Repeating Lies, Repeating Truths

By
Marie-Pascale Lafrenière
BA, Visual Arts, Université du Québec en Outaouais 2017

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLEMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2019

© Marie-Pascale Lafrenière, 2019

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Figure 1 – It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes the Truth (stills), 2018

iii

Abstract
This support paper seeks to analyze the potential of a new media arts practice in relationship to Second to
Fourth Wave feminism discourse. Based on the works produced during my MFA studies at Emily Carr
University, I investigate how a humanized representation of feminine subjectivity in media arts can operate
a mind shift in the audience. I intend my work to participate in the neutralization of the internalized
objectification of women’s bodies, providing a counterfoil to the images of the beauty myth at the benefit
of a broader and more inclusive mode of femininity. Drawing from feminist photography, video and
performance art from the 1970’s to present day, I explore how abjection, repetition, and autoethnography
in media art act as key strategies in my research. Just as my artworks, this support paper is both a manifesto
and a love letter; a protest and a celebration.

Résumé
Ce document de soutien vise à analyser le potentiel d’une pratique artistique médiatique dans le cadre de
la Seconde à la Quatrième Vague de féminisme. Se basant sur les œuvres produites durant mes études de
MFA à Emily Carr University, je questionne comment une représentation humanisée de la subjectivité
féminine dans les arts médiatiques peut exercer un changement de mentalité chez l’audience. Mes œuvres
ont pour but de participer dans la neutralisation de l’objectification internalisée des corps féminins, offrant
un contrepoids aux images du mythe de beauté au profit d’un mode de fémininité plus large et plus inclusif.
Citant la photographie, l’art vidéo et la performance féministe des années 1970 à aujourd’hui, j’explore
comment l’abjection, la répétition et l’auto-ethnographie dans les arts médiatiques agissent comme
stratégies clés dans ma recherche. Tout comme mes œuvres, ce document de soutient est à la fois un
manifeste et une lettre d’amour; une protestation et une célébration.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ iii
Résumé ......................................................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... iv
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... vi
Introduction and Context............................................................................................................................... 1
Body Image ............................................................................................................................................... 2
Gender Identity ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Mental Health ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Material Practice ........................................................................................................................................... 7
Abjection................................................................................................................................................... 7
Repetition................................................................................................................................................ 13
In History ............................................................................................................................................ 13
In Art-Making ..................................................................................................................................... 14
Media Art ................................................................................................................................................ 16
Process .................................................................................................................................................... 20
Self-Representation................................................................................................................................. 22
Art in the Time of Patriarchal Capitalism ............................................................................................... 24
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 27
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................ 29
Works Consulted ......................................................................................................................................... 34
Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth .......................................................................................... 36
Appendix II – Letter to the #MeToo Movement ......................................................................................... 37

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List of Figures
Figure 1 – It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes the Truth (stills), 2018 ........................................................... ii
Figure 2 – Skinned, 2018 .............................................................................................................................. 8
Figure 3 – I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should Be (stills), 2018............................................................. 11
Figure 4 – It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes the Truth (stills), 2018 ......................................................... 14
Figure 5 – Until Your Nose Bleeds (stills), 2018........................................................................................ 18
Figure 6 – Ghost, 2019 ................................................................................................................................ 22
Figure 7 - #NoFilter (detail), 2017 .............................................................................................................. 23
Figure 8 – Mask (stills), 2019 ..................................................................................................................... 28

