The Gather Hunks Photo Collage Secrets *

*Or what I learned about Gather men. Or not.

    As many of you know, I love editing, playing with and otherwise fooling about with photos. I've done several black and white collages of Gather women that I titled Gather Cover Girls.  It made sense then to do one for men or so I thought. I put the word out for likely candidates. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to get a new and improved photo of themselves, right? For free no less. Only a few brave souls came forward. And then it hit me; Gather men are different from Gather women. I'm not judging. It's not about gender wars but something jarred me.

    Just look at the icons. There are way more snapshots of women, often glammed up, while more men hide behind cartoons or inanimate objects. Why? Are there more attractive women than men? Are the women more vain?  More women post photos of themselves while men rarely do. Why is that?

    What I did notice was the was the inordinate percentage of men with facial hair. What's that about?  I know there are quite a few old hippies here but that can't be the reason. The men that did come forward publicly and privately were sweetly shy and self effacing in an aw shucks 'who me?' kind of way. Where were the prima donnas, the G.Q. wannabees? As the collage began to take shape I resorted to trolling Gather for choices that fitted my original vision of the project. Yes, I did include our gather CEO Tom Gerace but only because he really is cute! It wasn't easy doing this project and I'm left with more questions than answers about gender differences and Gatherites in general.

     I've been known to ruffle feathers even though I play nice. That's the price of playing in the sandbox that is Gather.  I leave it to you to take the conversation forward. I'll be posting the collage under a separate heading called Gather Hunks Photo Collage #1. and a more artsy one  called Gather Guys X 3.  Both will have a who's who description. All thoughts and critiques are welcome, even nasty ones ;-) Hey, it seems to be the only way to get a gazillion comments around here...

Peace,

Layla