The Saleswoman Is Sold - Fashion Reflected

The model's look is reflected in the saleswoman, foreground; at a

time when bleached hair still is considered 'in' and same

with 'streaked hair' at long last it now seems cutting-edge fashion

to have brunette hair in America. This saleswoman was standing near

the entrance to her store when I photographed her and this poster

(without her knowledge). Your ratings and critiques are invited and

most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically, please submit

a helpful and constructive comment; please share your superior

knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

The suit, if you call it a suit, that has been washed in a washer needs to be thrown away.

Ok... I found another picture... to look at. this one struck me along time ago and since nobody else said something I though I would tell you what I thought (I don't say anything about the "dancer/porn stars" as they don't intrest me in any way ~ ha)

I hate that she is wearing this suit that is off black and the shoulder has the markings of too many washes. YUCK! I can't see her purse but I can tell it is a normal black purse, not that there is anything wrong with it but it is not a clutch or a stylish purse or a briefcase so she is not in management. If she was in management she would have something nicer (in my opinion). Maybe a Coach.

Right off the bat I said to myself she is beautiful (I am of course saying this about the girl you took the picture of and NOT the model) I will get to that in a second. No "real" makeup and NO lipstick but natural beauty. Even in drab black... arghhh this is really upsetting me that she is in this suit! You is a Winter color I can tell. She should be in Red's or Navy. Even a Red Cami with a darker black would have worked. A turtle neck and a dark black suit. Her Hair is to straightened for her face. She NEEDS color. Her eyes are small enough without it. She has to have lipstick and you must have taken this at lunch time or in the afternoon because she doesn't have any on. Now if she left in the morning without any on then she is a "boob" as my daughter would say. Silly girl... you wear lipstick!!

Now the contrast.

The model doesn't not have much makeup on either does she. BUT... The model has something else. The model is looking straight at you with MOXY! The model has power and the model knows this. She knows she has it and she knows she has "it" as they put it. "It" meaning she knows where she is at and knows she is pretty and knows she is beautiful and doesn't need to prove it to the world.

I think it is a wonderful picture that you took of them both at the same time and perfetly framed. I'm glad that this girl is not standing face forward and is and an angle to you. Don't think I didn't notice that she is also trying to hid her "bigger" chest either in that suit (I'm not daft). HA.... we woman notice all too! She is insecure and it shows and you caught her in that moment of "oh no I have to smile because he said something sweet to me". (sigh) ~ I have done that smile many of times! only when I do that smile my smile is crooked.

I'm really surprised more people didn't say something about this picture. Or maybe they saw themselves... hmmmm ~ regardless, I like it! ~ micki

I'll leave the 'makeovers' to you, Oprah and a few other television personalities, just so long as they're as well-informed as yours appears to be (I'm no judge; I'm a fashion train wreck).

This is one of my 'failures' if one judges popular opinion, but I seldom really do. I took it; I like it; I posted it; it didn't get either high ratings or views but I didn't and won't take it down, just on the off chance someone such as yourself will come up with some fabulous comment that makes if all worthwhile (so Thank You!)

I don't know about 'overwashing' a suit, and whether that just shows impecuniousness -- after all many shop people are required to 'dress smartly' but paid crop worker wages, and a great many, especially in San Jose/Santa Clara (this is on the City Lines of both cities), often sponge off their parents with no hopes of ever owning a home unless they get one by marriage or inheritance, with high housing prices of Silicon Valley. And many are 'addicted' to 'brand names' with concomitant high prices, flaunting same, while at the same time not even earning enough to really shop at Wal-Mart unless they get subsidized housing from good ol' Mom and Dad or some other wealthy relative leading to a whole new subclass of 'glitterati have nothings' in Silicon Valley's shopping malls according to one study I read which was quite revealing. Perhaps she is just one of those.

Is she pretty? In a wholesome American sort of way, with too many McDonald's burgers for her pretty face and figure. I had a model visit me today, with a hook nose and veeery tall (she said about 5'9" but way taller than me and I'm taller than that, and I suggest 6'0 to 6'1" and I though to myself 'this isn't a woman I can photograph, but she had applied her makeup well, had an appropriately thin face, mostly looked straight on at the camera as I requested hiding her 'hook' nose, applied her makeup expertly, and -- although a hopeful amateur who had some difficulty with language differences and inexperience following instructions, was able to hold a pose and modify a difficult pose, and consequently proved to be a very able model.

