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Found Article: In Search of the Perfect Bra

I loved the intro to this article! I tore the piece out of some British mag a long time ago. It must have been written in about 2004/5. I’ve transcribed the bits I thought were interesting, fun or unusual. The article is called “In Search of the Perfect Bra”, written by Daisy Garnett and mostly discusses how women both don’t wear the right fitting bras for their breasts and also how the image of wearing bras has changed over time, due to elements such as engineering and textile development as well as fashion.

ARTICLE- In Search of the perfect Bra 03 By Daisy Garnett

I know all about the perfect bra. I have owned it. To get it, I went to an atelier above a Paris lingerie shop- Alice Cadolle on the rue Cambon- three times over six weeks. I spent hours having fittings with the shop’s proprietor and bra designer, Poupie Cadolle, daughter of the shop’s founder, and great-great-great-grand-daughter of Hermione Cadolle, the woman widely credited with having invented the brassiere in the late nineteenth century. I waited a month for it to be designed, engineered, constructed and stitched together, and then went back to Paris to collect it. It cost over 400 Pounds, and it was worth every penny. I loved that bra- properly loved it- in the way other women love their engagement rings, say. It fitted me perfectly, made my breasts look better than they have or ever will, and helped me feel secure and together and cared for…

…Ah, cleavage. That signal of womanhood. The great, problematic signpost that draws the eye ever thither. “Babies see food. Men see sex. Doctors see disease. Business people see dollar signs,” writes Marilyn Yalom in her book The history of the Breast, adding, “Psychologists, religious leaders, advertisers and pornographers have rhapsodized over, vilified and used breasts to sell everything from war to Cadillacs. And, finally, women have seen in them pleasure, power, sustenance, fear or failure to measure up”…

…”breasts are even more individual than feet; changing hormone levels, the Pill, diet, and weight changes- all of these will affect your bust size. Really, we ought to be fitted every time we buy a bra”. Of course we should. But we don’t simply buy a bra to help hold up a large or small bust, because a bust in never just large or small. It is usually too large or too small, too oddly shaped or too floppily shaped. The fact is, our breasts- suddenly upon us in puberty, and even more quickly appropriated once we become mothers- are as connected to our psyche, sexuality and identity as they are to our chest, back and shoulders. No wonder so many of us are wearing the wrong size bra: getting the right one is not just a chore, it is fraught with having to face up to the specific reality of our breasts…
 
…[model] Erin [O’Conner] says, “It was no fun having my body at school.” And now? “Well,” she says, “people may talk about how bitchy the modeling industry is, but I found it helpful, because it was through modeling that I changed my self-image. I had to become more confident because suddenly people wanted to see every bit of my body. I became my own version of a woman. I discovered that I didn’t need tits and arse to be feminine… 
ARTICLE- In Search of the perfect Bra 02 By Daisy Garnett
 
…Marilyn Monroe, meanwhile, had buttons sewn into the nipples of her bras to achieve that pointy look; while in the Sixties, as in the Twenties, women deliberately flattened their breasts in order to loo fashionable.
But that is fashion. And fashion has always maintained a love-hate relationship with breast. It is, I am afraid to say, hard for us large-breasted women to carry off narrow tailoring, or to wear anything bias-cut, or made of chiffon or silk, not to mention a polo neck or tank atop. Look at any of the women who have graced the upper echelons of the well-dressed: Jackie Kennedy, Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Katharine Hepburn, Wallace Simpson, BiancaJagger, Marisa Berenson, Nicole Kidman, Kate Moss. It is no coincidence that all of them are flat chested. Because being we’ll dressed isn’t, of course, only about the clothes you choose , but about the line your body creates, and bosoms ruin a chic line…
…”though the bra has been used to do everything from flattening the bust to projecting it skywards, it is not, in fact, a garment to be suspicious of, whatever your feelings towards feminism. Nor, for the record, was the bra ever burnt: the so-called bra-burning incident at the Miss America contests in Atlantic City in 1968 never, in fact, took place. The story, like many that have surrounded the breast, is pure myth. The truth is that despite what  it has been made to stand for, the bra is not a symbol, but a tool”.
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Playmate Pictorial: “Miss March”
for Playboy Magazine, South Africa

I LOVED working on this shoot for Playboy South Africa. I met and cast Sabian from a gym class I went to at 360 Specialised Training in 2013. We did her casting shoot in my studio and her shoot for the magazine itself was done in the gym where we met.

