Artist Karice Mitchell Deconstructs the Black 'Playboy' at Silke Lindner in New York

Karice Mitchell
Paradise (Triptych), 2025
Archival inkjet print, custom frame, sandblasted glass, vinyl


text by Karly Quadros

“I love using familiarity as a way to ask unfamiliar questions,” says Karice Mitchell.

Drawing from Players magazine, often dubbed “the Black Playboy,” Mitchell’s photo-based works explore the no man’s land between exposure and illegibility, frankness and mystery, modesty and obscenity. Through her closely cropped diptychs, triptychs, and modified images sourced from the pages of this landmark magazine of Black erotica, she explores the self-definition, personal expression, and resilience of Black women. Economy of Pleasure, her latest show at Silke Lindner and her first solo exhibition in the U.S., hones in on the early 2000s: the era of the video vixen, digital downloads, and lower back tattoos. Sand blasted over intimate images of a woman’s shoulder, a hoop earring, a pristine pump and a French pedicure are words pulled from the magazine’s pages and models’ nommes de guerre: angel, sensation, paradise.

After a frustrating moment of censorship when she was commissioned to do a public work of art in her native Vancouver, British Columbia in 2023, Mitchell returned more committed than ever to her project exploring the representations of Black women in adult media. While it may seem salacious, the work itself is deeply sensitive and interior. There is recognition between women who have worked to claim their bodies as their own through ink, jewelry, donning clothing, or shedding it. The work is seductive but withholding. Notably missing are the Players models’ faces — rather than exposing these women to judgment and interrogation once again, Mitchell’s work gives the audience only glimpses of a personality and a life lived. Her work is an interrogation, a negotiation, and a reclamation. The rest is on the viewer.

KARLY QUADROS: Can you talk a little bit about yourself, your practice, and how you got here?

KARICE MITCHELL:  I live in Vancouver. I'm an assistant professor full-time at the University of British Columbia. I teach photography there. That work does inform my practice in a lot of ways.

I'm really interested in one publication in particular: Players magazine, which started in the early seventies and stopped in about 2005. It was dubbed as the Black Playboy at the time.

I did my master’s thesis during Covid, which was a terrible, weird time to be making art. I had moved back home, and I didn't have access to camera equipment. I was always a photographer, but the pandemic was a time for me to reassess. What can I do that's readily accessible and within my means? 

I started going to used bookstores, and that's when I found Players magazine. At the time I had no idea what it was, but the images were intriguing to me. So I started making collages with the found imagery, and then after doing some more research for my thesis, I found that it was this really crucial publication for its time in terms of facilitating Black representation. The first editor-in-chief was a Black woman, and she really cemented a particular direction for the publication.

It has a really interesting history that intersects with politics, music, culture, and it was something that was reflective of its time. The women that were in the magazine, that were posing nude, there was a certain kind of allure to them. It felt distinct. It felt cultural, feminine, and very familiar in terms of the women in my family and their rituals of adornment, as well as my own. I was really interested in mining that subtext throughout the images in order to speak to its specific history.

QUADROS: That’s fascinating to hear that the first editor-in-chief was a woman.

MITCHELL:  Especially for that kind of a publication, which we often attribute to facilitating or being simply for the male gaze – which it absolutely is. But something in my practice I'm interested in doing is looking at the images and asking, “What am I picking up on through my engagement and act of looking?”

QUADROS: Have you ever tried to reach out to her?

MITCHELL: She passed away a couple years ago. Her name is Wanda Coleman.  There's one interview that she did. I forget when it was published. It seemed very early 2000s. She talks about the complexities of starting the magazine as a woman, the tensions that were present at the time. But she did also say at the time she had carte blanche to do whatever she wanted. 

It facilitated this very distinct vision for the magazine. She left after a couple of issues, unfortunately. Then the magazine started to go into all of these different directions that I think appeal more to how we understand pornographic visual content today.

But I'm interested in those pivots and in the kind of shifts. With Silke’s show, a lot of the images were from the 2000s, which is seen as being the era that is the most “dirty” or “trashy.” But is there room, maybe, to filter some kind of agency with these images as well?