She was confident of herself, even though she was not the 'IT' girl depicted above as the 'model'.

Hereabouts (and I'm not saying exactly where), women are often quite beautiful and if you ask them to describe themselves, they may answer, without guile or boastfulness (just truthfully) 'I'm a beautiful woman'.

End of subject.

Next subject please.

'I'm a beautiful woman.'

I'm happy with my looks, they are beautiful and I take good care of them.

In part because those good looks will get me the husband I want and the children I want by the age of 22; the husband will be older, abler and able to support a family (he may also later have a mistress and the family may fall apart for reasons you may expect).

But the attitude: 'I am a beautiful woman' was part of why this particular woman model could be a successful, if amateur, model for me today (well yesterday as it's well past midnight.)

Here in the East of Europe, women who have it flaunt it; no self-abnegation hereabouts.

A woman friend of mine took me to a swimming pool and showed me her son swimming then pointed out a bunch of young girls in bathing suits -- young nubiles and each one was holding her arms to cover her breasts -- none knew exactly what to do with their newfound maturity there in America.

Here, in the East where I am, I suggest that young women know exactly what those things are for and what purpose they fulfill in life, or maybe I'm dead wrong, but I doubt it.

I'm not overly (or much) interested in young girls/women; my tastes are for the fully grown/developed, but this serves a point. There are some unhealthy attitudes toward the body in America and where it comes from is partly the media and partly our social culture, and I suggest that religion has some part in it, but I refuse to speculate where and how much each part plays in it, or even if that's entirely true. It surely is far, far more complex than that, and part of it is how the camera distorts reality by adding pounds to the 'graven' image -- it makes normal women look fat and absurdly thin women look of average weight and 'pretty' -- an optical illusion commented on by actress/model Sybil Shepherd who once was the world's leading model, but who carried a 'normal' weight (and who gained fame at an unusual time in modeldom).

Those are just some thoughts about your comment and that your comment raised in my mind in relation to those photo and photography in general that I've been meaning to write down for some time; I've enunciated some of them before, as much as 20 years before (to the embarrassment of my then girlfriend a former ballet dancer who was waif-thin and who had entered university as a 'older' student after her career 'washed up' in her mid-late '20s, when she invited me to her university for 'parents' weekend' (imagine that I was the only 'boyfriend there on 'parents' weekend, and her parents weren't invited, much to their chagrin, as they and I were about the same age (and they were quite pleasant, very educated people -- she went on to become twice a Fulbright scholar by the way, though quite dysfunctional last I heard, but we've been out of touch for a decade or more.)

John (Crosley)

I do remember her! WOW... I realize, hmmmm I did do a makeover on her. Funny I think I did a makeover on me. I think I was her 20 years ago. A little bit shy, not sure of herself. Not able to measure up to the woman on the BB in back of her. Wearing the "off" brand clothes because she couldn't but the COOL stuff. I don't go buying anything really cool now because I don't need too. I really don't go anywhere. I don't buy things for my kids that are really "cool" because I don't believe in FADS. There have been times when I have actually taken my kids out of school (when we have had to move around for the sake of my husbands job) and I have taught my kids at home (I hate the word homeschool) and my kids have self learned and we don't do fads as they are smart enough to know that they are way above doing what other kids do and waisting there time on stupid things.

WELL, starving yourself to look like a thin stick figure and not look like a woman should look is also a stupid way to be... another FAD! I have never been really thin. I have always had curves, can't help it. I have always tried to somewhat hide it. I am 5'9" and I have been heavier and lighter not unlike the actress of Sybil shepherd. I am not fond of skinny actresses or men for that matter. I actually don't like short men either but since I married a tall man that was solved quickly. Being in many different cultures and Europe is one of them I have seen how the woman are different there vs here. I will never forget how in SPAIN when I first was on the beach there looking at my husband going. HELLO? What is wrong with THIS picture. I was only 19 and very shy and I had to get over myself! I got used to it very quickly because I had no choice. In this picture I see part of myself. That old self. After being in Japan the last few years I decided I would not do the BATHHOUSE thing this go around mainly because I didn't want to hear the Japanese woman say things in Japanese about me. I understand enough that it bugs me to be talked about when I am right there. I just don't relax. Now I regret that I didn't do it! Silly me! I let a society rule me! My insecurities and my being shy. I wonder when will I grow up sometimes. But then again, it is just now that I am comfortable with my self enough to actually take pictures of myself and share. One might think I am conceited but now I don't care. Now I am just doing it because I am finally expressing something that I couldn't before. Why not! Letting go sometimes is good for the soul. I think you watch people let go as you take their picture am I correct? I think so! Off to go look at your new picture... it looked interesting... hmmm ~ micki

Cybil Shepherd?

