I'm a feminist. Deal with it.
And, one thing I think a lot of people don't know about me is that I grew up with a fairly feminist mother.
But because of the era in which I grew up, my mother's views were often considered controversial. She pointed out things that many people simply accepted as normal. She challenged assumptions. She paid attention to inequities. And whether I realized it at the time or not, that had a profound influence on me.
Now, depending on where you stand on the sociopolitical spectrum, you might hear the word "feminist" and immediately assign either a positive or negative value to that. Or, if you're a reasonably functioning adult, you might simply see it as a description of a set of beliefs and move on with your day.
I can't claim to know what it's like to be a woman in this world. I can't speak from that perspective and I will not try to. What I can speak to is a lifetime of observation, beginning with the things my mother encouraged me to notice, continuing through my teenage years, adulthood, relationships, friendships, and ultimately through a career that has placed me in direct collaboration with many amazing professional models, most of whom are women.
Over all that time, I've maintained a fairly obvious and unapologetic belief that women deserve equity. Not because I enjoy labels. Not because I need a political identity. Simply because many of the core principles behind feminism strike me as, I dunno, rational. The idea that people should have equal opportunity, equal respect, equal safety, and equal access to professional, economic, and social advancement is not exactly a radical concept.
At least it shouldn't be.
Over the last ten or fifteen years, social media has encouraged many professionals to avoid expressing any meaningful position on anything. The advice is understandable. If you're posting hyper-partisan political content every day on your wedding photography page, you're inevitably going to alienate potential clients who disagree with you.
I get it.
But what I'm talking about isn't partisan politics.
To me, feminism, particularly from the perspective of a man, is simply an acknowledgment that women have historically gotten the short end of the stick in countless areas of society, and that pretending those problems have all magically disappeared is absurd.
Now, are things better than they were? Of course they are.
Where I live, women have rights and protections that many women in other countries can only dream about. Progress has happened. That matters, I know it does.
But the idea that everything is now "solved', that men and women exist in perfect equilibrium and there is nothing left worth discussing, strikes me as deeply naive, nay, willfully blind.
Whenever conversations about marginalized groups arise, whether we're talking about race, age, disability, sexuality, or women, the same arguments always appear.
Someone inevitably points out examples of men who have struggled. Men who lost jobs. Men who were overlooked. Men who suffered setbacks.
And yes, those examples are real.
The problem is that counterexamples do not invalidate larger patterns, plain and simple.
The existence of individual men who have struggled does not somehow prove that women have achieved complete social, economic, and cultural equity (or even close).
That's not how any of this works.
Someone points to a few exceptions and then declares the entire conversation over.
Meanwhile, women are still navigating issues of safety, opportunity, representation, credibility, and autonomy that men often don't even have to think about. Not because every man is malicious. Not because there's some giant secret male-only conspiracy meeting happening in a volcano somewhere. But because systemic problems often persist precisely because the people participating in them don't recognize them.
That's one of the defining characteristics of a systemic issue. You can contribute to it without intending to. You can reinforce it without noticing. You can benefit from it while simultaneously insisting it doesn't exist.
Over time, I never stopped believing these things. What changed was how openly I discussed them.
I gradually convinced myself that it was professionally volatile and likely best to avoid fusing the two things. You know, that it wasn't worth mentioning too often on my professional accounts. That people came to me for photography, education, art, and business advice, not social commentary.
In hindsight, I think that was a mistake.
One reason is something I've experienced repeatedly over the years.
Every so often, some random guy I've never met messages me on social media and immediately launches into a sexist joke, a crass comment about a model I've photographed, or some other nonsense that assumes I'll naturally agree with him.
And every time it happens, I'm left thinking the same thing: Why exactly do you think we're on the same team?
Just because I'm a man doesn't mean I think the way you think.
The assumption itself is fascinating. Not fascinating in a good way. More like the way a traffic accident is fascinating.
The idea that openly sexist attitudes are so normalized in some people's minds that they can casually approach another man, a stranger even, and assume immediate solidarity says a lot. And none of it is encouraging.
No, I don't plan on turning my entire professional presence into a nonstop stream of feminist activism.
But I'm also not going to stay quiet anymore.
There are still problems. There are problems in positions of power. There are problems in economics. There are problems in the arts. There are problems in education. There are problems in everyday social interactions.