Engaging with these images from the early 2000s, I see so much of video vixen culture or those modes of representation and femininity – a lot of body modification. There’s this pivot where there’s this very bold risk-taking in terms of the ways in which Black women were adorning themselves. There’s longer nails. There’s a lot of tattoos.

QUADROS: Maybe we can speak a little about adornment – jewelry, acrylics, tattoos – in that era, and how they related to Black women, their bodies, and Black culture more broadly.

MITCHELL:  This is something that I think about all the time, as a Black woman. In a family or a lineage of other Black women, a lot of us are born into these rituals of self adornment. When I was born, the first gift – and this is something that I still have – you get a gold necklace. And it has your initial. It has a stamp affirming who you are. That kind of practice is so familial and feels really precious to me. 

I think about my aunties in the early 2000s, their acrylics and like the sounds that they would make and what they would look like when they were speaking. It's something that I picked up on as a very young child and in a lot of ways has informed the way that I take up space today. 

I think about my mother and corporate settings. She immigrated to Canada from the UK in the ‘90s. One of the things she would say, when she moved to Canada, was that everybody wears sweatpants. “Why don't people dress up when they're outside?” That proclamation of the way she represents herself, especially when she had to navigate the corporate world as a Black woman, was so important to her self-preservation.

Today what we're seeing is a lot of those trends being watered down and bastardized in the context of social media. What does it mean to stake a claim to something that is so authentically true to yourself, and then also watch it be denigrated, but then praised on certain bodies?

QUADROS: There’s this never-ending cycle of cultural innovation and then rejection, often by a white mainstream because that style is “in bad taste” or “too much” or “too Black.” But then  there’s this eventual assimilation that we’re seeing happen now, especially with the early 2000s, in a way that feels very uncritical. 

MITCHELL: I'm in Canada so it's a bit different, but I’ve been witnessing America swing this pendulum into a very sex negative, puritanical, evangelical view and positioning of sex, this anti-pornographic rhetoric. But if we rid pornography, that's not gonna rid us of patriarchy, white supremacy, and misogyny. It's always going to be there. 

I also think about that ongoing rhetoric that is trying to demonize sex but then also permit it only in these weird, codified mainstream ways. It's all of these different contradictory things happening. 

QUADROS: With your artwork, like where do you fall in that?

MITCHELL: In a way, it's complicating. I see my work as interventions to ask questions. I don't ever wanna say that the work is solving all the problems. That's not what I'm gonna do at all. I don't think art should do that. 

When I initially started doing this work, I would have to follow this historical lineage around unearthing the kinds of traumas and violence that had been enacted against the Black female body. That's something that is oftentimes now not being taught in schools: the wars, the transatlantic slave trade and how the Black female body was this vessel of reproduction, labor, and this particular kind of violence that is misogynoir. In a way, I'm sitting with that.

I think my work and my interventions and my interpretations are trying to find the pleasure, find the joy, find the desire and the sexiness and in these subtle suggestions. I think I'm trying to imagine something otherwise. I love using familiarity in a way to ask unfamiliar questions.

QUADROS: This question of the archive and what to glean from it and what to leave, that's something that like Saidiya Hartman writes very clearly about. 

With your work, you're taking us very close. Your work is intimate, almost interior. I find that really interesting because that's the way that sexuality is often expressed: erogenous zones, small touches, little moments like that. The things I love about my body are, for instance, these freckles I have right here on my face or my little tattoo. Your zooming in quality takes away some of the more objectifying quality.

MITCHELL: It’s kind of reorienting, or maybe a different way of looking. In the 2000s era, it was raunchy. It was there for a particular kind of gaze that I'm trying to reject in my own way.

I compared [my work] to when you're at the club, and you're in the girls' bathroom and all the women are like, “Oh my god, your hair, your nails, your outfit. Love it, love to see it.” And that's maybe the kind of approach. It’s like women taking some form of control given the kind of nature around the making of the images. So I love calling attention to those little details.

