I often listen to audio books during the long days of making in my studio. I’ve also been working to lift my parenting game (which often looks like an attempt at creating the kiwi version of ‘Bad mom’s.’) It was in this vein that I listened to, ‘How to Raise Girls Who Like Themselves,’ by Kasey Edwards (There is also a version for raising boys, both filled with practical ideas.)
The books’ discussion of body image led me to reflect on my own experience of being a woman, in a body, that I have to take with me all the places I go. I had a mini epiphany. I have wasted almost 30 years on a war against my own body. Thirty years of worrying about what I’m eating, how much I’m exercising or what treatments I should be doing to remedy my imperfections and ultimately feeling that I am not good enough.
This experience is not a unique one. ‘Fat Chat,’ is ritualised in western societies and it’s everywhere. It’s your mother-in-laws’ casual assessment of whether you are skinnier or fatter than last time she saw you. The excited description of the new everything-free diet your work colleagues’ niece has just undertaken to shed her post-baby-weight. The pre-brunch round up of the new diet or exercise programmes your friends are all doing now. While seemingly innocent, research shows that ‘Fat Chat,’ normalises body dissatisfaction and disordered eating.
I don’t want my children to waste their time and energy worrying about whether their bodies are good enough, I want them to get on with life and focus on more meaningful pursuits. Unfortunately, ‘Fat Chat,’ is so engrained that my resolve is probably not going to have much impact. And where are my role models that have a super healthy balanced attitude to their body image and relationship to food and exercise? Somehow, I have to be the role model I never had.
It’s from these pondering my new body of work, ‘Fat Chat,’ was born. I’ve collected the negative labels causally applied to women’s bodies, labels that disembody and undermine our humanity and put them in the spotlight. I’ve crafted them them in gold, silver, sapphires and rubies and displayed them on the fruit body types, asking for us all to contemplate the beginning and end of this stupidity. I hope that we can begin to disengage from the ‘Fat Chat,’ and get on with more important tasks, like taking down the patriarchy.
‘Fat Chat,’ will be on display at Depot Art Space as part of Proof of Concept end of year show with Handshake 8 until December 20.