Here is a teaser for Sab’s behind the scenes video made by the talented Ross Campbell.

Above and below are shots from Sabian’s casting call for Playboy in studio.

This girl was pure sunshine to work with.

Below the small team who worked on the shoot. Ross Campbell on the behind the scenes video (link higher up in this post), Colleen Van Rensburg on hair and makeup, Sabian and Colleens apprentice (can’t remember her name unfortunately).

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A Zine by Amsterdam Sex Worker Candy Tricks:
“The Client of the Day”

I was gifted this zine by my dear friend Sarah while visiting her in Amsterdam last year after a shoot id done in France.
Sarah is currently in the midst of a PhD (doctoral) thesis for the university of Utrecht: there she is working on “Back to the Book” a giant research project on zines, amongst other things. Although we have zine culture in South Africa it’s not nearly as widely known, understood and practised here.

The zine Sarah gave me was a copy she got from the author “Candy Tricks” and is  made up of seven A4 pages printed, folded and stapled. Each zine copy is finished with a real lipstick kiss and signed in red on the last page.

The cover of the zine reads: The sex worked, Candy Tricks, in her infinite wisdom awards The Client of the Day to the most memorable clients of an Amsterdam Strip Club. Recipients constitute the good, the bad and the banal of this worker's bread & butter.
The cover of the zine reads: The sex worker, Candy Tricks, in her infinite wisdom awards The Client of the Day to the most memorable clients of an Amsterdam Strip Club. Recipients constitute the good, the bad and the banal of this worker’s bread & butter.

It is a great zine and I’m sharing it here to impart her facts and wisdoms which surprised and challenged my own notions, about sex workers:

Candy Tricks
Well duh, that’s not my real name. But it IS my real work name. I’ve been working as Candy for over 2 years now. I started off as a stripper in a peep show in Australia, then after a few months started working in a brothel. And I loved both. When I started stripping/fucking for money, I was also doing social work. And sex work provided a welcome relief from my high-pressure, emotionally draining day job. I eventually got burnt out in my social work role, and gave it up to do sex work exclusively. Then I decided to use my ho money to come to Europe and do more sex work. Clearly I just can’t get enough.

A Kiss from Candy Tricks

Sex work, prostitutes and whores
So the reason I use the term sex work is because it highlights the fact that this is a job just like any other. The term was created to be non-stigmatizng, without the negative meaning society attaches to the terms “whore” or “prostitute”. It also covers both types of work I do: stripping and “full service” (or fucking). You might notice that sometimes I use the word “whore” or “ho”. This is a self-identification thing- some workers like to use this term while others don’t. I like using it in a positive way, reclaiming the word from the stigma attached to it (much like the way I use the words “queer”, “dyke” or “slut”). But that doesn’t mean you get to use it. Especially if it’s in a negative way.

