`Nice Girls Don't' is almost exclusively photos with just occasional minimal text
Though this book's pitched at lesbian intimacy a lot of it is individual subjects. This works though because it provides a feeling and an insight into lesbian lifestyle.
There's couples where there's no indicator of their sexual preference except the fact they're involved in girl/girl sexual activity (a dead give away!!). There's couples where the haircuts, accessories etc all scream lesbian. There's the motorcycle and `scene' girls (tribalism tribadism?). I'm comfortable on large and powerful motorcycles but don't need the image and `pack', but to each their own. Some need to make their statements and wear their colours, be that lesbian, dyke, motorcyclist or any combination that's important to them and they want to identify with and be known by. This book represents them all with high quality, mostly monochrome images.
`Nice Girls Don't' gives a nice overview. From the private happy sharing of love and intimacy (the pregnant woman and her partner in the shower just makes you smile without realizing), to those for whom how they identify themselves and are perceived is important are all here. The images make you really feel the fact every one of these people is a fellow human sharing the planet, also with their own dreams, ambitions, goals, joys, pains and disappointments. Even for a straight man, it's a reminder that our humanity makes us (I reckon) about 98% identical and things like race, gender and sexual preference make up the other 2%, the sauce, not the meal. A title like `One type of Sauce' probably wouldn't work but this book could alternatively have been titled `Nice Girls Just Are' since by sensitive photography the reader starts to feel a closeness that makes it the subjects could be their Sister, Aunty, Daughter, Mother, best friend or possibly, for female readers, themselves. Though it wouldn't affect my world dramatically if every gay girl on Earth suddenly went straight, that doesn't stop me celebrating our differences.
Cheers
Lloyd