The making of the conceptual Barbie parody photoshoot

 Hello readers. :) Welcome to the behind the scenes of my latest photoshoot, the conceptual Barbie parody. There was a lot more preparation put into this shoot than most of my others, but it's to be expected, work with Orion is often very complex. I'd been wanting to do this shoot for about a year or more, and a LOT of planning and symbolism went into it. If you'd like to read about that, please check out this sister blog entry.


 This was one of those shoots where I had an exact image in my mind of how I wanted it to look, and fortunately, everything went perfectly! I'm absolutely thrilled. :) However, because I wanted everything to be perfect, I spent a lot of time looking around for the perfect wardrobe pieces.


 I had the wig in mind, long, straight, blonde, with Barbie style bangs (much like my typical Cleopatra style bangs).  Anticipating the shoot in the future I started searching, and I finally found the perfect one on Amazon. It was actually wonderful quality despite the low pricetag, I was super thankful for it! Really soft and silky. I did have to cut the bangs a bit, but other than that it was ready to go out of the box.

There are shops and particular items that pop up on Amazon but come and go (especially in the costume department), some never to return, lot in the bowels of online shopping, so I snatched it up as soon as I saw it, even though it was months before the shoot. I was terrified that if I waited, when it was closer to the time I needed to buy it, I'd be met with my old enemy:

Unavailable

Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

  I've lost many a wonderful wardrobe piece to that! :( Sometimes I'm able to find the product on another site, but sometimes I'm not, causing the search to restart and the possibility of settling for something less than perfect if there's a deadline. At the time of the shoot, I had Orion help me by following a tutorial to twist up my massive mane into small bunches to shove into the wig cap, then we both pulled the wig over top. Yes, both of us. It two two people to get all my hair into that wig. :)

  Another obscure but PERFECT piece I found on Amazon: The "Zombie" Barbie necklace. Very unique, and 100% exactly the small touch the photoshoot needed. I was originally going to buy a regular Barbie necklace, one, to fill up the space the dress' necklace left on my chest, and two, so there was no confusion on who I was portraying. When I found this gem unintentionally, my whole day was made! :D It's still written in the classic Barbie font, but it says the word "Zombie" instead, and looks so similar that it could be missed if you didn't look closely. Perfection, thanks God!

  I also found the pink mini dress on Amazon, but at the time of writing this, it appears that it's no longer for sale. See, what did I say earlier about Amazon and particular individual objects vanishing into the abyss? Glad I found it, it was exactly what I was looking for: hot pink, short, and very Barbie style/doll-like. However, since I bought it a few months ago and it was cut small, it just barely fit at the time of the shoot. I had to put on a corset underneath it and have Orion zip it up in the back "Gone With the Wind" style. Haha! Before I found this dress, I bought a back-up at the local thrift shop in case I didn't find anything better down the line, so I wouldn't be stuck dressless, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. At the same time I also stumbled upon the pink high heels in the thrift shop, which I did keep and end up using.

  Since Barbie has blue eyes, and I have dark brown, this was a big thing that I needed for the transformation. A few months ago, anticipating the future shoot, I originally bought another pair, but unfortunately, they didn't look the way I hoped. They are very transparent and looked extremely dark blue over my dark eyes, and for this shoot I needed a bright vivid blue to show up on camera. In fact, the original pair was so dark that the colour change was pretty much unnoticeable unless the camera was set to flash and extremely close to my face, and not much better in person. However, I did use them in a neat mini-photoshoot up close with a blue mask on my face, and that turned out pretty nicely. :)  I had Orion help me pick out a different pair that would stand out on camera, even if it didn't look realistic in person. We found a winner!  Here is the second pair I bought that worked perfectly. They're much creepier and unnatural looking in person, it was weird seeing myself in the mirror, haha!

Me sitting awkwardly waiting for the silicone to dry, doing the vacant face! 

 The star of this photoshoot was the prosthetic skin attachments, allowing me to be held up by hooks and rope through my flesh. This is where Orion shines! He hand made the skin pulls from scratch with silicone. It was so exciting when he'd send me text updates of their progress. He truly is an amazing artist. Here are some photos from when he applied them to me:

Artist at work

Trimming the excess silicone

Much better!

Brushing on the silicone glue...eugh, this is where it got icky on my skin.

Me sitting, waiting for the silicone to get dry enough to add the next layer.

After the first layer of silicone was brushed on, we did the other arm, then when they were dry enough, we did another layer on each. When everything was done, Orion used some cosmetic powder to blend the prosthetic to my skin and emphasize the highlights/lowlights in the curves of the silicone. I didn't get any photos of this process because I couldn't really do anything with my hands after this point! :P

Then Orion put up the rope and hooks, and we spent a good amount of time adjusting their position to be juuuuust right. After that, it was time to test the lighting, then start shooting! :) 

Getting ready to shoot!

Me messing with the camera resulted in this beautiful shot.

Lighting test! :D 

  There was a second half of the shoot that we planned out, but it kind of fell through the cracks. I had intended to get some shots of pricetags pinned onto various parts of my body, with a number representing something that women do to themselves, usually in order to "fit in" with society's standards (tummy tuck, shaving/waxing, breast enhancements, etc), but long story short, we didn't get around to it. I forgot to bring pins to pin the tags, and by the time this half of the shoot was over (over an hour of holding my arms up like that), I was exhausted and it was the last thing on my mind. Shame, I did all that research calculating numbers for nothing :P  Still, I'm more than happy with the photos we got! <3

  I feel like I should add a disclaimer here:  If you want to do something to yourself, or DON'T want to do something, do what YOU want! I don't want it to seem like I'm against bodily alterations, because I'm not. I'm only against doing things that you don't really want to do because someone else (the media, partner, family/friends, etc) is pressuring you into doing it. For example, I was constantly teased growing up because I was underweight and had a very small bust, to the point where I considered getting breast implants when I grew up, even though my personal aesthetic preference is smaller breasts, because I was made to feel ugly and not good enough. Don't feel that way. If you want larger breasts, or whatever it is you want to change, go ahead and do it if YOU want it, but don't let anybody or anything manipulate you into altering your body for anybody but yourself. You're the only person in control of your body.



  Oh! I almost forgot to mention. These days, shaving is pretty much obligatory in the USA, and unfortunately, you're commonly seen as unhygenic or unfeminine if you don't. Trust me, I deal with that often because I don't shave. I only shave my armpits during specific photoshoots or some mermaid gigs, for aesthetic preferences, and don't shave my legs...well, ever.  This photoshoot was the first time I've shaved my legs in just over four years, done for realism and aesthetics of the character. Now it's been awhile and my legs are just prickly. Ick.

  All in all, a LOT of preperation and thought went into this shoot, and again, I want to give a BIG shout out and thank you to Orion, who made the prosthetic hooked skin by hand, and really tied the entire shoot together! 

 Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more adventures :) 

Love,

Queen Werandra