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14d (edited) • ✨ Season 1: The Story Begins
Book 1/1980s
Through a Mothers Lens of Protection
I think my mom believed she could protect me from the world if she made the right choices. Maybe she hoped she could steer the storm before it ever touched me. So when it came time for my very first photographer, she insisted—absolutely insisted—that it be a woman.
In her mind, a female photographer meant safety.
A woman behind the lens meant someone who wouldn’t take advantage of a twelve-year-old girl with long legs, big eyes, and no idea what the industry could really be like.
And honestly? For that first little chapter, she was right.
My first photographer was gentle, patient, and professional. She posed me softly, spoke kindly, and made me feel like the world was just a bright window and a reflector board. She wasn’t trying to shape me into anything other than what I naturally was. She was young herself, only 22, and already she understood how to treat a child with dignity. She honored meby using our photos on her composites and business cards, letting my twelve-year-old face represent her work. I remember my mom watching the whole session like a hawk, but for once she didn’t have to intervene. (More Peggy Sirota 1/27/2026)
But here’s the thing:
That woman was the first and the last female photographer I would work with for many, many years.
After that, it was men. Men in studios, men on sets, men who could have shaped the entire course of my life if they had chosen the wrong moment or the wrong intention. The fact that I avoided so many of the “Me Too” stories you hear today still feels like divine intervention. Not careful planning. Not luck. God.
The only other female photographer I remember came a few years later when I booked Teen Magazine. That booking was huge for me. I was so excited—like electric excited—because it meant I was taken seriously. Teen Magazine was a big deal back then, and for a sixteen-year-old Valley girl, it felt like winning a little lottery.
So I walked into the Hollywood studio expecting glam, energy, youth… and instead I met a photographer who was, well, very much older, very much old-school Hollywood, and very obviously a lesbian. There was nothing wrong with that, but the way she interacted with me was something I had never experienced before.
I was posing, trying to keep my face soft and relaxed, when she suddenly leaned in and said:
“Look into the camera, my little kumquat.”
I froze for half a second.
My little what?
And then I burst out laughing—like full, uncontrollable teenage giggles. I couldn’t stop. Every time she tried to get me serious again, I’d remember “kumquat” and break all over.
The irony is that the laughter made the photos better. I was glowing, natural, alive. But still—even at sixteen, I felt the weirdness in the room. This was the second time in my entire early career that a woman photographed me… and somehow, she made me feel more watched than any man ever had.
Not unsafe.
Just… observed in a way I didn’t yet have the language for.
Looking back, that moment stands out, not just because of the nickname—I mean, who calls a teenager a kumquat?—but because it marked the end of something. After that, it was men, men, and more men. And little did I know, being surrounded by men in the industry could have gone so wrong, so fast, if God hadn’t been placing invisible guards around me.
But in that studio, laughing at the absurdity of being called a citrus fruit, I wasn’t thinking about protection. I was thinking about Hollywood, and opportunity, and the way my life felt like it was just about to start.
⭐️You’re invited to be part of the story📖
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Book 1/1980s
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