QUADROS: I love this idea of the girl's bathroom too because it makes me think of the “much-ness” of the work. I don't wanna say “too much-ness.” But there's something where the subjects can't be fully contained in the print. The images are so close. The words are spilling out onto the gallery walls. Could you maybe talk a little bit about how you engage with the frame and the idea of containment? 

MITCHELL: The text has been a new step in the work, and I think it came out of me looking at the covers and seeing the way that on the cover of a magazine, the woman's shoulder would be covering a little bit of the text and like the body on the cover would be like spilling over in these moments. The text is also very particular, and it's very objectifying in a way, but the body is disrupting it. I was really interested in that small moment of disruption of the way this publication is trying to define the body.

It's all text found in the magazines themselves. Some of the pseudonyms of the models – like Angel and Candy and Sweetness – there's this kind of sugary quality to the names that I absolutely fell in love with. I really like this idea of persona and character and the way you represent yourself. What is your character? What is your armor? What do the nails and the hair and the earrings look like? How can I make this spill over into the work in this larger sense? 

QUADROS: Persona comes up a lot in photography with subjects, right? You said you teach photography, so I imagine that's been a large part of your practice for a while.

MITCHELL: It becomes this generative site to determine how you want to represent yourself. I do think more complexly about representation as a whole, especially considering art and the art world, the kinds of representation that are deemed as “good” and then “not good” and feeding into this neoliberal understanding of representation, that just because more Black people are behind the frame, that's a good thing. But are we questioning the kinds of representation we're redeeming as being accessible, as being mainstream?

I think that pornography and committing to this archive in my work, has made a lot of people cautious. Like, why are you walking this line? But Black women were there, and I think that deserves our attention to some degree. That representation is there, so how are you gonna wrestle with it? I'm really interested in the gray area of representation.

QUADROS: Something about representation too is that it’s literally built into or excluded from the technology, right? Cameras originally weren't really constructed with darker skin tones in mind. It's really only been in the past couple decades when we're starting to see directors of photography, cinematographers that can actually handle darker skin tones. Like I just saw Sinners, and it looks spectacular. But it took us a while to get there.

MITCHELL: Oh my God. That movie. It's funny you actually bringing up that movie because I think the use of eroticism in that movie really stuck out to me. Like people assume that couldn't occur given the obviously violent systems in place, but for like sex and eroticism to still bleed out – I love it. It was so good. 

QUADROS: And female pleasure, right?

MITCHELL: That’s right.

QUADROS: I saw that at Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is a little historic movie theater around here, and it was a sold out showing. And that was a crowd that was like hollering laughing. There was a man behind me that was audibly horny. (laughs)

MITCHELL: I love it. Like, we were horny during that time. It's the humanity, right? It's humanizing to acknowledge that was absolutely the scenario and the case.

QUADROS: I guess one thing that I was wondering about though, with your photos, obviously, like they're very closely cropped. There's not a lot of faces. How do you think about anonymity with the source material and your work?

MITCHELL: This is something that I'm still thinking about. I think a lot about other artists’ work like Lorna Simpson or Mickalene Thomas who go to the Ebony archive or the Jet archive. They include the faces of the women in their work. And I do think there is this reason to be specific or to outline that specificity within the archive to show the particular faces of the women that were there. I find that can be a way to humanize the subjects of that particular time or within that era through image making.

My work is about the women in the archive, and it's also about other things. So I think anonymity becomes this way of trying to speak to the other things that I'm interested in. I've played or toyed with the idea of faces, but for me, I think I'm interested in a kind of body politic and maybe that's the draw to then focus on the body, but it's something that I'm still figuring out.

QUADROS: Is there anything you think people fundamentally misunderstand about your work?

MITCHELL: Yeah. People are always like, “Why aren't you behind the camera?” And I'm like, “Girl, it's not about me.” I mean, it is, but it isn't. It's about the images.

There's this constant demand when you're dabbling in terms of this representation to make yourself fully legible, right? To make the subjects fully legible. I think that's why I'm pushing back against this use of the gaze or use of the face because there's this constant expectation that as a Black person, you have to show up in a way that's fully intelligible, oftentimes to a particular kind of white, patriarchal gaze. And in a way, I think this is maybe an exercise of refusal in that. 