And women continue to encounter those problems because society still places limitations on them that men often don't experience.
Before anyone rushes in to tell me that men and women are different, let me save you the trouble: Of course they are. Nobody is arguing otherwise.
But what I find amusing is how often that argument comes from the exact same people who, moments earlier, insisted that men and women are already completely equal and experience the world in exactly the same way.
So which is it?
If men and women are meaningfully different, then perhaps we should acknowledge that they also face different challenges and obstacles, no?
And if they face different challenges and obstacles, then maybe we should stop pretending every conversation about women's equity is unnecessary, no?
You can support women without hating men. You can advocate for women's rights, opportunities, safety, and advancement without despising yourself or your gender, fellas.
Those are not mutually exclusive positions.
For a while, I stayed quieter than I should have. Not because I was ashamed of what I believed. I simply convinced myself it wasn't (often) necessary in my professional world.
I don't believe that anymore. Some things need to be said.
And if whatever small amount of influence I have can help challenge a few assumptions, encourage a little empathy, or perhaps cause a young man to rethink an attitude he's inherited without examining, then that's reason enough for me to say what I feel I want to say.
Oh and I hear you already, because I've heard it a few times over the years, so allow me go right into "Part 2" here...
Before anyone comes at me with the idea that I photograph women in images that are considered sexy and therefore, ipso facto, I must be sexist, exploitative, or somehow contributing to the problem, I'd encourage you to reconsider your position aka sit the fuck down for a minute.
Over the years, I've been very vocal about my views on sexuality in art and photography. I've spent a great deal of time around the boudoir community as an educator and public figure because I understand something many people seem uncomfortable acknowledging: sexual energy can absolutely be a source of empowerment. For some people it's confidence. For some it's reclamation. For some it's healing. For some it's simply self-expression.
Whatever the motivation, the idea that sexuality is automatically degrading or exploitative has never made much sense to me.
Now, to be clear, I don't shoot boudoir clients. I don't photograph people who have never done such a shoot and want to explore that experience. That's not my expertise. I work primarily with experienced models and artists, yes I do. But the principle remains the same.
To me, sexuality, beauty, sensuality, and expression should be rooted in strength. They should communicate confidence, agency, self possession, and intention. If something feels exploitative, looks exploitative, or appears designed solely to reduce a woman to a prop for someone else's consumption, I want nothing to do with it.
I've called people out on that for years. What I have very little patience for is the endless stream of lazy, token, cheeseball glamour photography that presents women as decorative objects and little else. You know the kind. The same tired concepts, the same adolescent fantasies, the same visual clichés dragged out for the 100,000th time. An attractive woman in a schoolgirl outfit sticking her butt at the camera while sucking on a lollipop is not exactly the artistic summit of human civilization in my view.
I understand that women can choose to participate in whatever imagery they wish. That's their right. But my interest has never been in creating images that merely invite consumption. I'm interested in creating images that command attention. There's a difference.
The women in my photographs are often beautiful. Sometimes they're sensual. Sometimes they're provocative. Sometimes they're intimidating.
Good. I like them to be intimidating.
I like images where the woman appears powerful enough that a man might feel nervous standing across from her. Images where she's clearly the protagonist of her own story rather than a decoration inside someone else's fantasy. Images that communicate strength first and attractiveness second. Or ideally, both at the same time.
Have I created some cheeseball glamour over the years? Sure. I've been doing this for a long time. Anyone who claims they emerged from the womb as a fully formed artist is either lying or insufferable or both. But even in my earliest years there were concepts I refused to shoot, certain tropes I never liked, certain aesthetics that felt cheap, exploitative, or simply beneath what I wanted to create. As time passed, that list became even longer.
Not because I became prudish. Not because I suddenly developed objections to nudity or eroticism. I have no issue with either subject. The issue has never been nudity. The issue has never been eroticism.
The issue is intent. It's aesthetic. It's context. It's whether the image is built around empowerment or exploitation. Those are not the same thing, no matter how many people insist on pretending they are.
If a photograph celebrates a person's confidence, autonomy, sexuality, beauty, and strength, I can get behind that all day long. If it exists merely to diminish someone into a stereotype, a fantasy, or a piece of visual furniture, I'm out. Always have been. The longer I do this work, the less willing I am to compromise on that distinction.