What sex work is to me
Before I started sex work, I worked in retail for over 10 years. And I felt more exploited and disrespected in that role than I ever have as a sex worker. I think the differences are illuminating

  1. The Customer is always right. The golden rule of retail: The Customer is always right even if they’re wrong (and rude and disrespectful), you respond as if they are being perfectly reasonable, and give them some freebies to quell their rage/indignation. Sex work is completely different. If the customer is wrong, you tell them so. If they persist in being wrong (or rude, or disrespectful), you kick them out. No refunds, no apologies and no exchanges. For me, this is a fucking HUGE difference.
  2. Autonomy and power. In retail work, I was always told what shifts I was working, and what work I would be doing on those shifts. Of course, you can ask for particular days off or particular jobs, but ultimately it’s up to the manager. You also have to serve every customer that comes in. In sex work, you tell the manager when you’re next working. And aside from the basic service (which varies depending on where you’re working), you get to chose what “extras” (or other services) you do, if any. And most importantly, YOU decide which clients you see, because you have the option to refuse anyone.
  3. Financial Compensation. Ok, so this is the most obvious difference. But it’s a biggie. In sex work I’ve typically  been well compensated for my job. Of course, your earnings fluctuate. But the difference in my financial situation since I started is incredible. I no longer have to worry about whether i can afford to pay rent, or eat, or do things. After worrying about these things for the entirety of my adult life, it’s really liberating to be free of them.

 I realise now that before I started working I held a lot of stereotypes about what sex work was like. I assumed that all clients would be sleazy assholes. That the worker had no power. That there was something inherently dirty or soul-destroying about the work. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The majority of my clients are lovely, respectful and appreciative of the service I provide. The number of asshole clients I’ve had I could count on two hands. Which given the number of clients I’ve seen, that’s a tiny minority (I have NO idea of the number, but it would be over 400).
The other thing that’s completely unlike my assumptions is that the worker actually holds all the power. I dictate what happens in an interaction with a client. Whether I overtly communicate that to a client, or subtly steer the interaction in the direction I want it to go.
It’s also a whole fuckload of fun. I love my job. I love sex, I love being seen as desirable, I love being complimented, I love dancing/stripping and I love meeting heaps of new, different people. There is nothing inherently soul-destroying or dirty about my work at all; in fact it would be more accurate to call it heart-warming and clean.
Except that clean is definitely a problematic term, and not right for this context. But what I’m trying to get at here is that firstly, sex isn’t dirty. And secondly, sex workers aren’t dirty. Even though heaps of people think we are (the number of strangers that question my sexual health when they find out how I make my living!). Sex workers are actually experts at safe sex, and have been shown in many studies to have lower rates of STIs than the general population. This is because protecting our sexual health is part of our jobs- because if we get a STI then we may not be able to work. Not to mention that it can also be bad for our sex (and general) life outside of work.

This Zine by Candy Tricks

Thereafter Candy describes her favourite clients from each shift during a month in 2011. I found the zine intriguing; not just because her insider “meat of the piece” parts are part of a taboo-associated hidden world but because she seems to have entered the world of sex work with integrity and a clear understanding of what it meant to others as well as to herself.
Although I would debate a few of her comments and ideas, I think she is correct in talking about all the out-dated stigmas attached to the industry, many of which, even the terms themselves, are used as slang in a degrading way towards women working in this industry and to women who are not.

And-Lastly...-Zine-by-Candy-Tricks

And now our time is up... Zine By Candy Tricks

On the back of Candy’s zine was an email address so I dropped her quick mail about this article and asked her if she would be keen to do an interview for The Softer Sex. She happily agreed. Its coming soon.

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Patric Fouad’s German Brothel Interiors

PatricFouadBrothels

I found Patric Fouads images of German brothel interiors by accident when I bought an edition of Design Week in 2005. The gaudy kitschness and the definite inimitable style of the spaces combined with their function is intriguing. I tore the article out of the mag all those years ago and kept it along with so much other female related material…

Amazon, who sells Fouad’s book “Frauenzimmer”, writes about the book:

Since 2001, prostitution is no longer illegal in Germany. Patric Fouad gives us rare insights into the interiors of eleven rooms of brothels all over Germany. The photographer left the places he saw unchanged in order to allow the most authentic view of the scene. Despite the absence of any human beings, the interiors speak for themselves: The pompous elegance of some and the imaginative or reduced decoration of others suggest the wishes of the clientele that is being served. The candid images are strong in their impact and yet subtle in their implications. By leaving out the main characters, the viewer’s imagination and curiosity is increased even further. A high quality coffee-table book of a different kind.

