Saturday, May 17, 2008
Rule #1: Surround Your Self With Images that Affirm (Y)our Beauty
Desiring Ourselves: Experimental short film, engaging the Black Body Archive (by Mireille Miller-Young, UC Santa Barbara)....
The Image is Mightier than the Sword.
Look around you.
What do you see? Or more importantly, what do you NOT see?
No matter where you, chances are, it's pretty difficult to find images that affirm (y)our beauty.
Is this a mistake?
An oversight?
Chances are what you see is not a reflection of (y)our soul. Not being able to see your Self, or recognize a part of your Self in the media or in your immediate surroundings is a subtle sort of abuse, a cultural amputation.
It is important that we recognize ourselves in the books we read, the magazines we peruse, the movies we watch.
A healthy dose of diverse representation is but one of the things our world needs.
The Remedy: Surround yourselves with images that remind you of who you are, who we are at our best. Include images that tap into the very best of our successes.
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4 comments:
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing this video and the reminder of how important it is to see beauty in ourselves.
Keep up the good work. It is very necessary.
Thank you so much for sharing this video.
Hi Lesley and BSG readers! Thanks so much for showing my video on your site and supporting it. I bought these images from a private collector in Paris who specializes in erotic photography. They are what I call "ethnographic porn," images taken by National Geographic-esque colonial bureaucrats and travelers of "the native body." These images circulated in Europe as a kind of pornography. My research has focused on tracing the history of black women in pornography-from the beginnings of photography to the present--and these images are the most powerful I've encountered. For many black women looking at them, all they represent is the exploitation and pain of sexualized colonization. I wanted to experiment with reframing these images as representations of our (black diasporic women's) beauty, and the unknowability of our desire. We do not know what kinds of pleasures and discoveries the women in the pictures experienced, but if we do not acknowledge their potential for pleasure, sexual autonomy, and the strategic use of their sexual labor for survival, then we miss out on really comprehending their humanity and multidimensionality. Moreover, if we now only hold onto legacies of pain, danger, and disempowerment with regards to our sexualities, then how will we ever learn to desire ourselves?
Yeah! So glad you stopped by to what is only the beginning of something BIG! Very happy you are a part of it!
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