Why I’d Rather Not Halloween

28 Oct 2018 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Black and White Photography, Family Adventures, Glamour Portraits Tags: , , ,

 

Never put your faith in a Prince.

When you require a miracle,

trust a witch.

Catherynne M. Valente, In The Night Garden

 

 

There are more than a couple of reasons why I don’t like Halloween. For one, black is not a color in my rainbow and, more importantly, I don’t believe in encouraging ugly people to dress up looking worse. I love Halloween for one thing only: I adore pretty costumes and faith in the goodness of all mankind–an occasion to forget “stranger danger” paranoia, gamely opening our front door, offering treats to whoever rings the bell even when they look scary or wear masks.

Rita Rudner, a favorite standup comic, sums up this dilemma best:

Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents told me, ‘Never take candy from strangers.’ And then they dressed me up and said, ‘Go beg for it.’ I didn’t know what to do! I’d knock on people’s doors and go, ‘Trick or treat’ and when they offered me candy, I said, ‘No, thank you.’

And while you’re at it, please keep all skeletons where they belong: buried deep underground,  in biology labs for educational purposes only, or tucked away in the back of your proverbial closet. Trick or treat!

Click on “Leave a Comment” (top left) to share your favorite costume.

xoxox

xoxox

Give the women you love the most unique gift

of elegant and timeless portraits with a

Powerful Goddess Gift Certificate

for a two hour photo shoot of up to three people!

 

Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

© Sharon Birke

Managing Member, DoubleSmart LLC

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

Pleasure and Pain

26 Oct 2017 1 Comment

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Boudoir Photography, Fantasy, Glamour Portraits, Unique and Personalized Gift Ideas Tags: , , , , ,

 

If I’m lazy and I can’t come up with a costume,

I would just wear a slip

and write ‘Freudian’ on it.

Julia Stiles

Of all the holidays in the year, I can definitely live happily without Halloween. At a Halloween party I attended last year, it dawned on me that there is simply no good reason for ugly people to dress any scarier! But since I love fantasy,  pretty costumes, and aspire to be wholly human, I concede that it is necessary to embrace the  scary and dark parts of ourselves along with the beautiful, the fleeting moments with the enduring, death with life, pain with pleasure.

From one of the books on personal power I recommended in my previous blog post, Pema Chodron’s  When Things Fall Apart:

People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last–forever, we say–things that we don’t have to ssh, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. Many cultures celebrate this connectedness. There are ceremonies marking all the transitions of life from birth to death, as well as meetings and partings, going into battle, losing the battle, and winning the battle. We too could acknowledge, respect, and celebrate impermanence.

But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn’t that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one-sided, lopsided view of reality. Who ever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It’s promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death  is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something. Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (top left) to share your favorite fantasy. Trick or treat!

xoxox

 

 

 

 

xoxox

 

Give the women you love the most unique gift

of elegant and timeless portraits

with  a Powerful Goddess Gift Certificate

for a two hour photo shoot of up to three people:

Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

© Sharon Birke

Managing Member, DoubleSmart LLC

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

 

The Femme Fatale

25 Oct 2016 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Movies for Women, Boudoir Photography, Fantasy, Glamour Portraits Tags: , , , ,

To a smart girl

men are not the problem,

they’re the answer.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

_s5a0264-new-york-new-jersey-butterfly-mask-glamour-boudoir-powerful-goddess-portraits-sharon-birke-2

A bit of noir for Halloween?  This series is a tribute to the femme fatale, French for “deadly woman,” that mythical figure in film and literature of the irresistible woman who lures men to their downfall with seemingly supernatural powers. On my recent cruise down the Rhine river, she’s Loreley whom careless sailors blamed for their sunken ships. In Biblical history, she’s the one Adam pointed a finger at, whining, “She made me eat it!” She’s famously associated with noir films: glamorous, sexy, strong, duplicitous, sometimes lethal. She uses her charms on a male protagonist, usually a lonely man grateful for her attention and is willingly manipulated into unscrupulous acts.

Now that contemporary women are bent on professional success, women may bristle at the thought that they can only get what they want through entrapment, artifice, and seduction rather than through meritocratic achievement. We want to downplay, if not deny, the power of our sexuality as a tool to employ in navigating our place in the world.

Not the femme fatale.

