PAULINA AT SUNSET
14x17" drawings, erasable crayon and felt pen, 1987/12/8, by Chris Wayan
Paulina Porizkova modeled swimsuits in Sports Illustrated one summer. Her beauty was a guilty pleasure for me--living in San Francisco, a town very concerned with feminist issues, it's hard to avoid worrying about the trend toward anorexic models. But... she was gorgeous.
Then I read an interview with Paulina and was startled to learn her height and weight were close to mine. And like me, she didn't even diet--it was just her genes! Suddenly America's resentment of skinny models felt like an anorexia witch-hunt, felt PERSONAL--they could just as well be trashing me. In fact they do, though differently, because I'm male: the same proportions that make models both sought after (and criticized) make women shun me--they figure I'm dying of AIDS. Same numbers, same body type, same genetic cause: supermodel if you're female, diseased pariah if you're male. Go figure!
So, in a rebellious mood, I set out to draw me/Paulina with more body, though not exactly the "more" the fat liberationists usually mean...
Hmm. Her skin is a bit orange because of a flashbulb used for fill against the low sun. I wanted to be faithful to the photo, aside from my minor anatomical innovation.
Let's try a less photo-bound sketch, without the silly suit and that backlit sunset.
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