2010 Self-Portrait: "while you're alive you might as well show your bare ass"

Well, having just said I was too shy to take good self-portraits fourteen years ago, I remembered the Red Wall self-portraits I took over a summer day in 2010--catching the changing light on a wall I'd just painted red. (I used the plastic drop-cloth in one photo. Oh, I just remembered--that was 3M window-wrap I'd saved from winter. Ha.)

I was uncomfortable posting them, but I wanted to, too. Partly because I always did––and do!––want to see older women, the reality of what our bodies look like, how they change. Partly because I wanted to blow away the lies that left me nothing but lost and broken hearted.*
And partly 'cause I loved and was surprised by how well they turned out. (This was before cell phone cameras--I had some dinky digital camera.)

This, below, the boldest, is "Red Wall, Afternoon". Let's see... I was forty-nine here... Maybe I should do something so bold again now!

Oh! Looking back at the original comments on this series, I see I had quoted Jim Carroll:

"There ain't much time left, you're born out of this insane abyss and you're going to fall back into it, so while you're alive you might as well show your bare ass."

A very Captain Kirkian sentiment. But actually, I'd quoted Carroll in response to a commenter who thought I hadn't revealed enough.
I disagreed--the photos were a complete revelation--you don't have to show your literal ass.
(But I dared her to go first, if that's what she thought was called for. She did not take up my dare.)
Also, I loved using the plastic window wrap as a classical drape.

*Bruce Springsteen, ya know...