Verified by 
The first time I saw intimate photographs of a woman giving birth was in 1973. My roommate and I were house-sitting for a friend-of-a friend-of a friend, and neither of us ever met the couple who lived there. These enormous photographs were displayed in the entry hall and both the dining and living rooms. There must have been twenty of them, shot in black-and-white, matted and expensively framed. As to technique, they were mainly close-ups, leaving nothing —absolutely nothing— to the imagination.
Even in an era marked by mirrors and the precepts of Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the end of the weekend, I was more familiar with this woman’s vagina than I was with my own. Needless to say, I thought it was weird —beyond weird, really — imagining the UPS man with a package in his hand, trying to avert his eyes from the stirrups shot that hung by the front door.
1973 was also the year that the great-great-granddaddy of reality television, “An American Family” aired and, for twelve episodes, millions of us watched, transfixed by morbid curiosity, as the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California —Bill, Pat, and their five kids — imploded and exploded on the small screen. Keep in mind that sharing the airways were both “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family,” which presented the American family through a rose-colored, laugh-tracked lens.
In fact, the review by John J. O’Connor in The New York Times was aptly titled “Mr. and Mrs. Loud, Meet the Bradys.” The series was both a scandal and a sensation, given the piles of dirty laundry put on view. As a result, Bill Loud was apparently offered a job as a television game show host, and two of the kids were asked to be on “The Dating Game.” The now out-of-the closet Lance went back to New York, became friends with Andy Warhol, and got his fifteen minutes of fame, although it didn’t end well. The Louds weren’t singing “C’mon get happy!”
Little did I know that I was glimpsing the future, a time when birth videos on YouTube would be widely shared (and, according to some bloggers, considered positively addicting!) and, according to The New York Times, birth photographers are becoming as much as a fixture in delivery rooms as doctors and nurses. A future when a sex tape —that’s for you Minka, Kim, and Pam — could create, jump-start, or revive a career. A time when what were once intimate moments between people who loved each other — a marriage proposal, a wedding, a birth — were potential platforms in the making, serving double duty, as it were.
“Shock and Awww” is what The New York Times called it in a piece about the flash-mob marriage proposals that are all the rage, and which can cost $7000 or more. Doing it in public —and spending big bucks — apparently does make the heart grow fonder, and has the ancillary benefit of potentially getting millions of people to “like” your story. Take, for example, actor Isaac Lamb who proposed to Amy Frankel in Portland, Oregon with sixty friends dancing to Bruno Mars’ “Marry Me,” and posted the video to YouTube. It went viral — even I was sent the link at least three times — and, soon enough, the couple was fielding invites from “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America, “ and Ellen Degeneres. (They ultimately appeared on “Today.”) Even Bruno Mars tweeted his appreciation: “ I don’t think I could’ve made a better music video for this song. Thank you.”
The young man is an actor, after all, and without disputing the sincerity of the proposal, it’s not a bad thing for an actor when, suddenly, millions of people have seen your face and heard your voice. (Can you say “platform?” “Double duty?” “There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”) Indeed, as reported in the Portland Tribune at the end of June, the couple has been “so busy with interview requests and offers to do TV shows and game shows… That’s the challenge —we’re now sorting through the offers.” It’s all very Justin Bieber-esque, isn’t it? And Amy said “yes,” to boot.
That got me thinking about Kendal, sgal901 on YouTube, the fifteen-year-old whose video “Am I Pretty or Ugly?” went viral with over six million views. I wrote about her in an earlier post, and questioned whether the video was sincere. Well, following the “I-didn’t-really-mean-to-release-that-sex-tape” script, now Kendal has posted a video, saying it was all a joke and besides, she didn’t post it herself anyway. There are other new videos too, along with links to her Facebook page (which reveals this minor’s real name!), along with pleas to “follow” her. Apparently having seven million people “know” you on YouTube outweighs a barrage of truly awful and disparaging comments, along with some support. Any platform is better than none, I guess.
Which brings me to writing. As a writer, I know it’s practically impossible to get published nowadays without a platform. (Yes, I appreciate the irony of writing that sentence in a blog that is itself a platform. Never mind.) I amuse myself by wondering what literary lights would have gotten published today, given the platform requirement. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway: Yes. Flannery O’Connor, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger: No. But then there’s Truman Capote, a man ahead of his time. He would have loved it. I can’t help sharing something the writer Anne Lamott posted on her Facebook page: “Wow, you were all so great about my book announcement. Oh course, I had worked myself into a swivet of thinking everyone would think I was exploiting this page for further self-aggrandizement, and that I was turning into one of the lesser Kardashians....which is only half true.”
Not to worry, Anne. Just the word “swivet” is enough. Thank you.
So here’s to you, Minka. Alas, I’m too old to make a sex tape. If I’d only thought of it in 1973, when I was still a babe… If only I had archived it. Oh well.
http://portlandtribune.com/rc/64-features/111731-art-imitates-life-for-actor-in-sound-of-music