The initial hesitation with the work is because it's pornographic. Not to deny the way in which porn does contribute to fetish, contribute to particular kinds of understandings of racial ideologies or gendered ideologies. I think that's where the hesitation does potentially lie. But I don't think the answer is to continue to disregard it or to silence it. 

QUADROS: Do you still take photos? Do you still have your own photography practice?

MITCHELL: I do still take photos. Actually for a public artwork that I did last year, I was behind the camera and I took a picture of myself. Because it was a public installation and it's like in Vancouver, BC, they rejected the work without a reason. It was just a proposal of my hand, satin, and some pearls, which was in reference to the archive. But they rejected it without the possibility of resubmitting.

It felt like a good decision on my part to implicate my own body in that process, rather than the images, because at least then it's a rejection of me. I made the decision to be behind the camera because then I have full control, in a way.

Then after the rejection, I was like, Would it have mattered if it was me or somebody else? I think just the idea of a body there for the sake of itself, is what people just didn't like, because it's a public work. I didn't look very different from any type of ad that uses sex to sell something, to be this capitalist thing. But as soon as it's reclaiming it as something else, it becomes a bit of an issue.

QUADROS: Wow. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.

MITCHELL: It's okay. We still rose. We still did something. They're operating out of this fear that people are going to say things about the work, and they don't wanna deal with the backlash around that. 

QUADROS: I don't know how it is in Canada, but now in America, you can't even make public art about Blackness or really any marginalized identity without fear of losing your funding. 

MITCHELL: It's crazy that simple visibility is deemed as a threat. It was really eye-opening. I was like, “So this is where we're at.” And, mind you, this is the way that I navigate my day-to-day life. This is how I have to exist, how I have to navigate the world. And somehow in this deeming it as unacceptable – what do you have to say about me and like other people that look like me? What is being subtly suggested there?

A Love Letter in Motion: An Interview on Fashion, Film, and the Erotics of Desire with Kate Biel & Kimberly Corday

Love Is Not All directed by Kimberly Corday and Kate Biel

interview by Eva Megannety

In fashion, desire is often draped in fabric, but for Kate and Kimberly, it lives in motion. In their collaborative short Love Is Not All, the two artists trade runways for reels, channeling longing, beauty, and decay into a filmic fever dream. Against the backdrop of a world increasingly obsessed with speed and spectacle, their work feels like a deliberate pause - a place where emotion lingers, glances haunt, and the act of getting dressed becomes a cinematic ritual. As fashion continues to merge with entertainment, film has become the new frontier for designers looking to craft legacy, not just collections. For Kate and Kimberly, fashion isn’t just about fabric and fit - it’s about emotion, storytelling, and cinematic escapism. And through their lens, each frame becomes a love letter to the art of getting dressed. We spoke about the allure of the fashion film, the seduction of storytelling, and why, for them, desire can only be truly captured in movement.

EVA MEGANNETY: Can you both walk me through the inspiration behind Love Is Not All? How did Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem shape the vision for the film?

KATE BIEL: Okay, so it’s sort of an extension from the first shoot I did with Kimmy, a couple of years ago. I think it was 2022. It centered around these somewhat sinister, feminine archetypes, isolated in a black void. It felt like a commentary on the ostracization and alienation that stems from feminine hunger and desire. Like Kimberly’s garments, it’s a feeling that’s both ancient and modern. We wanted to explore that further because we felt like we were onto something.

KIMBERLY CORDAY: It’s interesting that the poem led us to the film, but once we had the visuals in front of us, our initial idea of using voiceover to recite the poem felt like overkill. Watching the dailies gave us the same feeling as the poem.

MEGANNETY: How do you both feel the film captures the essence of the poem? How did you approach translating such a powerful literary work into visual art and fashion?

BIEL: Kimberly and I both have such a personal connection to this poem, it resonates with each of us in similar but different ways. For me, it encapsulates all the love stories that have really stuck with me: Phantom Thread, The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James, or even my own relationships. I've always seen love as tragic but necessary - nothing transforms you like romantic love. It’s overwhelming, humbling, a constant ego death. Torturous, but it’s also how I’ve grown the most, personally and creatively. In the film, we wanted to explore that duality, love’s destruction and its fertility, through each vignette.

