Feminist Bodies Causing Trouble

Feminist Bodies Causing Trouble

George Vasey, the co-curator of the Wellcome Collection exhibition 'Misbehaving Bodies' talks about how bringing illness to light is a rebellious act. Disease and illness have become taboo in today's society. More than that, certain diseases are considered worth discussing while others aren't, and the values we attach to them often align with class, race and gender hierarchies. How we behave in medical institutions, how we respond to our diagnoses, says a lot about our place in the world. We focus on the work of Jo Spence, who used photography to document her experience of breast cancer. She shows us how illness can be a creative part of life, and that it needs to made visible for us to respond to it in the best interest of patients.

What's horrific about feminism?

Writer, producer and filmmaker Cat Davies (https://kittycointreau.wordpress.com/...) talks to me about horror in her films. Her award-winning shorts like 'Connie', Keen-wah' and 'Blood shed' all satirise horror conventions in surprising ways. We explore horror and feminism as we discuss the artistic process. What do our fears say us as a society? What does society fear about feminism? What do we fear as artists? What does a feminist retelling of a horror story look like? How does horror help spread a feminist message?

Is stripping a feminist statement?

Dancer 'Roxy' talks about how she got into stripping to pay her way through university. She now continues to do it to pay the bills. In light of the rhetoric of mainstream feminism that emphasises a woman's ownership of her own body, stripping is sometimes cast as an act of defiance against the objectification of the female body in society. Roxy sees this differently. Stripping isn't always 'empowering', she says, nor is it necessarily feminist.

Should models be feminists?

I talked to the successful model Ariana Diamant about the pressures placed on models with an online following to serve as role models. She explains that models' online presence presents new opportunities for challenging industry beauty standards, but that it also presents expectations that they take on a much more public role than ever before. She challenges the assumption that any woman in the public eye should necessarily be a feminist.

What's feminist about gaming?

'Gaming is creating a kind of person who is good at something....we're still trying to figure out what that is.' Samantha Beauvillain (@sambvlln) reveals new dimensions to the feminist struggle in the online world. Gaming as a woman isn't just about dealing with a male-dominated environment, it's about revealing new possibilities and new ways of interacting online. Not only is Sam an avid gamer, she also works for the first ever luxury gaming brand, 'Buddah Tek'. This brand is about changing the culture around gaming. There's a lot of positive potential for cognitive development and new ways of interacting in the gaming world, she argues, and a feminist critique can help reveal what that might look like.