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Acknowledgements
This essay was written on the stolen traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the
xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwuu7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. I
wish to express my gratitude to them for the care and protection of these lands for thousands of years. It is
with unease as a descendent of settlers that I live, learn and grow on this territory.
I also want to take space to express my privilege writing this essay in a body that gave me a head
start from birth. As a Canadian-born, francophone and anglophone, white, cisgender, able-bodied, thin,
educated, middle-class woman, I acknowledge the immense labor of the humans who helped directly and
indirectly building the knowledge used in my creative research, especially members of the queer
community, women of color, and disabled folks. I am forever grateful and eager to keep learning.
The words “girl” and “woman” are used in this essay for reasons of brevity and style, with both a
desire to encompass all feminine gender identities – transwomen, ciswomen, masculine women, femme
queers, two-spirited women, feminine gender non-conforming people, and more – and an awareness of the
impossibility to do so. I believe that feminism should have intersectionality as a standard, and I intend to
do my best in being inclusive and respectful.
Finally, I would like to thank my advisor Kyla Mallett for knowing when and where to push me,
and for always seeing the bright side. I thank the Dean of the MFA program Trish Kelly, and faculty
members Birthe Piontek, Lorelei Pepi, Susan Stewart and Randy Lee Cutler for their continuous support
and generosity. I also want to thank my friends: Jesseca Paquette for believing in me even when I don’t,
Karyne Montgomery for inspiring me to live up to my ideals, Fadwa Bouziane for making me feel like
home wherever we go; and, of course, my life partner Yannick Tremblay for making every small adventure
epic. I love you.

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Introduction and Context
In March 2011, I was sent to the emergency room of the Hospital of Gatineau by my psychotherapist. She
told my mother I was a danger to myself. After several hours of waiting in the emergency room, the doctor
was ready to welcome me. He asked two questions: “Do you have good grades? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Apparently, these are the two things a teenage girl should want the most in the world. These are the only
two things a teenage girl should need to enjoy life. These are the two things that should have been keeping
me alive. I said yes. Only a few hours later, I tried to kill myself.

I am not alone. Since the 1990’s, teenage girls’ mental health has been degrading exponentially
(Hendrick; Anderson; Davis). What is problematic is that our society doesn’t know how to deal with it.
What is even worse is that it doesn’t take it seriously. That doctor in the emergency room was probably
doing his very best. However, he did not understand how deep the pain of a visibly healthy seventeen-yearold girl could be. Girls just want to have fun, to be in a relationship, and to succeed at school. Some want
to be popular. Some want to please their parents. But some girls also have an increasingly bad relationship
with their body image 1. They have more and more learning disabilities 2. They have a growing tendency
toward self-destructive behaviors 3. And girls consume images of other girls more than ever 4.

When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a truth.

My release from the Pierre-Janet hospital in April 2011 coincided with my choosing to pursue a
post-secondary education, as I was just about to graduate from high school. Unaware that it would become
a career, I chose what was at that time my only healthy coping mechanism: visual arts. Seven years on, as

See Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth.
See Appendix I.
3
See Appendix I.
4
See Appendix I.
1
2

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a young western woman living with mental illness, I am developing a new media practice based on feminist
theory and autoethnography 5. Now sitting at my desk in an apartment 4,440 km away from that psychiatric
facility, the key concern of my research is: How can the repetition of an abject representation of feminine
subjectivity in media arts participate in the neutralization of the internalized objectification of women’s
bodies for the viewer? I write this question knowing art alone won’t reverse the patriarchy, knowing it
won’t trigger the revolution from capitalism, and knowing too well the damage done by this system cannot
be reversed. But I also believe that every little action counts, that it is okay if I can only help a few people,
and that there is still hope.

When you repeat a truth often enough, it becomes nonsense.

Body Image
In 1990, Naomi Wolf published The Beauty Myth. This ground-breaking book not only put her on the map
as a fantastic writer, it also shook the western world for its thorough study of how the modern representation
of women in media is a leading cause of mental and physical health issues for women. Wolf brought forward
the concept of the “Iron Maiden”: a metal cabinet with the shape of a body with interior metal spikes used
for torture in the Middle Ages, as a metaphor for the societal expectations imposed on feminine bodies and
the acts of physical and psychological violence that they entail (17). She explains how the repetition of the
same beauty ideal through advertisements and pop culture in general become engrained in most women’s
psyches (155). The ubiquitous representation of the thin, white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual
woman repetitively shown in the media leaving no room for alternatives, Wolf argues that people of all
genders internalize this ideal as the only good way of being feminine. In her book Feminism and Pop
Culture, Andi Zeisler links this phenomenon to the “male gaze” (7), a concept cleverly explained by John

Throughout the text, autoethnography is used following this definition: “highly personalized accounts that draw upon
the experience of the author/researcher for the purposes of extending sociological understanding” (Sparkes 21).

