It's not what you think
非你所思
2018
The body is perceived as an object that needs control. The female body in particular needs extra control and is more powerless, at the same time perceived as a source of physical pleasure and a “penetrable” object subjected to “standards” and beautification.
While resistance sometimes seems to be of no avail as such perception stays, one can't deny that the female body is still a subject—no matter how it is perceived as fragile, powerless—and such subjectivity points to the power that creates the subject's trajectory and boundary, alongside the struggles a subject encounters.
The body—lying down on its back on a surface and being surveyed by the camera—is vulnerable, while the hexagonal reflection from glossiness echoes not only the hexagonal reflection from objects that serve as transitions between the verbal phrases in the latter part of the video but also the perception that the body is an object subjected to beauty standards.
All such vulnerability, fragility exist with the body’s power to assert its subjectivity, to get beyond control and limits. Those eight phrases*—partly my own experience and reminders for myself and partly what I remember from conversations with others—matter to me as an embodied individual who treads through different types of spectrums including that of power and fragility.
The phrases:
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Self-talk is fine
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Say no to unwanted touch
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Say yes to taking actions
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Bare lips’re great
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I’m more than my body parts
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Say “let me finish” when I get talked over
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Be unapologetic
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Eat all the chocolates I want
身體，尤其是女性的身體，如何被物化，它還是個主體，有其主體性；在掙紮中走自己的路。這就是脆弱與能力的交織。