Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Guest Blog by Bronwen Marsden

Ilford FP-4 with deep green filter

Somewhere along the line, someone (or something) must have taught me that polite friendliness is the best way to get through life: never showing anger, fear, sadness, or disappointment. Theatre school trained me to open up on stage and on camera, but only rarely will anyone catch me displaying those less attractive emotions in my day-to-day life. This means my film “type” is the bubbly girl next door, usually younger than my real age. It means I’m seen as far more innocent and wholesome than my history would suggest. It means older men love to approach me and have conversations with me, because I’ll usually giggle politely at their stories and jokes, and blush charmingly when their flirtations become overt.

Ilford FP-4 & deep green filter

This way of presenting myself does have its benefits. One look at the entertainment industry (and, oh, a couple thousand years of art and literature) will tell you that women are either angels or vixens, and it could be argued that the angels have a bit more leverage. And I am, essentially, a “good girl.” I have a good relationship with my family, I have strong principles, I have many friends, I love to cook and garden, I care about animals and the environment…

…But that’s not the whole picture. I’m not a fool – I am well-informed about current events, I am fairly well-read, I am educated. I can think critically. I am not inexperienced – I have done things that would probably make your mother blush. I am not naïve – I know enough about human behaviour and body language to be able to read situations. And, you know what? I’m not Little Miss Nice either. I have a temper. I am stubborn. I struggle with depression. I bite my nails.

In my professional life as an actor, a background performer, and a model that second set of attributes comes out only rarely. (I am also a director – a job that allows for a fuller range of expression.) Most of the time I am paid to look pretty and do as I’m told. And most of the time it doesn’t bother me. I enjoy any and every chance I get to be in front of a camera or on stage, on the path to fulfilling my lifelong dream of making a career out of performance. Posing for glamour photos is fun. Being on set feels like home. Stepping out onto a lit stage is exhilarating like nothing else.

Kodak Technical Pan 120

But every now and then I’ll find myself giggling and blushing away, presenting this perfectly sweet version of myself to someone I barely know and don’t like, and I’ll want to scream. I was on a movie set at the end of the summer, at an outdoor swimming pool. Two days of being paid to sit in the sunshine in a bikini. There are worse ways of making a living. There were about three hundred extras on this set, most of them children and teens. I spent the majority of my time between takes reading The Iliad, and the sight of a pretty, bikini-clad woman reading Homer at a pool was apparently so novel that numerous older men started chatting me up. I’d have happily told them to go to hell and continued with my reading, but what did I do? I put down the book and giggled and blushed.

So, as a model, I wonder what is the opposite of a glamour shot? What does it look like if I attempt to repulse instead of attract? What does it feel like to pose in those more negative attitudes? What does it feel like to be the subject instead of the object? What does it take to look my age?"

Bronwen Masden

Ilford FP-4 & deep green filter