The Female Body: Mini Collection 2021

This is a collection of three portraits celebrating and discussing the female body. The portraits are of my 9 year old daughter, myself, and my mother and are a conversation about what it’s been like to have a female body. These portraits illustrate the emotional journey I’ve experienced as I’ve explored my relationship to my own body, my reflections on my daughter’s body, and my relationship with my mother’s body and reflections on aging as a woman in this society.

Daughter

This portrait is of my 9 year old daughter. At her age, she delights in the wonder and beauty of her body, and I do too. But when I think of the future of her body, all I can see is the darkness that surrounds her. She is an indigenous female, and the prevalence of violence and sexual abuse against native women is outrageously high. As a woman, I don’t want her to relive my experiences. And as a mother, I don’t see progress being made on this issue and so raising daughters is scary. I can’t protect them from every experience and sexual abuse and violence almost feel inevitable. There is a silent epidemic in the U.S. and Canada of missing and murdered indigenous women. It feels like no one is paying attention. Even though these issues are so prevalent in my mind as I raise her, this child of mine is confident and strong, and this portrait is a call to action so that we can hope for a better future for our daughters, so that more people will be the light in the darkness.

Please consider watching the video I created about this portrait. It is a piece of artwork all on it’s own.

I’ve Made Peace… with My Body

It’s taken nearly 40 years but I’ve finally made peace with my body.

I am barely 5’4”, my measurements are …33” 28” 35” and I currently weigh 129 pounds. I’m telling you this because people ask me for my stats. Both men and women ask me for these numbers. I don’t mind the inquiry, bodies are interesting. I do mind the value placed on these numbers. I am basically shaped like a rectangle. No boobs, no waist, no hips, no feminine curve. At some point in my life, I’m not even sure when to be honest, this began to matter to me. I allowed room for lots of insecurities about my body to breed. Realizing I had little control over the size of my hips or my breasts, I began to put a lot of effort into controlling the size of my waist in an attempt to have a feminine body.

I portrayed a rodeo star in a play with my local theater. The set onstage required a poster of me without out a shirt on, showing my full back exposed as an ad selling jeans. There were conversations about photo shopping my muscles smaller because I was suppose to be a sex symbol and my body wasn’t sexy. I don’t know at what point in my adult life being sexy mattered, but it began to matter to me.

I eventually fell in love with my muscles and I use food and exercise to nourish and strengthen my relationship with my body instead of to combat it. I love physically using my body so much that I now have aspirations to compete in amateur body building. Most people who know this are not very supportive and I have repeatedly been told with great concern not to do it, and warned not to allow myself to get “gross” with the size of my muscles. And I’ve been asked lots of questions about why in the world I would want to “hulk out” as a woman.

My insecurities about my body, about the sexiness or lack there of in the shape and look of my body killed my libido, and nearly destroyed my sex life.

I don’t know how I got here, to this self destructive place. All through high school and college “sexy” was not an aspiration as I rocked a green mohawk, extra baggy clothes and combat boots. I wore my “I don’t give a F**K about what you think I should look like” like a badge of honor. I don’t know how I got here! While I was thinking about my saggy stomach skin from having babies, stretch marks and how small my size A boobs were etc,… You wanna know what my husband was thinking when I took my clothes off? “OMG she wants me!” So I was playing this mind game all by myself. I repeat…I don’t know how I got here, to this self destructive place. And I find that very concerning.

I’ve finally made peace wth my body, and so I’ve decided to redefine sexy for myself. I celebrate my body now at almost 40 years old. I wear crop tops, and fitted skirts. I embrace my own brand of sexuality. And now…. I’ve been told that I’m cheapening myself. That wearing revealing clothes is beneath me. That I’m diminishing myself and my respectability, my self worth to “get attention”. To all of the “progressive” women in my life still telling me what I should and shouldn’t do regarding my own body, why haven’t we moved beyond this.

I guess the question I’m raising is…why do we make it so hard to make peace with our bodies and how do I prevent my daughters from creating negative narratives about their own bodies when I don’t even understand how I became so vulnerable?

Mother

When I think of my relationship to my mother’s body, I recognize the features or pieces of her that she received from her mother and passed along to me. I see a woman who celebrates her body, insisting on diving off of a diving board for her 60'th Birthday. And I am reminded of all of the comfort her body gave me as a child, and the comfort it continues to give me when I release tension in her arms on instinct as she hugs me.

I think this image is simply stunning on so many levels. My mother is a very private person so I was genuinely surprised and whole-heartedly elated when she agreed to participate in the creation of this portrait…and then through the process we met some apprehension which forced me to reflect on the social narrative of aging as a woman in today’s society. In my darkest days battling the shape of my body with food (or lack their of) and exercise, I would often think….I can’t wait until I’m in my 50’s and 60’s and I can give up this pursuit and eat whatever I want whenever I want. When I interact with women in this age group all I see is confidence and comfort. I assumed that body image just wouldn’t matter anymore at this stage of life.

Then someone once said to me, “I can’t wait until you’re in your 50’s and 60’s and no one will find you attractive anymore.” I recognize that this was said out of anger and from a place of insecurity, but it was like pulling a veil from my eyes and what I saw was horrifying. I wasn’t hurt by the attack against me personally, but I was intensely rattled and angered by the implication this statement had made about women as a whole, aging in today’s society.

I know women in their twenties who get botox injections. I know women who jokingly insist that they are forever 39 when their birthday’s role around each year. And I thought about how many women actually experienced feelings of panic when the pandemic hit and they couldn’t touch up their grey’s at the hair salon.

In traditional Ojibwe culture, the word for a female elder is Mindimooye, which literally means the one who holds us together. Needless to say I prefer this word over the words “old woman”. Traditional culture reveres aging as one of life’s greatest gifts. That life has 4 seasons and the goal is to experience all of them. I personally am still in Summer as I raise young children. My mother is in Fall as she admires her harvest and the abundance she’s created reaching the height of her career, reflecting on the ways in which she’s contributed to her community, and watching her children spread their wings. The goal is to see Winter where you can barely crush a raspberry in-between your gums.

As women, our bodies undergo beautiful life transitions. From our menstrual cycles to pregnancy to menopause. And yet pregnancy, the toll it takes, and the joy it brings….this transition and the physical and emotional nature of it, is the only transition that we discuss publicly with each other and with men without shame or embarrassment.

We don’t secretly rejoice at the discovery of our first grey hair like we do at our first pubic hair. We don’t celebrate our “laugh lines” as physical reflections of how many times we’ve laughed in our lives. We don’t hold private or public celebrations of the stage of menopause, instead we try to deny or hide its onset. We don’t view it with gratitude, as a beautiful milestone we’ve made in our long journey. We don’t celebrate it as a new beginning. Instead we mourn an ending. We don't see the transitions of a woman’s body as sacred, and we haven’t rewritten the narrative to assert that aging is beautiful. But what if we did?