MAN Into Woman

Gia Carangi
Gia Carangi
People on the internet leave a lot to be desired when it comes to perception. For example a picture of Lady Ga-Ga in her underpants, well some horny teenage boys interpret the outline of Ga-Ga’s vaginal area as meaning that she has a penis,  Really? Are teens so virginal that they don’t know what a crotch bulge looks like? 

I’m bringing this up because as you’ve notice: Over the past couple of weeks or so I have been having my own Gia Carangi Renaissance. Nothing wrong with that.  

Generally you couldn’t see the track marks that Gia had from abusing Heroin, you just couldn’t, because many addicts will find unique places to inject themselves, but in Gia’s case, she was using Heroin so frequently that it became noticeable:  Her face was was becoming sallow and drawn. Gia was losing a lot of weight and since there was no Adobe Photoshop in the early 80’s, that meant that there was no digital manipulation [Like Whitney Houston had to make her look fatter at the Michael Jackson Tribute]. The makeup artists TM01acould only do so much.
I won’t post the worst photos but you can see how thin Gia had become. To me that was the most revealing aspect of her addiction [That and the mood swings and the disappearances].

When Gia went to rehab her face would become full, when she was on drugs her face would become thin and drawn.
Whatever photos are online are aged. But remember this happened during my significant era and I saw the original shots. I saw only three other major campaign shots where you could clearly see that Gia was noticeably under the influence. 


One such shot was made infamous in the movie Gia. It’s where [played by Angelina Jolie] Gia so drugged out that she is passing out while the German photographers are posing her {I am assuming they were alluding to when Gia worked with photographer Helmut Newton]. I saw that photo and to be honest it’s hard to tell if she was posing or really “Out Of It,” like the movie suggested.

The other photo is a high fashion photo where Gia is very thin as described in the documentary: An American Girl: The Self Destruction of Gia Carangi. In the photo Gia’s face was very thin, it really didn’t look like her. Gia’s hair seemed dry, sort of like straw.  

The Final photo was Gia’s last Vogue Cover where she appears very bloated and is posing with her arms partially behind her back.
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That Vogue cover was Gia’s last and there were no visible track marks, contrary to the rumors. Gia may have completed rehab resulting in the bloated face, Gia was strategically posed with her arms partially behind her back.

I remember how much respect I had for the photographer Francesco Scavullo when he tried to help Gia resurrect her career.

Francesco Scavullo took some of the most memorable photos of Gia Carangi during her all too short but meteoric rise as a supermodel.

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Gia was so cutting edge that in 1978 at the age of 18 she posed with another female model for Helmut Newton’s cross-dressing photographic series, Woman Into Man:
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