Artscape Women's Art's Festival is on 4-6th August. This week I attended the media launch and met fascinating women, amongst them Khadija Tracey Heeger.
Khadija is a poet and presented her poem "Surrender". I bring it to you as it resonated with me so well. It talks to the pain women's bodies bring to them, it describes the measures we go to in order to have bodies that fit the expected media/male norm. Recently I was invited to comment on an article written for a magazine called Your Child. It was about the sexualisation of girls via the clothing available in major stores.
There is a huge fear amonst moms and societal structures that if young girls dress in padded bras and g strings, they are going to become sexually active. I don't beleive that. I would not feel comfortable for any young girl to wear panties with a slogan " come and get me" or "lick me" as they don"t get the not-so-subtle nuance in this and thus set themselves up for confusion once comments are made by older people.
I do believe that young girls body images begin becoming distorted once they hear conversation as in "ag sies" as adults discuss these clothing and other sexually related topics. I mean what is a young girl to do with budding breasts, a desire to look like Rehana , and loads of hormones coarsing through her body - and no one talking to her about the changes, the feelings of arousal and excitement it brings. Her body becomes her place of control and power- she starves, overeats, begins a lifelong disconent and thus disconnect with her body.
Read this poem, send it to every woman you know and read it to your daughters but promise to talk about their bodies with them after the reading.
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Surrender By Khadija Tracey Heeger
This is my surrender to my body shape
the thigh to which I refer only with grimace and malcontent, the plump slope of matter at my rear that has been the cause of so much discontent, so much embarrassment, to this end I now repent
This house to that enigmatic entity, the soul, to this tower of flagellation, diet probations - the foundation of an industry that has belittled me,
I surrender much of my own distaste
In that attitude I have misplaced my dignity, my self esteem and too many a romantic dream, misguided by the idea that the rule for body shape is somehow trapped in the mono-slope, the one handful grope, the 30-32 if you stand next to me no one will see you, we’re talking side view, dream
Buy yourself that exercise machine, melt away the kilojules to please these maniacle fools, who are filling their wallets while we’re masticating lettuce leaves, riveted by an unattainable pedigree to satisfy visually
well what about touch, more than you can mange? More than you can wrap your mind around? That I get.
Hynotised, bought and taught to deny ourselves this kind of delight, the experience of the voluptuous. Captured and recaptured by the old masters, who identified child bearing hips or simply being healthy, as beautiful
The canon, the silhouette, one of the many sub plots to the face of femicide. That undeniable thumb on your identity, “Keep the Queen in her cage!’ And while we’re here, what about anorexia, suicide princesses. A rough ride through what I like to call ‘Image cuisine’ getting women to hate themselves, an internalised oppression case study.
My sisters where are we really when we let them fill us up with more self-deprecating notions on this nurtured human family tree
Fuck that!
Today I surrender myself completely to this body shape, understanding finally what a privilege it is to be, all of me.
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