5

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Berger in Ways of Seeing: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines
not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor
of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus, she turns herself into an object” (Berger). This
objectification of women is linked to their oversexualization by the reduction of their bodies to functional
objects for heterosexual men to consume, and to an oversimplification of feminine subjectivity.
In other words, women in pop culture are represented in a strongly stereotyped way. Conventionally
attractive women are often depicted as sexy and simple-minded; unconventionally attractive women may
be represented as smart, but at the cost of being either fat, old, prudish, crazy, or flawed in some other way.
Not that any of these qualities are inherently unattractive, but this belief is essential to the current economic
model under capitalist patriarchy. Indeed, Wolf reports that most urban professional American women
consider the improvement and maintenance of their appearance an investment (52). The Iron Maiden
becomes a serious trap as heterosexual women need to look good to get a job and a life partner, both usually
assuring financial security, but they need money in order to get to and maintain that look. This would lead
any adult to madness. Imagine what it does to children 6.

When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a truth.

Gender Identity
Because of its overwhelming presence in western societies, the beauty myth is believed to participate in the
formation of gender identity. According to neuroscientist Lise Eliot, interviewed by Peggy Orenstein for
her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, all babies are very similar until the acquisition of language.
Regardless of gender, some are more emotional, others are more adventurous, some smile a lot, and others
cry all the time. They all have similar preferences in terms of toys, games, and needs (59). When they reach
the age of two or three, they start recognizing gender by physical features – long hair equals female, deep

6

See Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth

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voice equals male, etc. – and to separate toys in term of gender – dolls for girls, trucks for boys (59). By
the time they reach elementary school, most of them prefer playing with children of the same gender, and
some come to antagonize children of other genders (60). In his book Girls on the Edge, practicing pediatrist
Leonard Sax points out that the more time is spent in gender-exclusive groups, the more stereotyped
behaviors are developed (175). In other words, the more girls spend time with other girls, the more girly
they become. The exposition to feminine role models displaying the same conventional values around
femininity in the media reinforces girly behaviors in a similar way.
In the 1990’s, American philosopher Judith Butler theorized this belief in Gender Trouble, where
she describes gender as a mere “stylized repetition of acts, and imitation or miming of the dominant
conventions of gender” (45), a performance. She argues that, by being continuously exposed to gendered
behaviors and receiving reinforcement for complying to them 7, humans come to internalize these behaviors
and adopt them as integral parts of their personality (Butler 45). Over a decade later, Sax explains gender
as a spectrum in which feminine and masculine are not opposites, but complementary (186). Then, every
human has a different amount of femininity and masculinity in them, existing somewhere between the
extremities of gender-neutrality, androgenicity, femininity, and masculinity. This can be reconciled with
Butler’s theory with the understanding of gender as something inherently free and fluid, but unfortunately
performed as bidimensional and rigid. The acceptance of such concepts would be beneficial for gender
equality, but also for the safety and mental well-being of gender non-conforming, trans*, and gender queer
individuals. However, it seems unrealistic for now to imagine a completely genderless – or genderful –
society.
When Peggy Orenstein wrote Cinderella Ate My Daughter in 2011, she was discouraged with the
impossibility of sheltering her daughter from the beauty myth. She was under the impression that, even if

I have observed this kind of reinforcement in many instances as a cousin, an aunt, a sister, a babysitter and an
educator. A lot of adults will praise little girls for their beauty, calm, creativity and servitude. At the opposite, littles
boys will be celebrated for their physical strength, humour, free-spirit and leadership. I have even seen this happen
with children with unconventional traits in relation to their sex. For example, I know many girls with leadership skills
who would get reprimanded for being “bossy” and some boys who will be laughed at by their own family for being
caring and sensitive.

