New Pictures

For those of you that don't know, my career is studying and appreciating the human body.  I teach movement to actors, and I choreograph intimacy on stage.  The human body to me is the center of my life.  How it is functioning, how it moves, how it feels, and how it looks are all things that consume me on a daily basis.  The pin-up and boudoir pictures for me are a representation of that.

The fact that there could be so much wrong with my body on the inside made me hate it for years and years.  In college, I thought I was the ugliest girl out of all my friends.  I hated my kidney disease and what it was doing to my body.  I wanted to be graceful and beautiful but I didn't have any capacity or confidence to do so.

Then in graduate school, I was taught by my mentors Aaron Anderson and David Leong to really see the human body and what it is saying.  They taught me to appreciate my own body in a way I never had.  At the same time, they taught me how to control my body in every situation.  I learned to appear confident, or feminine, or shy, or masculine, or whatever the situation called for.

Now I teach movement to college students.  I do it because I want to teach what I wish I had learned earlier.  That sexuality on stage and off is not scary and it is not that taboo.  It is natural.  I consider myself a different sort of feminist.  I am a feminist that uses her femininity in a way that works for me.  I am a woman, why would I ever want to be anything else?  This is why I teach sexual intimacy on stage to college students.  I am very passionate about it.  No one is teaching it anywhere, because most of us have to learn it on our own.   I think of how much easier my life would have been if I had learned not to be scared of sexuality at a younger age.  I am not talking about sex necessarily, I am talking about intimacy.  Human connection is becoming so unnatural to us and I try to stop that process.

I started this kidneys and pinups website because of my appreciation for all things bad and good about the human body.  I took these picture because I see the inner workings of my body every day.  I get to see my blood exit my body and return four days a week.   I am covered in tubes and ports, and most days I feel very unfeminine.  It is difficult for anyone to feel confident in that kind of situation.  Taking pictures like this reminds me that I am a woman, that there is beauty in every body, and that even with my flaws, I can appreciate what I have.  You can even see my port in the third picture.

All pictures by Mi Amor Studio in OKC

These pictures were important to me to take before the transplant.  I wanted to have a benchmark of what my body looked like at this time.  I don't post them to be shocking (I don't think they are shocking at all-most magazines show more).  I post them so that we all can see the human body can be beautiful even when so much is going wrong inside it.