CORDAY: When we were first discussing the short, I had kind of given up on looking for love. But I’ve always been a romantic at heart, so I was constantly grappling with those two sides of myself. This poem was kind of like my single woman manifesto because it encapsulated that same feeling through a combination of flowery language and macabre imagery. And the irony is … I met someone while working on the short.

MEGANNETY: Did that change your view on the project?

CORDAY: Yeah! In pre-production, I actually consulted him about the budget because I’d never handled a short film before - I’m not a line producer, so I really didn’t know what I was doing. And now, we’re literally engaged.

MEGANNETY: Oh my god! That’s insane, congratulations. What a beautiful full-circle moment.

CORDAY: Thank you!

MEGANNETY: Kimberly, your brand is known for merging punk aesthetics with a softer, more feminine touch. How did you blend these elements in the film’s character design and overall art direction?

CORDAY: Well, I never explicitly set out to make things that are both pretty and punk. I even fought that instinct for a while because I was afraid of being boxed into a genre. But I guess it’s just in my nature; it’s what I gravitate toward when I create.

MEGANNETY: The film seems to feature a lot of gothic undertones. How did the gothic genre influence the design of the wardrobe and visuals?

BIEL: Totally. I think the gothic genre is something that both Kimmy and I have always been attached to. For me personally, I love the erotic melancholia experience in Victorian era romance. There was this dying for love and being seen and being worshipped, but also was just not a fun time to be alive in, you know? And so, I think the gothic genre does a perfect job of challenging the romanticized, over-idealized notions of love. It adds these elements of fear and haunting to the mystery of human connection. And we wanted the visuals to be reminiscent of a ghost story, which is like unsettling yet bewitching, just like being in love.

CORDAY: Echoing what Kate said, I really love the gothic genre, so it comes up unintentionally in most cases. And so this time I thought, why fight it? Let's delve deeper into this. We were looking at a lot of medieval art and early horror films like Jean Cocteau's rendition of Beauty and the Beast from 1946, and just let ourselves play in that world and have fun with it.

MEGANNETY: Desire is often a central theme in both fashion and storytelling. How does Love Is Not All explore the idea of desire - whether it’s longing, obsession, or the pursuit of something unattainable?

BIEL: Yeah, I think we grounded that theme really clearly in the lead’s journey, the way the film begins and ends. With desire, there’s always this element of danger and risk. You have to give yourself away entirely, and there’s just a lot of risk with that loss or gain, because you could entirely lose yourself in that. And so in the first scene, our lead enters this portal through consumption, and she’s honoring her hunger for more while still being uncertain if she’ll come out on the other side fully intact. And I would argue that we’re our most feminine when we allow our desires to take control and overpower our reasoning, our logical thinking.  It creates something scary and uncomfortable, but also violently beautiful.

MEGANNETY: I love that analogy. The film has an ethereal, almost dreamlike quality. Do you think desire is something inherently surreal or unattainable in some way? How does this influence your artistic choices?

CORDAY: For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fantasy addict, like growing up, I was obsessed with the artist J.W. Waterhouse, who painted pictures of nymphs and Roman Gods and sorceresses. I never wanted to leave that world, and honestly, I still haven’t. It makes reality a little easier to manage. Escapism plays a huge part in my brand’s aesthetic. Kate and I were referencing a lot of the surrealist painters like Paul Delvaux and Leonor Fini, whose works very much feel like a fever dream. So I’m happy to hear that translated.

BIEL: Totally. The vignettes start with this idealized version of love and romance, but as the film progresses, those fantasies start to crack. We wanted to show the inner conflict of desire - this constant dance between fantasy and reality.

MEGANNETY: Fashion is so intertwined with desire - whether it’s being seen, expressing yourself, or embodying something else. How does your work tap into the psychology of desire?