7

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she monitored her child’s exposure to problematic images at home, it was impossible to stop her daughter
from absorbing the false ideas of the beauty myth when she stepped out the door. Indeed, the beauty myth
is also in children’s books, in advertising, on billboards, in every shopping mall, etc. Orenstein references
a research carried out by the Advertising Educational Foundation in the United States, stating that at the
early age of twelve to eighteen months, children can recognize certain commercial brands, and she describes
these toddlers as being heavily influenced by media and advertising (38). This means that by the time they
reach adolescence, most girls already have a fixed idea of what a woman should be and are conditioned to
fit in with the values of patriarchal capitalism. That is, they have been conditioned to perform the “right”
way to be feminine.
This realization, occurring at an ever-younger age, comes in pair with a phenomenon named by
marketers “Kids Getting Older Younger (KGOY)”. Orenstein describes it as the process by which “toys
and trends start with older children, but younger ones, trying to be like their big brothers and sisters, quickly
adopt them. That immediately taints them for the original audience. And so the cycle goes.” (84). For
example, when crop-tops are trendy for thirteen-year-old girls, the ten-year-old see it and, wanting to be
like their big sisters or their cool friends, begin wearing them as well. And then the same happens to the
eight-year-old girls, and so on and so forth. Around the same time, a lot of young girls start having more
access to the internet – the legal age for enrolling on Instagram and Facebook being thirteen. They
simultaneously start to feel a growing pressure to display an overt sexuality – after all, isn’t that what their
older sisters do?

Mental Health
The internalization of the harmful messages of the beauty myth is made evident is young women’s use of
social media. There, the emphasis is put on “being my best self” and “living my best life”, those two things
being measured in terms of numbers of “likes” and followers. As philosopher Byung-Chul Han suggests in
Topology of Violence, self-absorption is very different than self-care (26). When putting the image first,

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and the person second, one can easily build an identity based on appearance. This is especially true for
young girls, whose value is already too often put on their beauty rather than their legitimate skills and
qualities. This construction of self blurs the line between woman and representation further. In 2017, the
Royal Society for Public Health led the survey #StatusOfMind in the United Kingdom and found that
Instagram is the worst mobile app for the mental health for these reasons. People from 14 to 24 years-old
reported to feel more anxiety, loneliness and despair when using this app than any other social media
platform (8).
Even before the rise of social media, French feminist Lucy Irigaray was exploring the
commoditization of the female body. In her book This Sex Which Is Not One, she suggests that because
women internalize their body as an object to be sold and exchanged amongst men, they can only relate to
each other as competitive commoditized entities (177). It becomes a contest of whose value will grow the
highest. This value, then calculated in phalluses, is now correlated to “likes” and followers. Social media
is pervasive as it blurs the line between woman and image even more than conventional media. Because
regular people share the platforms with influencers and celebrities who have marketing teams and
professional photo editing software, it is now almost impossible to dissociate reality from fiction. Therefore,
it is increasingly harder to make the difference between realistic and superhuman expectations towards
one’s body. Simultaneously, sharing these platforms with professionals raises the bar for self-advertisement
and pushes young people to commoditize themselves in a way that was unattainable with traditional media.
That is why girls put so much importance of self-representation, even if this importance is misplaced.
That will to please and conform is unmistakably strong, pushing over 40 000 Americans under 18
to surgically alter their appearance in 2008, most of them female-identified (Orenstein 139). This might
allow some girls to stay close to the constructed beauty ideal for a longer time. But every girl, at some point,
fails to meet the beauty ideal. At what ever age this fall happens, the consequences can be devastating.
Indeed, from the youngest age, most girls are taught that their worth is directly correlated to their beauty.
Consequently, when their skin starts breaking out, or when their bodies become heavier, or when the first
white hair appears, it can feel like an incommensurable defeat (Sax 68). All self-worth is lost. Remaining

