So when I get an email about a job that requires me to forgo pants, it's kind of like waking up for school and being told it's a snow day-- I'm surprised, excited, and probably already in my underwear when I get the news.
Yet this particular email was not your typical no-pants email. This time it was accompanied by a very serious phone call, in which I was emphatically warned not to get naked. Like, that was the entire point of the call. To inform me that, while wearing no pants was fine, wearing nothing at all would not be okay.
The fear was that this client might try to get us naked, convincing us at the shoot to do some free nudes without consulting our agencies first. Given that one of the girls would go on to do Victoria's Secret, this makes a lot of sense.
Because if there's one thing that doesn't
fly at Victoria's Secret it's...oh.
Nudity can realistically affect a model's future though, and keeping agents in the loop about these things should probably be high priority to a client. If bookers are like pseudo-parents, then convincing us to get naked without telling them is like trying to sneak us out a bedroom window at night and fuck us in your Volvo. I'm not saying they'll come at you with a hatchet, but I am saying it wouldn't hurt to bookmark the WebMD page for "hatchet wounds" either.
So giving us a heads-up made sense. But that was it. Those were all the details I was left with. They might try to get you naked...so do not get naked.
Which means it was left up to my imagination to wonder what exactly this shoot was gonna be. And my imagination kind of took off at 88 mph.
No word on if it ended up in 1955.
What my brain decided to churn out was something akin to those dream sequences in The Sure Thing, where John Cusack keeps imagining himself on the beach with a bikini-clad Nicolette Sheridan.
The shoot was in Brooklyn.
This made me determined, then, to ensure I was firing on all cylinders. And thus I made an executive decision to shave what I would affectionately call my "wangajang area."
If you're familiar with how great I am at shaving, I can go ahead and assuage your fears and assure you that I emerged from the experience mostly pain-free. But only "pain-free" in terms of cuts, as it left me with probably the weirdest non-poison-ivy itchy feeling ever. Because rather than just keep my bikini line clean, I kept going...and going...and going...until an overwhelming curiosity had combined with my complex Cusack-ian fantasies to turn my nether regions into a barren wasteland.
I had never gone that far before in my trimming adventures. But as the itch wouldn't start for a few more days, I showed up in prime condition, my crotch clean and smooth like new bar of soap. And you know what? I did end up doing nude. But only because they begged and begged, and said I should do it for America, and for the children, and then one girl started crying, and I was like okay fine.
Just kidding. The reality is actually way more awkward. Because it turns out, guess what?
THE SHOOT DID NOT REQUIRE ME TO TAKE MY PANTS OFF.
That's right, what I was assuming was going to be an epic near-nude sex party, and was warned to not get naked for, turned out to require no de-pantsing at all. I had, in effect, made myself look like a 12-year-old between my legs for nothing. Given how long it had taken to not look like a 12-year-old down there in the first place, this was devastating.
And I was not going to take it lying down. With most of the photos taken and everyone hanging out, the conversation luckily drifted to the subject of shaving private parts. I think it went something like this:
*silence*
*sound of one girl flipping through a magazine*
*more silence*
Me: Hey so I shaved my balls for this, can we do some underwear shots now?
Okay maybe it was a little more organic than that, but the point is we joked about the irony of the situation and I half-seriously suggested we not let my efforts go to waste. And you know what? The photographer loved it. This was of course because I'm awesome and have great ideas that any true artiste can and should appreciate, and had nothing to do with the fact that I was volunteering a bunch of models to randomly de-clothe. Not at all.
Either way, we all got up, stripped down, and took some goofy photos that helped make it feel worthwhile. Because that's what you gotta do when you blitzkrieg your whole dong zone. That and buy some exfoliating acid, cause...Christ on a Huffy bike, seriously.
