Reflections

(Written mid February, 2013) 

When I began this research, I thought I had some idea of what it meant to be a feminist; I had an inkling of what it meant to be an artist, an arts activist; I also had a vague idea of the content of pornography, mostly from overhearing my younger brothers interact with their mates around our kitchen table. What I hadn’t considered was the extent to which this research would influence my life. Writing a reflexive piece, outside of the comforts of academic rigour, is daunting. Until this point, I have managed to separate my private life and art life reasonably neatly. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the two must come together – art as life as art –; that despite my fears it is time to drop my guard and engage fully, in order to maintain the critical integrity required.

I began writing this piece because I haven’t shaved my legs for forty-two days. Reading outside one afternoon, (a hugely inspirational book Art and Activism in the Age of Globalisation), it dawned on me: I am twenty six, and this is the longest I have ever been without shaving my legs. I have been dutifully trimming my ‘excess body hair’ since I was thirteen and some girl in the high school canteen queue told me my hairy legs were disgusting.  At that stage, I was already too fat, too tall, and too strong to be sexy, so the hair had to go! For just over half my life I’ve been shaving and waxing, without much thought, but with an underlying sense of stress about belonging. On top of routine maintenance, every important event, every milestone, each birthday even, was preceded by a ritualistic removal of body hair. Because I am a woman. Because that’s what women do.

This new hair growth was unplanned – initially we were camping and ‘maintenance’ wasn’t practical – but became a conscious decision soon after. I have been observing the effects with a growing consciousness, changes in myself perception and in other’s perceptions of me. At the moment, I am lucky. I am immersed in a community of likeminded folk– my hairy legs (the phrase still brings a curl of disgust to my lips!) are symbolic of a conscious choice, of belonging, of a shared subversion of cultural norms. It is not too much of a stretch for these folk to conceive of a woman with body hair, and it comes as no surprise as I identify with other cultural ‘outsiders’, being queer and an artist.

My lover also has body hair which makes it easier; I’ve always found it sexy on her.  She is the first, though, in a fairly long list of lovers, to resist the societal dictations around personal pruning. Maybe that’s what I find attractive about it; the subversive nature of the act is appealing. However, it has taken me eighteen months to become comfortable with her unabashedly hairy legs and armpits in public. Whilst she was (or at the very least appeared to be) at ease, a small part of me was embarrassed, ashamed that others might not think my lover was attractive. Of course this was foolish - she is both gorgeous and true to herself. Nevertheless, I’ve found it is possible to be conscious of normalising cultural confines and their agendas, and still be subjected to them. My hair humiliation was further compounded by an acute awareness of my fear driven inability to step beyond my socialisation.

Despite my aesthetic anxiety, I have never shied away from the term ‘feminist’. My lover is one amongst many who surprised me with their deep-rooted reservations at the use of the term, associating it with misandry and hairy-lesbian communes (oh, the irony).  It has been an inspiring journey delving into feminist history. The artists and activists, the lovers, mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers, the powerful, independent, self-aware women in the generations before mine had so much courage.  They pushed boundaries, speaking out and protesting, putting their own bodies on the line to get society to where we are today. But what they have achieved is not yet enough! The speakers at recent exhibitions and seminars, particularly the art focussed Feminist Futures (MoMA 2007) and the Wack! retrospective(2008), many of whom have been actively participating in Feminism since the 1960s all uttered the same message: the battle is not yet won - the new generation needs to critically engage and build on their foundations. 

And there are those who will, who do fight, but it is easier said than done! There appears to be a general belief (frustratingly prominent amongst the young women in my life) that we don’t need feminism anymore – that we have equal rights. Even when this myth is exposed, again and again, the levels of apathy are often overwhelming. Despite easily accepting my mildly alternative appearance, the communities I move in seem uninterested in opening many spaces for feminist discourse; the queer community has its own battle for equality to deal with first, and many of the performers and artists (consciously or not) are invested in a patriarchal status-quo. The revival of burlesque, pole-dancing as sport and pin-up girls also limit the capacity for critical discussion. Many of them are extremely talented performers, who are aware of the societal scaffolding in which they operate,  claiming their performance of femininity as a positive and empowering - actively choosing to be the object of desire, or making ridicule of it with daring strip tease performances which push proprietary boundaries.  Even so, when they’re up on stage, the audience – myself included- rarely engages with those politics. I’m certainly complicit within my art practice to some extent; one –segregated- part of my practice involves painting on the skin of nearly nude models, the majority of whom are women. Like the burlesque girls, it is a calculated complicity, fraught with ethical and practical issues I’m still trying to resolve.

Aesthetic valuation as a primary measure of a woman’s worth, especially in our consumer driven society, is a problem which seems often criticised but rarely countered, and I understand why. It is hard to see the way forward. This was demonstrated at a Masters Graduate Exhibition by Lisa Waldner which I attended, entitled I want to be a forensic scientist playboy bunny; sadly the punch of the title encapsulated the content of the show, which demonstrated the contradictions in contemporary ‘female’ experience, but did little to offer any solutions. It was frustrating to hear the tired rhetoric of her female interviewees: the pressure they felt, the physical attributes they identified as sexy, their simultaneous awareness of and subjectivity to the construction of femininity. I hazard resistance seems futile in the capitalist economy where even the subversive act of displaying ‘real women’ has become a marketing campaign to sell more products. The exhibition displayed the findings of the research in bland domesticity (inherently female?!); scribbled thoughts on brown paper, magazine cut outs and fluorescent post-its, already fading under the lights, and a short video - animated typography overlaid with sound clips from the artist’s interviews. The typical response in this video to the f-word? Something about hairy, too hairy, and armpits stimulated a wave of self-conscious nausea in my singlet and shorts - despite my own criticisms of the act of buying in, it seems I’m not immune just yet.   

Disclosing this information feels like an act of activism, as much as it feels like part of a performance. As much as it may be both of those things, it is also the musings of a twenty six year old woman coming to terms with a feminist legacy which is so vast it is hard to avoid paralysis in the wake of its esteem, and struggling within the dictated norms of contemporary society. It’s as honest as I dare to be - at this point, it feels like the first small step toward a feminist-art-activist-practice/life.