We settle down for sushi and Macomber tells me that before moving to New York, she went to a women’s college in her home state of Texas, where she studied photography. She recalls the moment when it occurred to her that full nudity could be more affecting—and, contrary to what may be popular opinion, less objectifying—than any level of clothing. “I was in a photo class when I was growing up,” she says, “and I did a partial nude of a friend of mine, and she was wearing her panties out of modesty, and her panties had these little pink hearts on them. And I remember my teacher being like, ‘I understand you were going for this timeless, classic nude, but it looks more fetish-y now.’ It’s like the pink panties were so cute and so sexy that she would have looked less sexualized had she been nude. So I remember doing full nudes from that point on.”
The nude woman in the project’s videos and photographs is Ejecta, and most of the photographs of Ejecta are Macomber’s own, including the cover for The Planet. “It’s kind of a project of self-portraits, really,” Macomber says. In a press release, the band once described Ejecta as something of an alter-ego for Macomber, a conceptual character that symbolizes “inner-struggles and also a way to deflect them.” The statement continued: “This alternate identity acts a conduit for Macomber’s countless longings, and as such is always depicted completely nude.”
This deflection of inner struggles through nudity also allows Macomber’s character an escape from the limitations of being an individual. Ejecta is more than just Macomber’s personal alternate identity. Macomber sees her as a sort of Everywoman—if not an embodiment of women everywhere, at least someone with the potential to relate to women everywhere. This isn’t to say that Macomber feels that she herself could represent any woman, but Ejecta isn’t Macomber.