7
are the social skills if any, and the coping mechanisms. Some are healthy: engaging in creative or physical
activities, spending time with friends and family, practicing mindful meditation, etc. Some are devastating:
gaining back control through eating disorders and self-harm, engaging in unprotected or mindless sexual
activities, abusing substances.
It has also been argued that these behaviors, or coping systems, are not to be seen as consequential,
but rather as reactionary. Indeed, girls affected by such issues are not merely passive objects bending under
too much pressure or breaking into illness. Instead, Susan Bordo, in her essay “The Body and the
Reproduction of Femininity”, speaks of psychiatric disorders in women as “embodied protest” (175).
Similarly, Naomi Wolf writes “It is a sign of mental health to try to control something that is trying to
control you, especially if you are a lone young woman and it is a massive industry fueled by the needs of
an entire determined world order. Self-defense is the right plea when it comes to eating disasters; not
insanity” (198). In this sense, putting issues of mental health and representation in settings of victimoppressor is not fair or productive. It seems more effective to act against the systemic structures allowing
these kinds of harmful images to be continuously elevated, and to teach young people to recognize
unhealthy thoughts and behaviors in themselves before falling into pathology.

When you repeat a truth often enough, it becomes nonsense.

Material Practice
Abjection
In my material practice, abjection operates as a tool to counterbalance the ridiculous amount of image of
so-called beauty to which western audiences are subjected every day. According to the Oxford online
dictionary, abject is the quality of something bad being experienced or present to the maximum degree
(Oxford). Now, under the beauty myth, bad can apply to anything which does not comply to its rules. Most
natural needs, functions and particularities of the human body are to be hidden. This definition aligns with

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that of Julia Kristeva, a prominent Bulgarian-French
author, psychanalyst, critic and philosopher. In The
Powers of Horror, she defines abjection as which “lies
outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to
the latter’s rule of the game” (2). Therefore, using
abjection in my work is a way for me to normalize
feminine bodies as living entities rather than
commodities. I believe that repetitively showing what
is considered to be their malfunctions, defects and
Figure 2 – Skinned, 2018

absurdities can ultimately humanize and concretize

them, as much to the eyes of outsiders – cis men, as to the eyes of insiders – cis and trans* women.
For example, in my series of photographs Skinned, 2018 (figure 2), I took very close shots of my
skin over several months and printed them in large format on glossy paper. Following a tradition set by
feminist photographers from the 1970’s to the 2000’s such as Geneviève Cadieux, Hannah Wilke and Lisa
Steele, I emphasized on the aspects of the body usually hidden in the media: stretch marks, break-outs,
eczema, wrinkles, creases, and tattoos. This celebration of the abject beauty is a direct response to alleged
positive images that are emblematic of the beauty myth. In that sense, a lot of my artworks act as antiselfies. They embrace to some extent the standards set by advertisement and social media – in this case
following the square format of Instagram, while breaking the expectation by being purposely abject.
On a personal level, this kind of artistic research was beneficial for my relationship to my own
body. In the past, I was often ashamed or disappointed with the appearance of my skin “issues”. However,
while executing this project I was excited to find them every day and curious to discover what these
“imperfections” looked like reproduced and on a large scale. What was shameful then became precious;
what was disgusting became beautiful. This is where abjection meets celebration: a meeting point acting as

