Who's That Ass?

Lily and Rebecca were shot by Ryan McGinley on one of the cross-country, all-nude photo-making trips he goes on every summer. Now you’ve seen their asses adorned with foxtails, but what’s inside their brains? Let’s find out! We know you care.

PHOTOS BY RYAN MCGINLEY

ON THE LEFT: LILY

WHEELWRIGHT

Vice: What was going on in that picture?

Lily Wheelwright:

We took a day trip into Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is a touristy Western town where they have stagecoaches and fake showdowns. Me and Rebecca bought the foxtails, clipped them to our pants, and walked around town with them. Ryan would shoot us every day and we had to be nude, so when we got back to the ranch, we tied our tails back on and wiggled our asses around. It totally awoke the inner bestiality in the guys we were with. They were all, “Whoa, naked girls with foxtails? That’s so sexy.”

Whatcha been up to these days?

I’m living in Barcelona now. I came for a one-week vacation last summer and ended up just staying!

Tell me a funny story about your co-cover girl Rebecca.

Rebecca and I met when we were about 14. The artist Justine Kurland used to photograph us when we were in high school. Rebecca had a doll from her childhood that she lived in fear of. She wouldn’t throw it out because she said that the doll would come back to haunt her. She finally decided that the only solution was to donate the doll to charity so that it wouldn’t be mad at her.

This is your second time being on the cover of Vice. Are you jazzed or what?

Yeah! Boys here come up to me and they’re like, “Holy shit, you’re that girl from

Vice

who’s got the 70s tits! Me and all my friends have your picture on our walls!”

ON THE RIGHT: REBECCA SCHIFFMAN

Vice: Do you remember Ryan taking that picture? Rebecca Schiffman: Vaguely. We were just having fun being foxes. Ryan had us do so much crazy stuff, so it’s all a blur. There was a lot of jumping off cliffs into water and stuff. I especially remember having to walk through bushes naked. That was particularly alien to me, being from the city… All these prickly leaves itching you. Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m a musician and a painter. My dad’s a Reconstructionist rabbi. I do a zine about the Upper East Side called the UES Journal. I’m from there, and after going to college at Cooper Union I got so sick of downtown that I moved back uptown and now I love it there. I feel like I discovered it anew. Lily told me about how you were terrorized by a doll. Oh god, yeah, it was an American Girl doll. The “Samantha.” It was a terrifying presence in my house my whole childhood. I would have to run past it. Finally I put an ad on Craigslist offering it up for free. I didn’t want any blood money for it. Now you tell me a funny story about Lily. On the road trip we were playing this dumb game called “How Hard Can You Hit Yourself?” It was just all of us going around in a circle, taking turns punching and slapping ourselves. I remember Lily was the most fearless, even more so than the boys. Even after everyone else stopped she just kept going, punching herself in the face really hard. We were all cracking up. The next day she had a black eye and I think that’s the black eye she has in the picture that was on the cover of the Vice Photo Issue last year.

Update: We are sad to report that Lily passed away on March 22. We send our sincere condolences to her friends and family, and we will be running a memorial in her honor in our next issue.