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I don't know if I have this all worked out yet, as though one could.
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:
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. 0/40
3 Comments
10/23/2014 03:47:25 am
hi Susan, I'm so interested in your projects. This rings a bell for me. For now I'll just share an immediate thought I have. I still weigh myself everyday. Whatever weight I am I decide that my ideal weight is at least one or two pounds less than I am. Even on days like today when I weigh 115 pounds. If someone who looked like me weighed 115 pounds, I would think that that person was just the right weight.
Lucinda
10/23/2014 06:57:02 am
The New Yorker had a piece on "Full Figured Fashion Week" in the Sept 22 issue. There have also been lots of threads about size-shaming on social media recently. Not sure if they address the issues you're interested in, but . . . And yes, it seems to me that we feminists keep rehashing all the same issues and nothing seems to change (domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, misogyny, fat-shaming, eating disorders, . . .) I'll admit the lack of progress used to make me angry, now it just makes me sad. I rarely weigh myself. I did lose 30 pounds when I went gluten/dairy free, but it was 30 pounds I had put on when prescribed oral steroids for bronchitis, so I'm back to what I've weighed for most of my adult life. I do have friends and relatives who have had eating disorders. Anyway, so many directions this project could go . . . I'll be interested in following its progress.
Susan Hensel
10/23/2014 08:35:05 am
Thank you Beth and Lucinda- Leave a Reply. |
INVENTORY METHODS
A socially engaged, yet personal project of body shaping, feminist inquiry and art production. CategoriesArchives
April 2015
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