httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhu7rs3Ihas
That’s how Amy Schumer described her nude photo by Annie Leibovitz for the new Pirelli Calendar, seizing the words from the tweets and thinkpieces by her critics and cheerleaders, all of whom will reliably bicker over the headline-making photo shoot from the star, who has turned the unapologetic, self-deprecating embracing of her body image into a zeitgeist-seizing art form.
In the photo, Schumer is nude with nothing but a pair of underwear and some heels on, her arms opting to conceal her nipples instead of the rolls on her stomach as she slouches, and holding a coffee cup as the flash of a bulb startles her face startles into a candid, quite beautiful pose.
In addition to Schumer, other models for the calendar include names not classically associated with the phrase “Pin-up”-Selma director Ava DuVernay; Yao Chen, the first Chinese goodwill ambassador for United Nations High Commission for Refugees; tennis phenom Serena Williams-and tfore reappropriates the phrase to encompass new layers of sexiness and beauty: the kind that triumphs confidence, intelligence, class, and strength as part of the idea of exhibitionism.
Schumer has always been candid about her body image, partly because she recognizes the radical power of being a successful and sexual woman in Hollywood while not having the body type of a waifish clothing rack with cartoon boobs.
How many interviews has Schumer sat through, forced to answer questions about being a “Trailblazer” because she’s carved a place for herself in show business without being a size zero?
So it’s with a careful honed grace, sharpened from so much of that, that Schumer shares the photo with the perfect message, a collection of words that some will use to describe how she looks, that she will use to describe her looks as her relationship to the photo and her body evolves, and that actually mean something real-more real than any rote “This is beautiful!” plastic endorsement.
In an episode of Inside Amy Schumer that spoofed 12 Angry Men, jurors did not debate whether the defendant was guilty of committing murder, but instead the crime of not being hot enough to be on TV. At one point, one of the jurors bemoans the end of the days w only women as sexy and perfect as Marilyn Monroe-the iconic pin-up girl-were allowed on TV. Monroe was a size 8, another juror points out.