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a refusal of patriarchal capitalism, whose many industries rely on women’s shame of their bodies to generate
profit 8.
In a similar way, American artist Lisa Steele’s early solo work highlighted the “defects” on
women’s bodies with a desire to participate in the conversation around power relations, self-love, and selfdoubt (National Gallery of Canada). Her piece Birthday Suit: with Scars and Defects, produced in 1974, is
a twelve minutes video in which she filmed every outstanding detail of her body 9 while explaining the
origin of each. Steele’s work as a counselor for abused women motivated her to make that piece (MoMA).
Without it being the main intent, this artwork was striking in its contrast with the usual representation of
feminine bodies in the media. My work operates similarly. However, I choose not to give any context on
the “flawed” details exposed in Skinned. In my opinion, they don’t need to be explained in order to have
their existence accepted and celebrated.
As Naomi Wolf writes at the end of The Beauty Myth, “while we cannot directly affect the images,
we can drain them of their power” (277). She suggests that images depicting alternative modes of beauty
can change the way we see images of the beauty ideal. In other words, while right now girls see themselves
as lesser versions of the women in the magazines, a counterculture might reverse the gaze (Wolf 278). That
way, the images of the beauty myth would finally become exactly what they are: mere representations of
the women holding the magazine, or cellphone, in their hands. Consequently, by having my images
participate in this counterculture, I contribute to the reversal of the gaze by questioning the current beauty
standards and its consequences. It is not so much about the power of a single image, but rather about being
part of a movement to slowly dismantle the harmful ideas that being pretty is the most important thing a
girl can be, and that there is only one way to be it. When these myths start fading, the images of the socalled ideal also begin to lose their power.
Now, it is yet to be determined what beauty actually is. In Saving Beauty, cultural theorist and
philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes contemporary beauty as being positivity, smoothness, sleek

8
9

See Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth.
Scars, beauty marks, bruises, et cetera.

10
perfection, citing the iPhone and Jeff Koon’s sculptures as the epitome of positive beauty (2). These
characteristics also correspond to images of the beauty myth: the pornographic ideal of hairless, pore-less,
ageless skin; the surreal silk of the hair; the plump smoothness of the lips; the long sleekness of the nails;
the disturbing evenness of the smile.
Han also refers to a negative mode of beauty, one that pushed the viewer down, knocks them over:
a beauty that can be experienced rather than seen or liked (6). This concept brings me back to The Powers
of Horror by Julia Kristeva, as she writes that abject beauty “disturbs identity, system, order” (4). Abjection
lives outside of the economy of desire - which Kristeva sees as being always towards an object – being
based on exclusion and opposition (6). Abject rather than object; enjoyed rather than desired (9).
Abjection comes into play with the beauty ideal at the moment of the failure to conform. The
constructed beauty ideal is desired both by the girls who want to embody it and by the heterosexual men
who want to own it. The feminine abject is avoided, hidden, controlled, to the point of excess, to the point
of illness. It disturbs the identity one tries to build for oneself through the body. But it always resurfaces.
Abjection only lives in opposition to the flawless ideal, otherwise the abject would only be the natural, the
normal living human body. Also, once embraced, the abject is even more enjoyable than so-called perfect
beauty. Contrarily to the beauty myth, abject beauty requires no labor, no sacrifices, only being. It is the
ultimate freedom from the gaze. The gesture of showing my imperfections, as in Skinned, is a much-needed
liberation for myself as for the audience. When the image of my skin is seen by the viewer, it operates
beyond being liked or disliked, this piece calls to enjoyment on both parts. It has to be fully experienced by
the viewer because I didn’t pose as an object for it. I experienced it with agency as image-maker and model,
a double-agent. Because the audience is not familiar with visual representations of the abject parts of the
feminine body the experience can trigger an affective response.

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In the making of I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should Be (figure 3), a two-channel 22:16 minutes
video installation produced in the fall of 2018, I was aiming for a mode of abjection doubling as a sensorial
trigger. In one channel, my eye comes in and out of focus in a central close-up. Repetitively, my hand with
a mascara wand applies makeup on my lashes. By the end, my eye cannot stay open for long enough for
me to apply mascara, and I flinch and start to cry thick black tears. The second channel first appears as a
static image of my hand over a white textured cloth. Every couple of seconds though, my other hand comes
into the frame in fast forward to apply a layer of nail polish. At the end of the video, the layers have piled
up into thick leaning blobs on each nail. The installation is also made of a sound element: my voice singing
over and over the phrase “I got a hole where my heart should be”, pulled from the song of the same name
by The Sheepdogs. As the piece unfolds, my voice gets distorted, inverted and layered into a rather
anxiogenic sound. As a whole, this artwork starts as calming and ritualistic, but as all elements get more
abject, it turns on the viewer. The expectations set by advertisement and online beauty tutorials are
subverted. The excess becomes uncomfortable and disturbing, in a way that the viewers who use makeup
have reported not being able to stop thinking about it the next time they applied mascara or nail polish.

