Savannah Smith: To me, this photo shoot illustrates the duality of my personality. There’s my soft, feminine side, and there’s my boyish side that loves working on cars and used to play rugby and chop down trees.

I grew up in a hippie town outside Athens, Georgia. We lived in the woods in a house my dad bought when he was 24. He was a cameraman and field producer for a hunting and fishing show, and my brother and I were homeschooled so we could travel with him on the job. I didn’t like homeschooling at first—I remember thinking, Dang, I wish I had the experience of being with a big pack of kids—but in hindsight I’m grateful for the independence it afforded me. Without the pressure of being a cookie-cutter high school kid I was able to become the self-possessed person I am today. In fact, I was such a strong-willed child that my mom’s friends used to joke, “You need to put her in boarding school!” to which my mom always responded, “I am never going to tell her to not be this way. No matter what, nobody’s going to be able to boss her around.”