It just so happens that Victoria’s Secret sells a Bombshell bra, which has like 80% padding, and it’s something that trans girls as well as obviously cis women who want to achieve a larger, more “bombshell” bust wear. [Now] it’s actually a Victoria’s Secret term—more modern, less Jean Harlow—so I was trying to fill that role. The relationship obviously deteriorated, and with it went my bombshell femininity, which I think is for the best.
But then, years later, I started using it again casually to describe things as I started to swing more in a feminine presentation. Not really changing intellectually or emotionally; you don’t necessarily change your personal approach to things, but you change your physical approach to things which, for better or for worse, changes the world’s approach to you in many ways.
Anyway, we were casually using this term bombshell, and we did the hair test—me, Ethan, and Lucas. At the same time, I was looking at a couple of blogs, one being La Petite Melancolie. It had a lot of turn-of-the-century photography of women in pastoral settings, or in studios, mimicking a Salome kind of thing—a lot of nudity, a lot of body—and I was really attracted to those images, which were in my mind when we shot. It was springtime, and I went to the flower market, and to a retailer I love called US Evergreens—they don’t sell tedious things like tulips [laughs] but branches, leaves, vines….
I arrived [to the shoot] without any clothes, but with leaves and things, maybe much to Ethan and Lucas’s shock. Because of that, it forced us to shoot more nudes than, I think, anyone really anticipated. Lucas had brought all these crazy wigs, like crazy Dolly Parton stuff—wigs for drag queens, basically. And that forced a certain silhouette with the face and with the hair that was accentuated by the posing.
It’s my understanding that after that day was done, Ethan felt inspired to continue. He has a huge cork board running along one of the walls of his studio where he puts all the images he has made—a mood board of his own work—and it was really there that he started building Bombshell very soon after we shot. I look at this book as almost a work of satire, honestly—I can’t really be specific as to why, but there sometimes just seems to be a farcical sense to the photos. It’s not making fun of the subjects, but it’s making fun of the scenarios in some way—there’s something humorous and light-hearted and satirical at play.
