Margot, Paris, France, 2017 'It’s hard to identify to its own skin when you’re born in a so called female body. Because women are mainly represented from fake and unreal prospectives in movies, books, magazines… To win the right to be represented they first have to be judged as ‘feminine’ and ‘pretty’. The definitions behind these terms being really limited, these women are expected to have all the same body, the same attitude. The body has to be young, thin, without muscles, without hair, without scars and without stories… They are not persons anymore but some beauty allegory. Disembodied. The attitude has to be smooth, soft, light, ethereal, kindly, harmless. From persons they become empty shells, while their being of flesh and blood with a unique story is being suppressed. This femininity is the negation of the person. It’s unreal and unreachable, and toxic as it is dissociative. How could one identify with this, make the link between this representation of femininity and a real body? While there is nothing more diverse, troubling, violent and sometimes painful, often dirty than the experience of our own bodies and life itself ? From birth in blood to pimples, hair, fat, blood, disease, wounds, then wrinkles, and degenerescence. We also need to express sadness, anger, hatred and frustration to exist. Violent feelings are inherent parts of human existence and reactions towards life experience. So why ‘femininity’ looks like the absence of vital forces and of darkness that makes us complete human beings?I would like to see women capable of violence, of anger, ready to fight for what’s important to them, their flesh marked, carrying themselves with only their own sense of self, existing without any consideration of beauty. Bestial and monstrous for others, humans for me. Then I might feel like the start of an identification and could feel like I can relate. My appearance does not reveal or reflects who I am. Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle East Images/ABACAPRESS.COM