The next day, I wired my ex the money. I didn’t think I could survive going through what I’d been through again. I exchanged the safety of those hundreds of Emilys for one image—an image that had been taken from my platform and produced as another man’s valuable and important art.
I hung the giant Instagram painting, the image from the Sports Illustrated shoot, on a prominent wall in my new home in Los Angeles. When people visited, they’d rush toward it and yell, “Oh, you got one of these!”
My guests would cross their arms and study the painting, read Prince’s comment, and smile. The comment above his came from some unknown user; they’d often turn back to me to ask if I knew what it said. “Is it German?” they’d wonder aloud, squinting.
Eventually, after enough people asked, I decided to translate the comment myself.
“It’s about how saggy my tits look,” I told my husband, with whom I now share a home. He came over and put his arms around my back, whispering, “I think you’re perfect.” I felt myself stiffen. Even the love and appreciation of a man I trusted, I had learned, could mutate into possessiveness. I felt protective of my image. Of her. Of me.
The next time someone asked about the German comment, I lied and said I didn’t know.
* * *
In 2012, my agent told me I should buy a bus ticket from Penn Station to the Catskills, where a photographer named Jonathan Leder would pick me up and reimburse me for my fare. We’d shoot in Woodstock, for some arty magazine I’d never heard of called Darius, and I’d spend the night at his place, she said. This was something the industry calls an unpaid editorial, meaning it would be printed in the magazine and the “exposure” would be my reward.
I had been working with my agent full-time for about two years. She had known me since I was fourteen, when I landed my first modeling and acting jobs, but she began to take my career more seriously when I turned twenty. I began to take my career more seriously, too: I dropped out of UCLA to pursue modeling and was working quite regularly. I opened an IRA and paid off my first and only year at college with the money I’d made. I wasn’t doing anything fancy or important, mostly e-commerce jobs for places like Forever 21 and Nordstrom, but the money was better than what any of my friends were making as waitresses or in retail. I felt free: free of the asshole bosses my friends had to deal with, free of student-loan debt, and free to travel and eat out more and do whatever the hell I pleased. It seemed crazy to me that I had ever valued school over the financial security that modeling was beginning to provide.
When I looked up Jonathan’s work online, I saw a few fashion editorials he’d shot on film. A little boring, I remember thinking. Hipster-y. His Instagram was mostly pictures of his home and a few strange, retro images of a very young-looking Russian woman with obvious breast implants. Kind of weird, I thought, but I had seen weirder. Maybe this is just the stuff he puts on his Instagram? His work on Google looked celestial and pretty. Legit. I didn’t bother to investigate further. Besides, my agent was in full control of my career: I did what she told me to do, and in return, she was supposed to expand my portfolio so I could book more paid jobs and establish myself in the industry. As promised, Jonathan picked me up from the bus stop in Woodstock. He had a small frame and was plainly dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He seemed distinctly uninterested in me and didn’t meet my eyes as he drove us in a vintage car over streets lined with tall grass. He came off as a nervous, neurotic artist type. He was very different from the other “fashion” photographers I’d met up to that point, men who tended to be LA douchebags with strategically placed highlights in their hair and who smelled like sweet cologne.
I was wearing a tank top that I’d tucked into the front of high-waisted shorts, and as we drove, I watched the soft blond hairs on my thighs glisten in the sunlight. Jonathan never looked at me directly, but I remember feeling watched, aware of our proximity and my body and how I might appear from his driver’s seat. The more indifferent he seemed, the more I wanted to prove myself worthy of his attention. I knew that impressing these photographers was an important part of building a good reputation. Does he think I’m smart? Especially pretty? I thought about all the other young models who must have come to this bus station in the Catskills and sat in this car.
When we arrived at Jonathan’s home, two children were sitting at the kitchen table. I stood awkwardly at the door in my short shorts and felt embarrassingly young—unwomanly even, like a kid myself. I noted the time from a clock on the wall: How are we going to shoot today if it’ll be dark in just an hour and a half? Maybe we’ll shoot very early tomorrow, I figured. I brought my hands up to the straps of my backpack and shifted my weight from side to side, waiting for instruction. I felt relief wash over me when a makeup artist arrived at the house and proceeded to set up on the kitchen table next to Jonathan’s kids. She was older than me, and quiet. I felt more comfortable upon her arrival; the pressure was off me to know how to be and how to compensate for Jonathan’s strangeness now that another adult was there, a woman.