Good afternoon,

I'm reading a book about Ulysses and it has a really super photo in it of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses. And I thought that maybe today we could enjoy some photos of women looking (a) great and (b) fully absorbed in being themselves.

Let's start with the photo that started this:

Reading is always a private act, is intimate, is lover’s talk, is a place of whispers and sighs, unregulated and usually unobserved. We are the voyeurs, it’s true, but what we’re spying on is not a moment of body, but a moment of mind.

https://www.rightreading.com/blog/reading/marilyn-monroe-reading-ulysses/

Now here is Nina Simone, who I don't think has ever been photographed looking less than fully absorbed in being herself. I love how relaxed and happy, as well as beautiful, she looks in this photograph:

Simone’s style served as an unapologetic visual counterpart to her art:  She favored head wraps, dangling jewelry, loud prints, big sunglasses, and pure white evening gowns that made her skin look even darker, as if to emphasize her young, gifted blackness. Nina Simone dressed to celebrate herself.

https://www.thecut.com/2015/06/nina-simones-uncompromising-fearless-wardrobe.html

Here is Susan Sontag, dressing to celebrate bears. There is no information online about why she was in a bear suit (maybe that is just what she liked to wear to write?) otherwise I'd have a link about that. Regular readers of Fem Fri will have seen this photo before. If that's you, I hope that, for you as for me, this one never gets old.

Love,

Alex.