The other day I was walking through the living room while my husband was watching sports. A female sportscaster (Erin Andrews) was talking and next to her was her co-host.  The male co-host was dressed in a normal professional suit. Erin looked like she was going to a cocktail party. She was wearing a sleeveless, skin tight red mini dress and heels...at a football game.

A few days before that, I saw a picture of two radio personalities. I wish I knew their names so I could go look up this picture for you. Apparently they are a man-woman radio duo. The image was a publicity shot (like a headshot, sort of). The man was sitting on a chair next to a table. He was casually leaned forward engaging the camera and smiling naturally. He was wearing a casual shirt, jacket and pants combo. His partner was ON the table, on her back propped up on her elbows with her leg crossed and sticking up. She was wearing a skimpy skirt so her entire thigh was showing and she had on super high heels. She had her head thrown back like, oh look at me..ha-ha! Gross.

What is going on ladies?! I was walking through Toys R Us recently and even the new dolls are looking racy. My mom and I were looking at baby dolls for Einin (my daughter) and a few of them seriously looked like they had make up on. They're not all bad. I did see these dolls that are so much cooler-smarter-relatable than these awful things. Point being, this messaging starts from the cradle!

It's not getting better as women move up into positions of power. In fact, it seems to be getting worse! Often, it's the powerful women, themselves, selling themselves out. When women don't do it to themselves, we (the media and the public) do it for them by picking them apart and criticizing them about their bodies.

These bodies we inhabit are only vessels. They're like a machine that our souls and minds operate. It's an extraordinary vessel, no doubt. Mine has allowed me to create children, feed them, make art, love and be loved, move around the world, explore and learn. The media is not creating an homage to the unbelievable machine of a body that we have. It's only focused on how we look, our sexual bodies. It's not focused on the inner workings but only on the exterior veneer.

I am NOT my exterior and neither are you. Stop the madness. Do your best to stop obsessing about your body (I'm trying, too). Don't criticize powerful women about stupid stuff like their clothes or their bodies. Disagree with their views but leave their looks out of it, it's irrelevant. Vote for strong, smart women. If sex is selling, stop buying! Don't criticize your looks in front of your daughters (or sons). Exercise and eat well because it keeps your machine strong and allows you to feel good and do more, not just to be skinny or sexy. Read books and ditch the garbage magazines. Don't watch stuff on TV that objectifies, humiliates and criticizes.

Above all ladies, It's time to put our clothes back on!

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Edited to add: Thanks to my friend Jenny for filling in the gaps. The table image I was referring to is here. The woman is a recognized journalist (TV, not radio). Frankly, the image is worse than I remembered. I found a great article about the image on Salon.com. I especially like the last few sentences. It's not only Mika and Rihanna (etc) that are culpable.

You might think that doing something that you love (like art) would be easy. That, because it matters so much to you, it would fuel you and make you leap out of bed everyday excited to work. That is absolutely NOT true. In fact, doing work that truly matters to your heart and soul is tremendously difficult. It's difficult because it requires that you dig deep inside of yourself and unearth the most fragile and precious parts of your mind and heart and bring them out into the light. You have to actually show them to people and allow them to comment on them.  You have to listen as they critique. Sure, you can hide away and make work that is protected and free from critical eyes but, let's be honest, that doesn't really work either. At some point, you have to face the fear and the resistance.

I've been reading a new book and it's a life changer. It's called The War of Art (by Steven Pressfield). It's spot on and should be required reading for all artists. His chapters on resistance are changing my life. I've always thought about the fear and vulnerability in art making as inherent to the process. While I still acknowledge that part of the process, I also see that the fear is a form of resistance. It's one of the many forces that are hard at work keeping you away from the work you need to be doing.

People who know me well will say that I have a gypsy spirit and that I'm restless. I would say it too. I love a good move...a new house, a new town, a new studio (I've had 5 in 9 years). I like travel, change and motion. I like to repaint and redecorate. I rearrange my studio every few months. I like new things and I love to shop. I can get to a place where I have so many things on my plate that it's hard to do any one of them well. While I think that part of this restlessness is positive and keeps me moving forward and inspires curiosity and exploration, part of it is resistance. The urge to go-buy-change-acquire is, in part, the voice of resistance in my ear trying to pull me away from the work I need to do. So when I came across this paragraph, I was frozen...

Seriously...this is not just about art, right? I mean that paragraph applies to us all. It's about anything that requires heart and bravery. It's about doing something meaningful with your life and your work and pressing the mute button on the culture at large that just fuels the fires of resistance.

What this makes me think is that these fragile bits, those warm and fuzzy places inside of our hearts are where we will find what we need. When we nurture them in spite of the fear and pay attention to the myriad of tiny distractions that stand in our path like huge mousetraps. When we acknowledge that moving into the fear is the only way we can get anywhere meaningful...that is when the good work will be done.

A couple of weeks ago, I photographed my brother and his family while they were here in Houston. I've always loved photographing my brother. Maybe it's because he always let me or because he became so used to it that he grew to be comfortable in front of the lens? It may be for the same reason that I love photographing my own family...because I love them, and him.

Right at the end of our session, I shot a little series of images of my brother playing with his youngest son. Gibson ended the day by planting this big kiss right on Rhett's nose. I love the shot. When I first saw it, while downloading the images off the card, I was so struck by it that I just stopped and stared. In one of those unexpected moments of clarity, I saw that somewhere along the way, in little fits and starts, step by step and little by little, we've become adults.

Does that sound strange? I mean, sure, I know that we're adults but, in that moment of awareness, this picture made me feel like we are. I saw that we have children and people that rely on us! We can't just pack up and go anymore. We have ties...and mortgages, jobs, college funds for our kids and 5 year plans. We have to be home on time and our cars are full of baby car seats.

The young boy that I knew as my "little brother" is now a father. In a flash, I see a flood of tiny memories- rolling cigarettes and playing endless hours of chess on a train across Europe, driving across country to move to California, burying him in a pile of dirt in our front yard (why did he ever let me do that?!), stumbling in and out of bars, driving up the hills in San Francisco too fast trying to "get air" and talking to him (when he was much younger) about the birds and bees. Now we compare notes on parenting, drink tons of coffee and play way too much phone tag.

It's not a sad realization like an "oh the glory days..." kind of thing. No, it's a wonderful realization. Life is so much deeper now. And while it's hard, the days can grind, the responsibilities can chafe and sometimes you just want to go stumble in and out of a bar, you also have moments like this one. That moment when the tough melts away and all you have left is love. I see him in this picture, the adult and father. This picture makes me love us all more- him, our spouses and our kids. We're fighting the good fight and I'm proud of us.