CORDAY: I feel like right now, people are hungry for romance and eroticism. There was an article a few years ago called Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny, about the simultaneous fetishization and desexualisation of the body on today’s screen. I’m hearing desire in a lot of new music, especially pop, but it feels like film and visual arts are devoid of it right now. Kate and I grew up on Steven Meisel editorials, McQueen and Galliano runways … we want to bring that tension back, that tug-of-war between romance and something more lascivious. 

MEGANNETY: In an era of fast fashion and fleeting trends, how do you think desire influences consumer behavior in the fashion world? And how do you both navigate that in your work?

BIEL: We both have similar, but different approaches given our medium. But personally, I try to slow myself down and remind myself that desire can be achieved through scarcity as well. That being selective, thoughtful, and precious in producing my work versus working from a quantity over quality mindset ultimately does a better job at serving myself and the audience. And that it’s sort of just like comparing casual sex with love and passion. 

CORDAY: Yeah, I’ll echo what Kate’s saying there. I’m personally interested in romance, not pornography. And I want to create things that haunt you or make you desperate to seek out, almost like an unrequited crush. Pornography is immediate and disposable. Romance is about withholding, delaying gratification, which is the sensation that I’m interested in recreating in my work. 

MEGANNETY: I love that. Fast fashion is like pornography. So accessible in today’s world too. It’s a shame. Do you think the pursuit of artistic creation is driven by desire? If so, what kind of desire fuels your work?

BIEL: I would say my work is honestly only driven by desire to really get down to brass tacks. Like my desire for approval, my desire to feel something, my desire to be seen, my desire to be understood and to understand the people around me. Desire is just exhausting, but also the only thing that gets me out of bed. 

MEGANNETY: Yeah, I really relate to that.

CORDAY: To be honest, I have no idea why, but it feels like I was bit by some bug that keeps me up at night creating and doubting myself and starting and stopping projects. It’s just in me and I follow it because it’s better, or somehow less painful than the alternative.

MEGANNETY: Your process involves manipulating materials like old lingerie and boudoir remnants. Can you explain how this Frankensteinian approach plays a role in the storytelling of the film and fashion pieces?

CORDAY: You know, the making of this film didn’t really change my process, it’s pretty much the same whether I’m creating for a stockist or a performance. But, what I can say is, any time I make something, I come up with characters who might wear what I’m working on. In this case, I had outlines of vignettes and Kate’s input to help build out the characters. 

MEGANNETY: So you had the garments first, and then the characters kind of grew from there?

CORDAY: Kind of. I made the garments based on the ideas Kate and I came up with for each vignette.

MEGANNETY: Fashion films are such a captivating way to showcase a brand’s narrative. Why did you choose to tell the story through a fashion film rather than traditional runway presentations or photography?

BIEL: When Kimmy and I first started, we were watching so many films where fashion was the heartbeat. One that really stuck with me was a documentary on Helmut Newton. There’s this incredible moment where Charlotte Rampling is being interviewed about modeling for him before she became an actress and she was saying that with modeling there’s this kind of frustration that comes about a still photographic session and it’s almost like you’re on the point of a climax and you’re stopped all the time and you’re frozen and your energy keeps coming up, it keeps coming up but it has to be still. 

And while in film, that climax moment is really lived in - fully realized and honored - I think that’s why we have a handful of these scenes in the film with no cutaways. We linger on the subjects, lavish in their desire, to the point where it feels almost extravagant. And so I would argue that desire can only truly be represented through motion. 

CORDAY: I was going to say, I think there’s a story built into my personal work and Kate’s personal work. Someone, upon first meeting me, told me that my brand brought up visuals of a 17th-century Versailles woman having a mental breakdown, which I just love. The stories are already there, they’re just waiting to be expanded on. And a fashion film felt like the natural next step for my work.

MEGANNETY: Kimberly, your brand has been described as walking the line between “punk” and “unapologetically pretty.” How do these contrasting elements work together in Love Is Not All, and what does that duality represent for you as an artist?

CORDAY: Yeah, I like to think it’s just an extension of my personality. I’m overly polite with a trucker’s mouth. And I listen to Vivaldi and Minor Threat in the same sitting. I think the contrasting elements in my work, the ultra-feminine and the unexpected decay are just a natural expression.

