TV TONIGHT :)

Tonight is an exciting night for the blog as featured Flesh Blood and Female supporter Lizzie will be in tonight's C4 documentary My Big Fat Fetish.  The show looks very interesting and is now doubt relevant to this project. Remember This is a project for all things concerning the female form and all are welcome to get in touch and or get involved in what ever way you wish.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/my-big-fat-fetish/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

A Hairy Issue

The link below is what inspired this entry please have a watch. 

http://www.itv.com/thismorning/life/hairy-women-debate/

So I shave. I am not a hairy woman, I am not hairless and always smooth but I do de-fluff my pits, flower and legs roughly twice a week. Why? I honestly don’t know. Its one of those things that if you are a British woman you just do. I remember my first shave like my first bra. I remember my mum pointing out that I had some hair under my arms when I was about 11 and being instantly ashamed and desperate to shave the hairs off.

It’s the done thing I guess, if you’re a woman you have lively well-kept head hair and you get rid of your body hair and pretend it does not exist. I’m sure most women will agree body hair is a pain in there arse, we have it all over us and I fell like it’s a constant friggin chore. You shave, it feels lovely for all of five minutes then you are like a walking sheet of sand paper till you choose to shave again. Or maybe you are a brave sister and you wax, the results are better and last longer but it is expensive and bloody painful (especially in one particular area). Maybe you epilate or use cream who knows, all good methods. I wonder though if there are any women reading this who don’t do any of these things who just let there natural body hair run its coarse.

A couple of years ago whilst at university a friend had an idea for a project entitled “Un-hinged Minge” J. We were going to leave our pubes to flourish for six months at least documenting their growth and our experiences and then shave them of and make art with them. HAHA love it! So when faced with this idea my first worry was my sex life. Then my second thought was won’t It make me smelly as for some reason I thought that one of the reasons women shaved was for hygiene reasons, when in fact I don’t think that is true I’m pretty sure its purely for aesthetics.

My story with shaving is quite a simple one I always shaved my legs and armpits since puberty always it was just what girls did, but I only started shaving my vagina when I became sexually active, I think it was because I just thought that men expected women to have no hair down there when of coarse that is simply not true.

Hair in women can be a huge cause of low self-confidence, there are conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome witch can cause quite excessive hair on females that shatter the confidence of many women young and old. And women as they get older and reach menopause often experience facial hair, and many have painful cosmetic treatments to try and rid them of it.

The truth is hair is an absolutely natural part of our anatomy. Fine hair covers all of our body but It seems that women in Britain, America and no doubt countless other countries are given no choice about keeping there body hair tidy and in may cases at a bare minimum unless they want to be viewed as hippies, dirty, freaks or one of those bloody feminists. I think shaving ect has become learned behavior and in the past twenty years pubic hair has had almost as many trends associated to it as the hair we primp and preen on our heads. I must admit I feel much better with hairless legs hairless armpits and controlled hair growth on my lady bits. I do not think I would like to be a truly natural woman, but I don’t know, I think I would like my daughters to have a choice. Hopefully we will one day get to a situation where it’s a choice for a young girl and she does not automatically feel that all body hair that is not in vogue must be pulled out or cut off.

I remember watching this documentary a couple of years ago now. Its well worth a watch. I found some of the self worth placed on something as small as body hair very worrying. Its another obvious peice of evidence that there is far to much pressure on wimen to conform.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hairy-women

Marina abramovic

Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful.

What do you think?

Marina herself reflects on this 1975 performance saying that she thinks that art should not be beautiful it should be violent and disruptive. I dodn't know what I think. For this project I do hope to make beautiful art and photography from the female body and females testimonials, but that is not to say that the subjects them self's would say they were beautiful. The truth be told I believe art is an open book and no two people will ever take the same message from a piece. As an artist or curator you must accept you can only make the work in the way you want, and then put it out into the world to be endlessly re interpreted by the viewer. I guess the art is only yours for as long as the tools are in your hands.