I had my photos all in place for Not All of Us and had even published the blog when I had my wife,
Marie, look it over. She had already heard me read the essay to her and liked
it, but was reluctant about having to read it online. She didn’t like some of
the photos I used and said she was just “really picky”. I thought they made my
point quite well and particularly liked the one I was going to use as my
Facebook profile picture. It showed two rows of naked women curled up in a
fetal position covered with plastic-wrap on white Styrofoam…packaged just like
in our local supermarket meat departments. That’s just how porn treats women,
so why didn’t Marie like it? She gave me an insight I hadn’t considered before
due her own experience with a perverse college teacher. I was showing
provocative images while attempting to discredit the images. Because sexual
images linger so strongly in the mind, my words against porn might get eclipsed
by the pictures themselves and result in exactly the opposite of what I hoped
my essay would do. This is what happened in Marie’s experience. Her teacher had
her modify her original draft to be more graphic. Depending on one’s topic and
audience, being graphic may or may not be a good thing, but it turned out to
Marie’s disgust that this teacher appeared to revel in the imagery instead of
heeding the warning.
For this reason I modified TIME’s cover photo to use as my
Facebook profile picture because it exactly proves Marie’s point.