MEGANNETY: What do you hope viewers will walk away thinking or feeling after watching Love Is Not All? Is there a particular message you want to convey through the film’s narrative and visuals?

CORDAY: I would like to haunt someone. I don’t need the viewer to understand what they just watched. I just hope that they walk away with a distinct feeling. And I hope it’s not a passive viewing. That’s the effect that LEYA’s work had on me throughout the editing process. I was haunted by the score that they made for the short. 

BIEL: Yeah, I’d kind of say the same. Kimmy and I have this love relationship through our collaboration, we’ve gone through so many eras of creativity and ideas. And this film is sort of a tailing off point from the first photo shoot we’ve done. It kind of shows that love is this open project, and there’s no big end. And it’s not necessarily romance, but it also shows that creativity is erotic in and of itself. So yeah, it’s about the many ways we, as creators, explore eroticism, desire, and love, and how it’s never-ending. A constant, open discourse.

Getting Off: Brad Phillips Interviews Author Erica Garza About Her Journey Through Sex & Porn Addiction

In the following interview, Brad Phillips speaks to author, Erica Garza about their mutual experience with sex and porn addiction. In Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, Garza challenges the stereotype that sexual addiction is within a man’s nature, and for a woman, the result of sexual trauma. Recounting a life of “revolting” fantasies both imagined and realized, she lays out a lifetime of orgasmic pressure begging to be released, and courageously retraces her road to recovery. Throughout the conversation, Phillips and Garza share their experiences of responding to fans who look to them for guidance, the benefits of being triggered, and the sexual taboos that continue to plague our sense of moral authority. 

BRAD PHILLIPS: I wanted first to say how happy I felt to discover your book. Having written about sex addiction myself, it felt valuable to read about a woman’s experience with participating and recovering from the same addiction. Particularly in that you wrote about it without nostalgia or redemption. What motivated you to write the book? Was there a sense that this was something you wrote in an attempt to process your experiences, or was it more of a desire to share with other people; make them feel less alone?

ERICA GARZA: It was a bit of both. I've always turned to writing as a source of comfort—a way to get troubling thoughts and memories out of my head and body, and onto the page. When I started writing about sex addiction, I did so in an essay online for Salon. I'd already been experimenting with telling my story in therapy and 12-step, but this was a more public telling. The response I received was overwhelming. So many people reached out and thanked me, and they were from all walks of life. I felt then that I could serve others by continuing to write about this. We aren't often presented the opportunity to help a wide range of people, and this was my chance.  

PHILLIPS: Sometimes there's trouble in writing about personal subjects that are taboo, in that readers develop projections about you, and a sense of attachment. Have you had any response from people who felt like they were connected to you in a way that felt creepy? I also was curious if men reached out to you, ignoring the aspects of shame and recovery you write about, and simply saw you as someone “into sex,” and approached you that way. Has that happened?

GARZA: Several men (and a few women) have reached out to me because they see me as someone “into sex.” This ranges from unsolicited dick pics, to requests to meet up, to full-blown erotic stories they want me to read. I usually block them immediately, or if I have the energy, I tell them they’ve crossed a boundary and we have a discussion. But I receive more messages from people looking for help because they’re dealing with sex/porn addiction. I always try to acknowledge and address these messages because I know how isolating addiction can be. I usually direct them to 12-step meetings because they can offer connection and community, but sometimes this isn’t enough for them. Some people reach out to me as if I’m a therapist, as if I have the magic solution to their pain, and this can feel overwhelming. I am not a counselor. I’m just a person who shared my story as honestly as I could. They have access to this honesty too. The best I can do for those who put me on this pedestal is to bring myself down to eye level. To remind them that I’m just as vulnerable as they are. The biggest difference is that I’ve come out of the shadows—maybe they should too.

PHILLIPS: It’s interesting and disappointing that people might read your book and completely miss all the shame and intense pain you discuss; things which go hand-in-hand with addiction. You mention other people coming out of the shadows. I think that there are certain people who find the shadows themselves sexual. I feel like on some level there would be very little new information to discover about men coming out of the shadows, which again is why I think your book is important. You’ve done mainstream press, and mentioned to me that you were told there were certain words you couldn’t use, or certain parts of the book better left not discussed, because they could ‘trigger’ someone. How do you feel about this climate, where we’re told we need to prevent triggering strangers? 