Yourself?

This woman?

Figuratively/Literally/Actually. Stream of consciousness writing fosters difficulties in understanding, sometimes.

I thoroughly believe by third reading I understand 98 percent of what you have written and am impressed by the though you have put into it; and agree with most of it; Conceited? I'd have to be in your presence to judge, but then some people judge me for being conceited, not understanding that if I talk about my accomplishments, I'm only taking up the space in which one can focus on my failings. . . . .

Filling space so to speak.

A form of verbal 'negative space' so to speak.

I'm far more complicated than most people I suggest . . . and sometimes people from a distance 'fall in love' with the purported vision of me, and fail to understand that I'm a real person, quite different from what they perceive.

I am all I present myself to be and less.

(not more, but less)

And more, too.

I'm just not to everyone's taste, and that has led to some disastrous consequences, which is why I am not really interested in Internet dating anymore; I've had some dreadful encounters with overeager women who fall in love with a voice and writings but can't anticipate the whole package.

Yet, my assistant, Anya, 'picked me up' in Red Square a year ago, just for the heck of it and we talked all night, which is how we met . . . talking and drinking cheap Russian champagne instead of sleeping . . . and ended up more charged up at the end than if we'd slept alone the entire night . . . and I went to the airport and took a flight directly from the hotel restaurant after sending for my bags as she went to her home from the same place.

We have gotten along famously ever since; just Internet friends which matured in December when we first traveled together, but she is heavily involved with a wonderful boyfriend she is greatly in love with. But he's a plus and minus computer type guy -- I'm the antidote for that, as I see ALL shades of gray . . . and they are constantly changing depending on the weather and the moral compass.

Anya's off to Kiev and Moscow with said boyfriend and I'm staying behind, then moving on, and we'll meet again soon, probably to laugh the days away as we always seem to eventually (after any initial friction from separation wears off).

When I was in my '40s, my fabulous girlfriend was in her middle to advancing '50s and we got along wonderfully together. She was an atta-girl type, self-educated, but full of energy, charm and wit, loved by everyone, and didn't really care much about age.

It's only happenstance that several years after I woke up one day and she said 'you have to go' (to which I said 'what, you're my lover and best friend?) and she repeated (you have to go), and I went, and a year later she had a nervous breakdown, which her doctor said was from making the 'bad choice of sending me away, and he disabled her permanently.

She never worked again, to best of my knowledge.

I moved away, she followed.

I moved again; she did not follow.

Later I met and married a Russian woman. We met when she was half my age at 26, and that was the start of a world class love affair, not just a 'green card junket; she got brain cancer only three months into the marriage three years later, just after arriving in the US to start a new life.

We're still married, but she blames me for 'causing' the brain cancer and we've been separated now nearly six years.

I'm looking and have been.

I am surrounded by young, happy, wonderful and beautiful women. Often they undress to pose for me sexily, and I help make them appear beautiful; I'm getting much better at that, but I'm not trying to get my web page mobbed by overeager, testosterone-laced young male voyeurs.

I can but won't post photos of them, in their charming and wonderful altogether sitting next to me, fully nude except for their bustiers or similar attire (or the altogether) after a photo session or during it, being 'just friends' or 'friendly' without any other manifestation.

(On the other hand, my blonde-haired assistant, Anya who is not 'fabulously' beautiful is 'hot' in a way the models could not be -- she can't help it -- she is mobbed by male clerks when she enters a store, or men in bars, restaurants or even on the street, and I have one photo that's a classic showing 11 male clerks clamoring for her attention in a Kiev store),

(Her future husband will have to be a very proud AND understanding guy.)

Not one of them would refuse to pose for me again; I have a wonderful reputation among my models (you won't find their photos here, however, or anywhere at present.

They are not much different from my gorgeous wife, except they aren't half as smart as she, and now I'm six years older, and it's less likely I'm going to find what they call 'my second half'.

