![]() ![]() We thought a lot about power and the white gaze in constructing the performance. In the original performance with the burqas, myself and two other Muslim women wore the garments while standing silently on pedestals. We both love to work, so to be creating together was one of the best experiences I’ve had with her. There was a distinct intention on my part to also just connect with and spend time with my mother. We mirror each other in so many ways, but sometimes it feels like there is an ocean between us. We were working together, understanding each other (mostly), but literally speaking different languages to one another. I had a clear cut vision, and she had the skills and the experience to make it come to life, and was able to pass a lot of those skills onto me. It was a pretty amazing collaborative process. My mother is an incredibly talented seamstress, and I had very little sewing experience at the time, so I asked for her help. Now, I feel a lot less pressure to make things “make sense” to others, and allow myself to get lost in radical imaginings of revolution (or apocalypse) and the future.Ī while ago, I had an idea to make hybridized burqas made of “western” materials. My work became darker, more grotesque, and more intuitive. So I started to really let go and shed those burdens. Then I got to a bit of a breaking point, where I felt really annoyed at the fact that “humanizing Muslims” was considered groundbreaking, and felt resentful of this pressure to send a palatable and “respectable” message. For a while, my art practice revolved around painting portraits that aimed to humanize, make visible, and uplift American Muslim women. so happy i got to play your wonderful city.I’m an American Queer Muslim Southern artist and those identities influence my work. and some of us pillars in this community understand that. I guess the purpose of this is to say that no matter how body positive you are or how much you like to preach about having confidence or being yourself or finding the zen and loving who you are, you can still have off days. i still get the little voice in my head that says “a trip to the bathroom will make the food go away.” With my 10 year reunion next month, i’ve been reflecting on this period a lot. ![]() i couldn’t tell my friends i thought they liked me now because i was skinnier. I couldn’t tell my family they were proud of the weight loss. this, coinciding with where i was attending school (a military boarding school), the situation became increasingly volatile. i started having body dysmorphia - furthering my problematic relationship with my body and hurting my mental health. as i lost weight, i still never felt like i was good enough. ![]() when i got to high school it became even more problematic: i started binging and purging. as a kid, it was cute, but as i got older, it put a target on my back. I’ve had a complicated relationship with food. Thank you so much for almost 10 years of community, positivity, and love. However, this blog will continue to exist so that others who present masc / identify as male going forward can see bodies that validate their existence. I feel it’s time to leave my masc presenting past behind and it would be inauthentic to be the voice for the plus size male community. As such, it hurts me to say that from here on out, this blog will serve as an archive, but will no longer host new content. I truly appreciate what I’ve built with this blog and the sense of community that has come with it. In some search to feel whole, I created Chubby Guy Swag as a resource for validation for me and others in so doing, I overlooked the real root of my feelings of malaise that had been lurking in the back of my mind. I realize now that much of my relationship to my body, including embracing the body positive community, stems from those issues under the surface. This comes from years of feeling pressure to present as something that I’m not leading to feelings of body and gender dysphoria. This has been something I’ve been feeling and grappling with for several years and for the sake of my happiness, I’ve decided to move forward with my truth. As some of you may have seen on my personal Tumblr and in socials, I have recently come out as non-binary / trans femme. ![]()
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