Frauenzimmer by Patric Foud

PatricFouadBrothels

The article in Design Weekly from 10 February 2005, written by Clare Dowdy, reads:

Sex is everywhere. Harmony has a licensed sex shop on London’s Oxford Street, Hustler has opened a “department store” in Birmingham and has its sights set on the major European cities; Ann Summers is planning to open outlets in Spain; and Selfridges-based sex toy retailer Tabooboo has 60 vending machines in bars and clubs across the UK and stores planned for the continent. Even venerable high street chemist Boots the Chemists briefly mooted giving vibrators shelf space alongside shampoos and verucca treatments.

All this in-you-face activity around Europe is the result of our increasingly relaxed attitude towards sex (think Sex And The City) and legislation that is gradually being relaxed. A recent development in Germany is the legalisation of prostitution, which came into force in 2001. This- in theory at least- means selling sex is now like any other business and should be treated as such. Hard to swallow, but Patric Fouad’s photographs go some war to persuading us of that. There are around 400 000 practising prostitutes in Germany, with more than half offering services in brothels. Fouad, who was born in Düsseldorf, has chosen to shoot the interiors of 11 of  these venues as you might shoot a restaurant or retail environment. “I wanted to make these rooms accessible to the public, especially women,” he explains. What started out as a thesis project for the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund has ended up as a coffee-table book: Frauenzimmer, Brothels in Germany. Its title is a (German) play on words: archaic German for woman, Frauenzimmer’s literal meaning is “women’s rooms”.

Boudoir Exposure Article

Despite their new-found legitimacy, Fouad had to go to considerable lengths to get access. It all started with an intense internet search- no mean feat considering that many of the brothels are registered via paysites that require a log-in. Contact details of the operators were also supplied through journalists and social workers. Then it was a case of calling the patrons up and persuading them to agree to the photo shoot. “I tried various strategies, using different choices of wording,” he says. “Usually, after a brief moment of hesitation, they agreed.” And on location he was given a warm welcome.

As with many images of retail interiors, these are people-free zones, Fouad was not in the business of taking portraits and wanted the rooms to speak to themselves. “There are so many details, colours, patterns that repeatedly appear in the various bordellos and give an idea of the people who decorate and live in them,” he says. Clues to the nature of the room’s occupants include PVC novelties pinned to the wall and a pair of kitten heels by the bed. By shooting all the rooms, where possible, from the same angle, Fouad has presented us with a succession of comparable images. This gives the scenes a nice coherence and helps to concentrate the viewer’s eye. With their curtained or blacked-out windows, all illumination is artificial. As Fouad was determined to shoot these places in all their naked glory, there was minimal additional lighting and no styling. “Naturally, a well-kept room contributes to the image of the house and is therefore important to the owner as well as to the prostitute,” he points out.

While it doesn’t appear that these have had the interior design consultants in, they do display some rules of thumb concerning aesthetics and layout. Unsurprisingly , the main attraction is the bed, though it might surprise the uninitiated that many are single rather than double. This is because half the rooms featured were in the houses for “occasional traffic” or clubs. As well as the gadgetry, walls are adorned with mostly tacky art showing ladies in provocative poses. Meanwhile, the paraphernalia of the profession (lubricants, tissues and such like) stand brazenly by the bed. When it comes to aesthetics, red and pink dominate. In fact, all the colour combinations would make John Pawson followers reach for the bucket. Some of the rooms share common features, clearly a case of the owner getting a job lot of items such as bedspreads or lamps.

Frauenzimmer mixes images of decadence with those of mean cheapness, demonstrating both spectrums of the “profession”. As a book it works on two levels: an insight into a hidden world and a set of interiors images. Either way, it’s intriguing stuff.

Design Weekly Cover