…but what does this have to do with boudoir?

Boudoir is about capturing your beauty, yes, but also your strength. Your confidence. Your ability to take what the world throws at you and stand.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing information about abuse of women, primarily from the perspective of online violence.

Sure, I hear you say. But what does this have to do with boudior?

I mean, nothing, and everything.

My goal in what I do is the opposite of abuse; it is about caring and kindness and love and celebration and support. It is about affirming women and anyone who looks at themselves with less than kind eyes.

There is the old chestnut about how baby elephants are kept with chains on their leg so that when they grow up, their handlers can attach a rope to their leg and still maintain control over the elephant. The creature has learned not to struggle against its bondage.

We are the same way as people. Things people say can bind us and hold us and have us believe things about ourselves that aren’t true. And sometimes it’s the people who are closest to us—who we let deep into our hearts—who say the worst things and through their words cast an enchantment of deception over us.

What I hope my images do is help break those chains. Those bonds that hold you back. Those things that people you cared about and who you thought cared about you told you that broke your spirit.

I know, I am not a councillor. I don’t have a degree in psychology. But I can listen. And I can affirm, and I can take amazing images of you. I can’t promise that how you see yourself will change magically overnight. But I ask that you are willing to look at yourself with kind eyes. With eyes that look on you only in love.

If you have an amazing partner who treats you with kindness and affection and love, I celebrate that. It is something to be treasured.

And if you don’t? If you have been surrounded by people who have mistreated and abused you? Know that it can change. It can get better. There are people out here whose entire job it is to help you, who only want what’s best for you, because you are you, and you are worthy of love and kindness and affection.

It can be hard. It might even be dangerous. And I don’t want my words to put you in a situation that might be even more dangerous.

But I’m here, if you need me as a photographer, or simply as someone who is here to support women. As an ally. As a supporter. As a friend.

And that’s hard, because sometimes, I don’t know what to do. I am not a man of action; I am a man of profound second thoughts, which lead to third thoughts, which typically lead to fourth, fifth and sixth thoughts. But I’ll do what I can, and if that means using a platform that is supposed to be there to find potential clients as a way of amplifying the message that we need to do better in protecting women? Then I will do so.

I don’t know if anyone will even read this, but it is something that must be said.

Note that this has nothing to do with politics; instead it is about the way we treat each other, and for most of history women have been been treated poorly: abused, belittled, slapped about and raped. Things have changed tremendously in the last 107 years. 107 years since women first got the right to vote, but these things, this abuse, still continues. Yes, we have made progress, and let us celebrate the progress. In 1963, a woman couldn’t get her own bank account without a male relative co-signing. The next year, a law was passed that ended that practice. In 1925, the Federal Divorce act allowed women to file for divorce for the same reasons as a man. In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) was passed, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, and ensuring equal pay for work of equal value. The next year the Canada Labour Code was amended, no longer permitting employers to lay-off or fire people who were pregnant. By 2009, there were more women in the labour market than men.

And yet.

And yet an estimated 840 million women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This figure has remained mostly unchanged since the turn of the century. Intimate partner violence has declined, but only at a rate of 0.2 percent per year.

Eight percent of women 15 years or older have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partmer.

Last year, about 50,000 women were killed by their intimate partner or other family members. That’s almost 60 percent of all the 83,300 women who were murdered in 2024. That’s 137 women each and every day that are killed by their intimate partners or other family members.

At the same time, only 11 percent of all male homicides were committed by a partner or family member.

Things are changing, but they are changing slowly. I can only hope as we keep shining lights into the dark corners of society things will change.

Speaking to all the men out there, this is where you come in. Because it’s not the women’s fault that they were killed, and it’s much rarer for women to kill their partner. Yes, this behavour has to stop, too.

What I do is the opposite of abuse, yes. But that’s not enough. It’s not something to balance out. It needs to be actively opposed. So that’s what I am doing here, too in some small way.

This song has been bouncing through my head the last few days. (Yes, I know there’s another version, but this one picks up a little more on that sense of righteous anger.)

Here are the lyrics

[Verse 1]
I must've dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They're moving into the street
Now, did you read the news today?
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
They're burning into the night

[Pre-Chorus]
There's too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see this is a land of confusion?

[Chorus]
This is the world we live in (Oh, oh, oh)
And these are the hands we're given (Oh, oh, oh)
Use them and let's start trying (Oh, oh, oh)
To make it a place worth living in

[Verse 2]
Ooh, Superman, where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow?
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour

[Pre-Chorus]
This is the time, this is the place
So we look for the future
But there's not much love to go round
Tell me why this is a land of confusion

[Bridge]
I remember long ago
Ooh, when the sun was shining
Yes, and the stars were bright all through the night
And the sound of your laughter as I held you tight
So long ago

[Verse 3]
I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know we'll never keep

So moving forward, what are the key takeaways?

1) You are not alone. Abusers seek to isolate you. Why? Because we are stronger together. They will send insulting DMs, or try and keep you from your friends. Don’t let them. Find people you can trust and let them help you.

2) It’s getting better, in some places, and in some places—typically online—it seems to be getting worse. Hold strong. Stick with it. Enlist people to surround you.

3) I care. Yes, I know, I’m just some rando dude with a camera, but I care deeply about how we as humans should (but often fail to) treat each other with humanity and compassion and love. I have a tough time showing it, and spend much of my time paralyzed by inaction because what can I do? But I will do what I can.

4) Finally, I know this time of year can be hard on some people. Too commercialized. Too much emphasis of presents and spending money. Screw the stuff. Try and find some real connection. It’s hard, I know, but it can be so worth it.