My name is Sierra … I model as Shotglass Sally … It’s a pseudonym that I adopted after a friend designed a saloon girl costume for me … when she made the costume I was doing some character storyboarding with it … I like to do that before shoots or before I go out in certain types of extravagant costumes because it helps when you focus on the character … and I was asking myself what would be the name of the person who wears such a costume… I thought their name is going to be Shotglass Sally … It’s a little old fashioned … I don’t know many people in modern times … many younger people … I should say … who have the name Sally … It’s a little sassy and I like that … I started using it … (Shotglass Sally) … to protect myself from externalities … especially because I lived above a nightclub at that time … It was good to have a barrier of misinformation … if you will … so people couldn’t find you online who you happened to randomly meet out … I went to school and studied Asian studies and International studies … So I triple majored at a four year university … I found that professionally that hasn’t helped me … but I’d like to believe it’s helped me be a more well rounded person … I used to live in Wisconsin … but I live in Chicago now and will reside her for the foreseeable future … I don’t have any plans to go anywhere else … My fashion attitude and influences for my personal fashion … I really like the color black … I’m not going to lie … I like more industrial styles … but I find … excuse me for sounding a little old fashion … but I find them unbecoming to the female form … I like to have the word inviting in my mind … I often see very attractive females running around in cloths that I find to be a bit garish … they’re just not that feminine … So I like to incorporate a little femininity into my style … I really like to watch runway shows … so I’m a big fan of Dior and other fashion designers who do kind of a dark glamor … more coquettish style … I’m not … I mean … I do run around in combat boots often … they’re very comfortable … but I like to bring that to my modeling as well … In to my modeling … I like to bring an even more visually stunning aspect … so I often incorporate vinyl or other type of club gear … just so it’s a little set apart then something you might see in other portfolios … I don’t think a lot of people have the same outfits I have … Though I think everyone might have a little black dress … no one has my little black dress … How I got into erotic or fetish fashion probably involves the internet … I don’t remember an exact moment in time … but I remember coming across various imagery that I thought was very stimulating … mentally and visually … in it … it really caught my imagination and through my web browsing … I came across names of models … and I thought they were so amazing … they had the most excellent clothes … and I thought if I could look like them … that would be fabulous … So I started looking at different web companies that produced these clothes … and I would always be amazed at what I would find … it would always be so spectacular and different then what you would find in the stores … For example … now I think for women’s common street fashion … one of the big things are are these huge oversized tee shirts which do nothing … nothing for the female form except to hide you like a potato sack … And I wonder why … why would you wear this … But the club fashions are so different … they can be very stimulating … visually … mentally and it’s a lot of fun to wear them … They’re just … they can change your whole … obviously they change your whole appearance but the perception of your character … while also you can have a lot of fun playing with different personas too … your not just trapped in … I guess who you are on your day to day existence … even though I like my day to day existence it’s fun to be able to go out and take a moment to step into the shoes of … say someone that looks like they’re from … a space invader from Mars or someone who looks like they live in some decrepit German dungeon beating people all day … I don’t know … but it’s tons of fun for me … So … yeah … that’s probably the long end of how I got into that … When I model … I try to project surreal worlds … fantasy worlds … whether it be a dark erotic fantasy … or it be that this person is from another place another time … I’ve done 1920’s style pinup … which is great … on the other end I have shoots lined up that have me in a dark dystopian future … and so I kind of run the gamut of those things and it’s a lot of fun and I just want to pull people into places that they don’t see in their day to day life … and I think the element that I like to add  into these shoots is a certain darkness … not so much the light glamour aspect that you might see in other photography but I like to add the darkness of the dystopian nature of realities … not so much … Let’s see … where do I want to go with this … It’s not so much that I want to show things that are just beautiful … I want them to be dark in a deep way that causes a person to think about what they’re looking at in a certain way … For example …  not just appreciating a beautiful woman in a swimsuit because she’s beautiful … and also look … the beach is nice … there’s a nice sunset … but to think about who that person is as a character … what’s their story … In a way it causes people to flesh out the image they see on their own … maybe you provide them with details in your picture through your wardrobe through your expression that lead them mentally to a certain place … but you don’t necessarily give them the whole story … so they create that for themselves … I try to work with people that have their eye on the creative process … So I’ve never found it to be particularly an abusive relationship … I think people with that kind of mindset … people who believe that woman should cover themselves and shun their own sexuality … even as it relates to their own personal identity and as biologically reproductive creatures … Sexual identity is key to who we are … even if we try to deny it … but you’ll still have a lot of people … particularly woman who think that as a female you should hide yourself … you should hide that from the public eye because it makes you stronger … something