GARZA: I tend to disagree with the sentiment that there’d be nothing new to discover by men coming out of the shadows. I think the act of telling can help the addict discover a world of new information about who they are or what they want. And other people can be positively affected by hearing these confessions, because they too can confess without fear of judgment or criticism. As far as people being triggered by stories of addiction and sexual language, I’m sick of it. It reeks of Puritanism. We can watch zombies eat off people’s faces on prime-time television but we can’t see breasts. What does that tell us about what we fear as a culture? Our own animalistic primal nature? Our complicated desires? Our grip on control? When I’m triggered, instead of acting out or shutting down, I become curious. Why am I being triggered? What is being reflected to me? By asking questions like these, I learn more about myself.

PHILLIPS: Censorship and the aversion to natural female bodies on Instagram is insane to me. Curious is a good word my therapist uses, it helps take the shame out of self-reflection. I think the complication of desire can feel scary to express because really, we’ve never seen it done. When you say animalistic, do you think it’s elemental to our fear of expressing all the ways we’re still animals? 

GARZA: Maybe being reminded of our bodily functions and the natural impulses we share with animals only reminds us of the other most natural physical experience we fear most—death. If we stick with our intellect, we can form elevated ideas about what’s right or wrong, and we can let religion and the media tell us how to desire and how to express that desire in the same way that religion and media tells us that we don’t have to die. But I think all of that is a distraction from being present in our mortal bodies, accepting and indulging our natural impulses.

PHILLIPS: Having once been close to death I’m no longer afraid of it. That hasn’t helped in managing my daily unease though. I recently read, for a radio show, the entire list of paraphilias from the DSM-5. What shocked me was that the only two paraphilias classified as mental illnesses were sadism and masochism. I’ve seen it be particularly shaming for masochists, especially women, to be told that what they like in bed makes them ‘wrong’ in multiple ways. There is a lot of very quiet research around the idea pedophilia is an innate sexual preference in the same way that homosexuality is. The recidivism rate for pedophiles offenders is above 99 percent. But these are the pedophiles that offend. There are far more that don’t, and by default are repressed. Sympathy for the pedophile isn’t something people want to get behind. Maybe you could tell me how you think these more ‘extreme’ sexual predilections could be managed, or re-evaluated.

GARZA: I think the fear of things like child sex dolls and cartoons for pedophiles mirrors the fear that some have about tolerance to porn, not just the most extreme kind. If you see images repeatedly, those images might lose their charge and so you’ll need more extreme images to feel something again. Pedophilia is one of those subjects that upsets people because the trauma can be devastating and I understand why people shy away from the subject because they are trying to prevent any more harm being inflicted upon those who’ve suffered. They want, justifiably, compassion to be directed to the victims. But I do think that there is value in trying to understand the pedophile’s motives, by conducting more research, and by including them in the discussion. As difficult as it may be to hear their stories and understand the why of what they do, the better equipped we are to prevent future incidents of harm. I think when something has been deemed socially unacceptable and there’s so much fear around the thing that we won’t even talk about it, then it’s a good indication that we MUST talk about it. Silence eventually implodes and the aftermath is rarely pretty.

PHILLIPS: Long ago Susan Sontag predicted ‘image fatigue,’ which she related to the Vietnam War photographs being relayed back to American viewers, and how they would eventually lose their impact. That same thinking can definitely be extended to pornography and the absolute nadir it exists at in 2019. I agree with you and have tried myself to address the idea that if things are uncomfortable or difficult to talk about, then it does mean we should. There is difficulty in seeing both the victim of a crime and the perpetrator as two separate people involved in a scenario from which information could be gleaned.     

Erica Garza’s book, Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, published by Simon and Schuster, is available through Amazon, Google Play Books, Barnes & Noble, and likely your local bookstore.

Follow Erica via Twitter and Instagram - @ericadgarza