Jill Rants and Raves: my near miss with reality

It looked like SPAM. An email sitting in the in box with the header 'Britain's Next Top Model'. This didn't seem aimed at me, honestly. My cursor swung towards the Trash icon and then changed its mind.

It was from a researcher at Thumbs Up Productions in London and they just loved my work. Ah, but not all of my work but some images in particular - my in your face satirical fuck you to the advertising and fashion industries 'Dirty Girls In London' series for On Our Backs magazine which I shot in 1988.

My idea was to take a freakin' sexy butch and her stunning femme on a tour of London icons - The Houses of Parliament, Royal Albert Hall, Hyde Park, The British Museum etc - and photograph them in flagrantly sexual poses, the kind of poses that fashion photographers try to shoot to show how cutting edge they are. Except I used women who were genuinely hot for each other and they were natural exhibitionists who wanted to push the barriers, as I did.

But we had another intent - in May of 1988, the British Parliament passed one of the most repressive laws in recent history - Section 28, an amendment to existing law and it said, in part, that a local authority (meaning city councils, schools etc): "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" (er...is this sounding at all familiar?).

We wanted to create a fun sexy spread for On Our Backs, and to give a finger to the politicians meeting just behind us, as Debra and Jane straddled Westminster Bridge. And that's what we did.

So this harmless e mail in my in-box definitely got my attention. They described my work as 'edgy' and wanted to know if I was available to come to London for a weekend in darkest gloomiest coldest January to be a photographer on the show - the British version of Tyra Banks' blockbuster success 'Next Top Model' with the express intention of pushing 'the girls' into a situation they might feel deeply uncomfortable in - a sensuous fashion photo shoot with other scantily clad 'girls'. The purpose was to see how far they would go, to challenge their preconceived notions about what might be expected of them in their chosen profession and to see how much or how little they would respect the photographer who was asking them to do something they were disturbed by.

This was actually a pretty interesting dilemma for me. I found myself having fantasies of educating the entire world through a reality show, of subverting the very industry that I have battled in my work for as long as I've been lugging a camera around. I found myself asking the researcher 'there's no fur involved, right? Because I couldn't handle the animal thing'. She reassured me there wasn't, and asked me pretty pointed questions about whether I felt comfortable pushing these young women to the edge. We exchanged ideas about respect, about feminism about the fashion industry and she paid me a huge compliment telling me they had looked at the images and said to each other 'that's it, that's the look we want'. I said 'you know these were taken 20 years ago, right?'. She was quiet a moment and then said 'well, I guess everything just comes around again'. Ouch. No, it doesn't just all come around again. Queers are still fighting for fundamental rights. Boys still wanna punch my lights out if their girl looks at me. And I couldn't help myself - I replied 'Nah, I was just 20 years ahead of my time'.

I don't think I'm gonna be on reality TV anytime soon, and I won't get to meet the impressive Tyra. It's Ok. They were getting nervous about the cost of the airfare anyway.