She is at ease with her femininity and hold men in her thrall. She brings out their chivalry, the hero, the protector they want to be. She may want them to commit irrational acts yet they’ll be eager to please.  The femme fatale may be a man’s nightmare, but she is also his fantasy: a woman in charge of her own sexuality who’d take charge of his as well.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (top left) to share your favorite femme fatale. Happy Trick or Treat!

xoxox

_s5a0268-new-york-new-jersey-butterfly-mask-glamour-boudoir-powerful-goddess-portraits-sharon-birke

 _s5a0275-new-york-new-jersey-butterfly-mask-glamour-boudoir-powerful-goddess-portraits-sharon-birke-2

_s5a0279-new-york-new-jersey-butterfly-mask-glamour-boudoir-powerful-goddess-portraits-sharon-birke-2

_s5a0234-new-york-new-jersey-butterfly-mask-glamour-boudoir-powerful-goddess-portraits-sharon-birke

xoxox

Give the women you love the most unique gift

of elegant and timeless portraits

with  a Powerful Goddess portrait session Gift Certificate:

Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

© Sharon Birke

Managing Member, DoubleSmart LLC

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

Alice In Wonderland

29 Oct 2015 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Family, Glamour Portraits, Women Photography, Women's Empowerment Tags: , , , ,

 

 

Everything in the world

is about sex except sex.

Sex is about power.

Oscar Wilde

_S5A9586-Alice-in-Womderland-Glamour-Powerful-Goddess-Portraits-Sharon-Birke

Scarier than zombies, ghouls and witches, my Halloween thoughts wander down the rabbit hole of sexuality having three know-it-all teens curious about tricks and treats. Excerpts from Deborah L. Spar’s Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection:

Until the shift in social norms that Helen Gurley Brown captured and Erica Jong brought to conclusion, women were still bound by the contractual nature of courtship: sex in exchange for a husband/protector, two cows or true love.

Women may lead themselves to believe that now that they can have casual sex, they are truly playing the same game as men. In theory, hooking up means men are now commodified as easily as women. In practice, though, it also means women are no longer in a position to ask for anything but sex in exchange for sex–not marriage, not a date, not even a phone call the next morning or a ride home.

Unless women actually enjoy casual sex, they may have struck a deal that works against their own best interests.  Women may like sex as much as men. They may want it as frequently and in the same infinity of permutations. But the link between sex and relationship is stronger for women, as is the social penalty for promiscuity.

Ultimately, the question is whether women truly enjoy the freedom of uncommitted sex.  Are women equally content to give and get sex for nothing, or have they given men what men want (easy and cheap sex) without getting much in return?

The widespread embrace of the hooking-up norm may be one of womankind’s greatest gift to men: No real commitment. No real feelings required. This is like a man’s paradise!

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what you have gained in pursuit of this liberty.

xoxox

_S5A9599-Alice-in-Womderland-Glamour-Powerful-Goddess-Portraits-Sharon-Birke

_S5A9712-Alice-in-Womderland-Glamour-Powerful-Goddess-Portraits-Sharon-Birke

_S5A9642-Alice-in-Womderland-Glamour-Powerful-Goddess-Portraits-Sharon-Birke-2

_S5A9721-Alice-in-Womderland-Glamour-Powerful-Goddess-Portraits-Sharon-Birke-2

xoxox

Give the women you love the most unique gift of elegant and timeless portraits

with a Powerful Goddess portrait session Gift Certificate:

Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

© Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

 

Face To Face

30 Oct 2014 3 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Boudoir Photography, Glamour Portraits Tags: , , , ,

It’s not that I’m afraid to die.

I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen

 _S5A9051New-York-New-Jersey-feather-Glamour-Boudoir-Sharon-Birke-Portraits

When I was growing up, Halloween was All Souls Day.   Parties, costumes and candy had absolutely nothing to do with it.  The closest it came to partying was how we had to hang out with relatives at the cemetery, saying hello to the families in the grave next door as we cleaned up family plots in honor of our dear departed. I have no doubt I would have much preferred trick or treat.

From Pema Chodron’s “When Things Fall Apart”:

We are raised in a culture that fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in the process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life.

Death in everyday life can also be defined as experiencing all the things we don’t want. Our marriage isn’t working; our job isn’t coming together. Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things, not working out. Time passing is as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. But getting old, getting sick losing what we love–we don’t see these events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what.

Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself no matter what’s going on. Fear of death is the background of the whole thing. It’s why we feel restless, why we panic, why there’s anxiety. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From an awakened point of view, that’s life. Death is wanting to hold on to what you have to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you feel completely together.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share your thoughts.  Trick or treat!

xoxox

_S5A9041New-York-New-Jersey-feather-Glamour-Boudoir-Sharon-Birke-Portraits

_S5A9023New-York-New-Jersey-feather-Glamour-Boudoir-Sharon-Birke-Portraits

_S5A9080New-York-New-Jersey-feather-Glamour-Boudoir-Sharon-Birke-Portraits

_S5A9056-EditNew-York-New-Jersey-feather-Glamour-Boudoir-Sharon-Birke-Portraits

© Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

%d bloggers like this: