastitis. I’d tell them that bras are unnatural, horrible things, that they have even been linked to breast cancer because of the lymph node restriction.

But these women wouldn't care what I think. They would still wear bras, because they are seen as conventional to society, because breasts are seen as sexual objects, rather than the vessels for food for the young, because this Western Society is repressed and doesn’t appreciate each individual woman for her natural naked physical beauty, no matter what the size and shape of her breasts are.

If all women burnt their bras, breastfeeding wouldn’t be seen as embarressing and something to be done out of the public eye. All sizes and shapes of breasts would be seen as normal and beautiful. Women wouldn’t hide them away under some uncomfortable torturous device of wire and itchy fabric. They would love themselves for their real bodies, rather than covering them up.

Nudity would be one step closer to being perceived as normal, rather than something repressed and hidden, and nude photographic art would be seen as beautiful mainstream work, openly celebrating the power and eroticism of the Woman, rather than primarily titillating (pun intended) "eye-candy" to be giggled at and labelled “porn”.

So I urge all women reading this to throw away your bras! Protect your health and the health of your future babies. Don’t be afraid to display your breasts for the camera. Let others admire your beauty, and trust the photographer to reflect this in his work (without drooling). He's not intersted in your breasts (well, not much anyway). He's driven by a passion to create art of the most powerful life-force in the universe. The female.

Be proud of your body and your breasts, no matter if they are young, pert and gorgeous, or if they have been chewed by three kids and are hanging round your ankles. Your boobs are talismans to your past experience – they show your life.

They show YOU, the Goddess, in all your glory.

Beautiful, naked, powerful and free.




The young Goddess, Lilmummy.

The Monster and the Flea

This week is software release week.
Our day-job software product is a direct competitor to a particular Microsoft product, but we are small fry in comparison to the mighty Gates Godzilla. So small, in fact, that we are merely a flea on the back of a rat on the back of the monster which is called Microsoft. But it’s a start.

There is a great deal riding on this software version, not least the ability to eat and pay the mortgage. It has been a tremendously stressful few years. My dearest partner has sweated 70+ hour weeks for over two-and-a-half-years to turn our company around. We have stressed, we have argued, we have come mighty close to losing everything.

Now it’s over.

Now all we can do is wait, and hope that potential customers will like our software enough to ditch the truly crappy Microsoft code and spend shiny hard CASH on this little flea.

Here is a little ditty that I wrote twelve years ago when we first started the company. It still seems apt! (although you will please note that I am definitely no poet)

An Ode to Mr Bill Gates

One day a famous man called Gates
Came knocking at my door.
“I wanna buy your company”, he said,
“I’d like a guided tour”.

I took him to my office,
He played with my groovy code.
“Richard, you’re a genius”, he said,
“This will surely cost a load.”

I took him to the kitchen.
He scoffed up all the food,
“And now let’s do a deal”, he said,
“I’m in a dealing mood.

“I must admit your product,
Has cost me an arm and leg.
How much do I have to pay today,
Or do I have to beg ?”

He offered me £50,000 UK pounds.
I turned down his offer flat.
“I see I’ve underestimated you”, he said,
“I am a silly prat !

“I’ll bring my millions tomorrow,
Just six or eight or ten”,
But then – oh bugger- I woke up,
And I was poor again.

Lilmummy, looking gorgeous in an eye-watering pose which would surely make me end-up in hospital (again).

Knock-off shops

There is a UK modelling site called Web-Models that is a very useful resource for finding and contacting models. Today I renewed my subscription in order to allow me to continue to contact models. However, I will not be uploading any more images to the site and I will be carefully vetting those who I work with from that site, because my recent experiences have been less than wonderful.

First up, their mods removed from my portfolio all images with my email address or URL on them. This is apparently so that they can adhere to the rule that you can’t advertise on their site. Now, given the impending adoption of the EU of the orphan works legislation and the costs involved if you want to register any images taken, it is simply not sensible to have images on the net with no identifying information. It not as if I used a huge banner. The text was always small and along one edge. I suspect that the real reason is that they simply don’t want other peoples URL’s appearing on the site. After all it’s THEIR site and they don’t want MY images to spoil it with some tacky URL. But it’s their call, so the only thing I can do is not upload any more images.

