I don't know if I am ready to go public.
It feels like a failure.
It feels like taking control.
FAITH IN THE ASSISTANCE OF THINGS:the weight loss edition
This is a year long/lifelong project. I have been involved in this project since I was a young child. When I was six years old, they weighed all of us at school. Perhaps it was to learn units of measurement. I don't know. I was one of the heaviest. I was PROUD, because BIG meant grown-up to me.
When did that pride in my body change? I don't really know.
So this project is very personal to me. My personal outcomes will affect my health and my ability to produce art for the rest of my life. That is BIG.
Why should you care?
While achieving my personal goals, in a very public manner, I plan to investigate:
- shaming forces
- health
- cultural pressures
- the role that consumerism/capitalism plays in all of this.
I plan to track all sorts of measurements and behaviors. I suppose this is a form of body art, of body shaping. But I expect it to be socially/politically engaged as well. I will use social media to develop community and at least once a month I will produce a physical piece of art in reference to this project.
Contextually, this project is a direct outgrowth of the WEARING MY AGE PROJECT, which focused on women and power in the workplace. I will be focusing on the cultural control of women surrounding issues of weight. In the 1970's we asserted that "Fat is a feminist issue." It still is.
What is your role in this? Perhaps support. Perhaps sharing your stories. Perhaps sending me articles and book titles.
And so, I begin.
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