(My wife bears a striking similarity to Uma Thurman except she's younger and smarter, and now a brain cancer survivor, at least for the present and still thoroughly (in the back of her mind) believes I am a bad guy who brought on her misfortune, so there's no hope).

I'll just go on taking photographs.

I have a career in this thing.

And much to show the world.

Family historical archives say I have a lot of time left and needn't fear senility.

My father at 74, after death of my mother, had several girlfriends at once, sometimes was dating women as young as in their 40s, and it appeared they were happy seeing him.

Young age is no panacea; I'd happily be with an older woman, but I have looked and there's absolutely no one I've run across who can keep up with me mentally and who is willing to put up with me, especially an American.

But I find many foreign women attracted to me; I'm often stopped by young, attractive foreign women who want to talk. It's quite a difference between America and across the Atlantic or even into South America or Asia where age is not something that's 'disgusting'.

The lifestyle I now lead even leads less and less to the likelihood I'm going to find my 'second half'. . . if she's even out there.

If she is, she'll be one of a kind . . . and an extraordinary person . . . gifted in some way, very attractive, but not necessarily in a traditional way.

I've always been with gifted, extraordinary persons. I married two; both got cancer; one died of it (though we divorced sooner, as she became an attorney and aggressive in the marriage, just like me at the the time).

Now I'm somewhat a different guy, with my aggression directed toward finding and 'capturing' good subjects with my camera and lenses.

I hope that I do so enduringly and endearingly.

It's something you certainly can aspire to, Micki.

And forget those gossipy Japanese bathhouse women.

Gossipy women are the same everywhere -- destructive.

If you let them be.

I believe in the wonderful statement by Whoopi Goldberg who when asked if discrimination ever played a role in her life, replied simply: 'No, I just never tell anyone I'm black'.

Just don't acknowledge their gossip to yourself or to anyone else.

It's their own insecurity showing.

They do it to preserve their own safe place in their own hierarchy.

You represent a threat to them or they wouldn't gossip about you.

So, mostly I've given up on 'chasing women' or looking for a mate.

If I find one who's a match, it will be wonderful; if not, I'm surrounded often by young beautiful, university educated, intelligent women who like and admire me.

Things could be worse.

Me, I'm chasing the perfect image.

I think I got it once.

Just have a look.

John (Crosley)

Several words of advice:

Google Toolbar with Spell Check.

'nough said?

I use it now.

It doesn't catch everything, but it helps.

John (Crosley)

My husband tells me the name of the model is Jennifer Garner and the Ad is for GAP... Oh he is so SMART! That is the man I married at 19. The man who speaks six languages and IS my spell check. See, you have to be able to somewhat spell a word enough to put it IN the place to ask it "what" it is really spelled like. Then you also have to "know" you spelled it wrong. I have a homophone problem. My kids have LOTS of fun with that. Then, I am completely and totally not "with" it as the kids put it. If I am typing at 12am I just type and don't look back sometimes. My mind doesn't register like it should. My brain doesn't think like it used to (the dyslexia kicks in). Yuck, I had using that excuse but I worked so darn hard on that one when I was young! See I'm an artist and a match person I didn't need to know how to spell. I learned shorthand! HA! My handwriting is terrible but I can take notes as fast as you talk! And I can type like no ones business.

Now about that conceit! I hold my head in shame, see I never thought I was good enough... maybe till now. Maybe conceit is good! If you look on my portfolio I actually have someone who thought I was prety (yes they said prety I didn't spell it wrong). It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

See... I am NOT perfect! I don't have the perfect body. I won't ever have it... I am 40! Well I will be in April. I'm not afraid of saying I will be 40. I just look at this picture and remember that I was once 25 and was so insecure and should have been ALIVE!! NOW I'm older, have teenagers and FINALLY feel beautiful. But... hey, I have other things going on! Seizures for one! Arghhh

So, you have been there, you have seen crappy things in your life obviously with your soon to be x-wife and past x-wife (sorry to hear about about both of them). Life does not seem fair sometimes! I do wonder why you are searching for perfection? Do you think you will every find it?

I think you hit it correctly how you found that your assistant is found so much more attractive than some of the more beautiful girls. Personality is so much more attractive than ANY pretty girl!!

Personality, wit, smarts and character last but beauty can fade. (sigh)

I hope the rest of your time without her their is still pleasant. ~ Enjoy, micki