The second problem is that they have this really nice feature where uploaded images are displayed on the front page. So anyone can see them. It’s great for the models as there is a constant turnover of images. However, there is a downside. Within two weeks of my most recent shoot, there are dozens of similar shots appearing, most of them much worse. Some models who have asked to shoot with me in that style have just shot with some third rate snapper in exactly the same style with similar poses.

OK, so the photographs I took and lighting style are not unique and I have seen many similar styles of shot, but I have never set out to directly copy an image, and copying an image within a couple of weeks of seeing the first one, then posting it to the same site is just wrong.

But I can see another problem. The world of photography is always shrouded in the drive to find your own unique style. Imagine that you shoot some images and another photographer says “I love that, I’m going to do that”, so that’s what they do. Then they post the images and they have a higher profile than you, or maybe they are famous, so the general viewers see their work before yours, or a model shoots that style with them and then posts it to their port after arranging to shoot that style with you. From then on all people that view your images in that style or in that model's port will accuse you of being the copy, simply because they saw it first from the other person, or that person is more famous than you. I recently emailed a photographer to apologise for shooting a duplicate image of the same model. While the lighting was different, the model used the exact same pose and then posted both images to her port within days. It was very embarrassing!

It could be even worse. Imagine the photographer shoots a whole load of images and publishes a book. From then on all your work will be “Like that book from so-and-so”. Your unique style is now considered a copy! I doubt if any of them will bother to email you to check!

So I’m not posting my images to Web-Models any more. The ones on there can stand, and from now on I’m going to be more selective about who I shoot with.

I have an idea for a more distinctive lighting style, you will see it here first, it will not be going on Web-Models, but I bet I still see copies cropping up.

This does make me think though that the photographers whose work that I really admire often have something in the photographs that can’t be easily copied. Be that a sophisticated lighting style, a distinctive approach, an outstanding technical skill or interesting use of hard to find props. None of the photographers I admire make simple copies of other peoples work.

For the general bulk of photographers, imagination seems hard to come by these days. While it is true that there is nothing new in photography, I really do believe that we should strive to exceed the ability of a 3 dimensional photocopier!




This is Lilmummy.

Pimp Your Art!

It’s been a week to remember in the UK Art world.
More money has changed hands than ever before. A painting of Waterloo Bridge by Claude Monet sold for £17.9m ($36m USD), which was more than twice than expected. Matisse’s "Danseuse dans le fauteuil" sold this week for £11m ($22m). George Michael (famous UK pop star) is trying to buy Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull “For the Love of God” for £50m ($100m).

London is fast becoming the art capital of the world.

Welcome to New Capitalism.
In the UK, because of the beneficial tax regime for rich non-domiciles, the super-rich are moving to London in droves, and indeed, most of them pay less tax than the average cleaner on minimum wage. The UK is now Richistan. This means that our new super-rich inhabitants have millions free to spend, and spend it they do, mainly on property and Art, both of which have always been seen as good long-term investments, now even more so.

So it’s definitely a good time to be an artist or photographer, because everyone is looking for the “next big thing”, the undiscovered genius. There’s a lot of dosh floating around out there folks. Now is the time to seriously consider strutting your funky stuff. Doesn’t matter if you are a painter, photographer, sculptor or you make highly collectible knitted voodoo dolls, you have to Pimp Your Art with a capital “P”.

Go for it! Find your inner marketing- guru and seize any opportunities you can find. Up those Google rankings like never before ! (Yes, yes, O.K. I admit it, I was wrong about Google, O.K.? For a moment I forgot my “inner new capitalist”, but I’m much better now thank you)
If you can, really push to get a gallery exhibition. You never know who may be watching. You might get a rich private collector buy up your entire exhibition in the name of “long term capital investment”.

And if you think I’m talking total nonsense and that no-one will ever do that, think again. Charles Saatchi has just bought out a undiscovered young photographer’s entire graduation show, for the purposes of sound-financial investment and making humungous profits. James Howard, a student at the Royal Academy school, was doing a small graduation exhibition of his digital prints, each one a collage of photographic images, and Saatchi took a fancy to his work and bought the whole lot. Not for very much money admittedly, but the young artist’s work is now worth many times as much as the original purchase price, and young James is going to be a very rich young man...

Who knows ? It might be you next.



The lovely Lilmummy, a couple of weeks ago.