Emulating Mae West

 

This month I had an exciting opportunity to practice some modeling with a very real and very good photographer, and I found I still have so much to learn. Afterwards, I promised to practice, practice, practice! I was given some homework - look to the photographs of Old Hollywood and see how the actresses posed and try to emulate them. The next day I did just that. I went online and tried to find some 1930s and 1940s actresses that had facial and upper torso features similar to mine. For me, I learned I had a short neck, and I found out that Mae West also was known to have a short neck as well. So, for my first round of practice poses, I am going to try to emulate the wonderfully glamourous Mae West! 

Now, I am no blonde bombshell. I really do not see myself as sexy or voluptuous. Definitely not like Mae West. And that brings me to the second part of my homework - I need to remind myself I am not an albatross. I am a swan. I have to remind myself that and that, I think, is going to be just as hard as practicing the poses. I have never really thought of myself as attractive. I always saw myself as a Don Knotts more than a Clark Gable or a Carol Burnett more than a Marilyn Monroe. But I think this homework of studying and emulating the beautiful women of Old Hollywood will be good for me in two ways - practice my poses and build my own self confidence. So anyways . . .This is how I emulated, or tried to, the beautiful Mae West. 

Now, Mae West had thin eyebrows more in line for the 1930s, I chose to leave mine alone and as for hair, she had a shorter blonder hair. I styled mine to be similar but as you can see it is not exact. . . In some cases, not even close. The goal was the pose and the facial expression. As for clothes and accessories, if I had something close, I used it otherwise I used what I had. 

This is what I came up with. I'm ok with how they turned out, I was hoping to get closer to her poses but once my neck was sore, I was done. I took what I had and learned to be alright with it. I got close a few times but like I said, it is not exact. This was actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be and just getting the photos took all of a Saturday morning. I had choses 4 to recreate but the last one was a hot mess. I decided to scrap that one. 

I did do a little freestyling at a few points, and I am including those at the end. My favorite of the whole lot was actually a blooper. For one of the portraits, I took out my marabou feathered bed jacket. There were little feathers floating in the air and I blew one out of my face, the timer on the camera caught it just right. I took it and ran it in a black and white. Sometimes the best shots are the ones you are not working too hard at.