like that … or that you’re exploiting yourself otherwise … or that your playing into the hands of some kind of chauvinist … sexist … male fantasy … and I believe it’s really sad that they believe that … I think it’s sad that they believe they can’t be who they are … I mean … idealistically … if everyone was to be who the are … without hiding themselves … without shunning some part of their identity out of fear of repercussion … Imagine what kind of world we would live in where all the closeted gay conservative pastors were suddenly out in the open … where all the woman who didn’t act on their desires because they were afraid of what people would say … all the beautiful relationships they would enter into … and where all the people … all the men who were afraid of pursuing interests that weren’t masculine enough … What if they pursued them and let off all that steam … Just think of the world we’d live in … Again … the long end of it is …  that I cant really concern myself with the fallout too much … And I pursue relationships that I find are empowering and creative and I try to protect those close to me who aren’t going to see eye to eye with me from what I do … and if they seek it out … then they’re just trying to be offended and that’s their problem … I find networks like Facebook and Model Mayhem to be especially useful … particularly  Facebook … I get so many friend requests from people … We might have one friend in common … that friend’s not someone who I even really know in real life … they’re just someone who I might know through someone else … who I kind of know … they find you through things that you post … or from other things people post about you or from tags … For example I put something up like … “Oh … I’m going to go work with so and so”… “We’re going to do a shoot tomorrow” … Well … then people might find this photographer and then they’re … “Oh man, their work’s great … I want to work with them and vice versa’ … If you have a makeup artist or a photographer or a stylist who tomorrow says … “I’m going to go work with Shotglass Sally and we’re going to to the raddest  shoot ever”… and you’ll have people go … “Who’s Shotglass Sally?” … Then they’ll follow that tag and they’ll find me … I’ve gotten … a little amount of notoriety that way … I say that because there’s people who I vaguely know in real life … I might have come across them once or twice while out and about … people who without social networks I would have never really know or have a chance to know because we don’t have that personal relationship … and then they’ll talk to me online … and they’re like … “Oh yeah you… and blah blah blah … yeah your my friend … I’ll talk to you about’ … like this personal issue … And I don’t know that it’s necessarily that even I have interacted with them … so much … and as an aside … that’s what I feel guilty about when I go online … I don’t necessarily interact with people as much as I’d like to because I feel like I’m often taking care of business or just reading what people are doing … checking up on them … but not necessarily interacting … but you’ll have people who I think feel connected to me through what I do … and then through my limited interactions … and then they’ll invite me into their friends zone … which I’m very appreciative of … So I find that social networks are useful not only for professional networking but for personal networking … With Facebook at this time particularly … and in the US … being the biggest …  biggest form of networking socially and professionally … I’m not sure about other countries … For example … I spent some time in China in 2009 … and I know that they have their own websites … I’m not sure if Facebook is blocked there … It is and it isn’t at times … Country by country … whatever that form of virtual networking is … that’s key … I started my life as an introvert … I was … I wouldn’t say I was a lonely kid … I never felt lonely … but I often played alone … I had an older sister … we didn’t get along … so I didn’t play with her … (laughter) … And that continued on into my teen years … I’d often sit in my room alone … draw… read … and I was perfectly content to be left alone … If I didn’t see anyone for days I would be fine … And even now in my adult life I can be … I’ll be alone … Just be in my room and take care of stuff and be fine … and not care … the difference is now … if there’s not another person in the vicinity …I start feeling lonely … or weirded out … I love having roommates … even if I don’t interact with them on a day to day basis … I like knowing they’re there when I’m there … kind of a weird mutual … just knowing that someone’s there who’s a friend … I think a lot of that comes from my modeling and martial arts that I did as a teenager … but especially from modeling … there’s something about … you know especially being able to be nude in front of a camera with someone else behind it … to interact with people … and I don’t want to make it sound financial … but to market yourself or to tell people … other people … “Hey come look at my nudie picks online” … Not that I just think of them just as nudie picks … It forces you to step outside of your comfort zone and as you keep pushing those boundaries your comfort zone expands … I’m at a point now where I’m much …much … more extroverted then I used to be … I love to go out … I love to meet people … I remember like some of the best nights I’ve had out are nights where I’ve probably spent no more then five minutes talking with any one person … I just … the whole night … talk to different people I knew from out and about and I was like … “That’s a great night” … or if I was truly introverted as I had been in the past …I’d have been like… “This is a terrible night … Uh … this is awkward” … and I think … Yeah … back to the question … a lot of that has to do with modeling and just being able to put yourself out there … being able to tell people to look at your work … to want them to believe in you … yeah this is worth looking at you should definitely see this … and also to be able to deal with the feedback whether positive or negative … no matter from friend … stranger … foe … or whatever … you’ll have all of that … and having those diverse interactions with people really helps … has helped expand my comfort zone …