Figure 3 – I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should Be (stills), 2018

12
Audience members also reported wanting to look away because of the anxiety conveyed by the image.
However, as the projection was very big and the sound omnipresent, it was impossible to avoid.
For myself, working with seemingly “flawed” parts of my body is an effective tool to recall my
past and current pain fed by the beauty myth. For the viewer, abjection operates as an affective trigger and
I am interested in the affective experience of images. In her book Empathic Vision, Australian professor Jill
Bennett describes affect as the sensorial response felt by the viewer when seeing art related to trauma. More
than a simple “mechanistic trigger”, affect “thrusts us involuntarily into a mode of critical inquiry” (Bennett
11). She also sees it the best strategy to grasp the audience through an emotive response rather than
illustrating trauma. Referencing Deleuze, she describes affect as the “encountered sign”, “the sign that is
felt rather than recognized or perceived through cognition” (Bennett 7). In that sense, the affective response
in the face of abjection forces the audience members to engage because it is harder to dismiss or ignore
than an artwork displaying more didactic strategies. Then, it stays with the viewer even after the experience
of it, forcing them into critical inquiry: Why does this make them uncomfortable? Why would an artist – a
female artist – choose to make art that way?
This type of abjection has been used by several feminist artists since the seventies. Carolee
Schneemann did it effectively for years, Interior Scroll (1975) being her most well-known work. In this
performance, she unravels a scroll of paper coming out of her vagina and reads a fictive dialogue written
on it. The abjection of female bodily fluids added weight to this otherwise simple piece. Tracey Emin also
used it in a powerful manner in the nineties when she exhibited My Bed (1998): a disgusting yet emotional
and tender installation of her so-called bed, covered in diverse kinds of filth and garbage. To continue using
these strategies in 2019, traditional to feminist practices, might sound cliché. However, I believe there is
value in repeating the same thing very often.

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Repetition
In History
Repetition is not a concept to be ignored when looking at the objectification of the feminine body and its
behavioral implications. As mentioned earlier, psychological distress in girls often comes from an
exaggeration of the expected performance of femininity. This slippage is carried by endless repetitions –
that of images of the Iron Maiden, of performed gestures of gender, and of pressure from family and peers.
Repetition also comes into play when reviewing the history of feminism and the artistic movements born
from it. At first glance, my artworks are not different from that of the feminist artists from the seventies and
eighties: I, too, am reclaiming the autonomy of feminine bodies and minds through abjection, repetition
and self-representation. The question should not be “Why does she still want to do this kind of art in 2019?”
but rather “Why does she still have to do this kind of art in 2019?”
It is important to understand that the feminist movement evolved considerably during the past
century. After thousands of years, the patriarchy has infiltrated most aspects of western life, from politics
to education, religion, economy, professional life, media, and people’s relationships with themselves and
others. In the beginning of the feminist movement, known as the First Wave, it was logical to go for the
most concrete aspects of society: politics, educations, and ownership (Phillips & Cree 10-11). It is only
during the Second Wave that this slogan came to light: “The personal is political”. During that same period,
a lot of my personal favorite artists began their career including Carolee Schneemann, Mary Kelly and
Marina Abramović. All inspired by their personal experiences, they created ground-breaking work with
messages that were political at different levels. This is something that I still carry in my work to this day.
However, the essentialism and lack of intersectional considerations led to a Third Wave of feminism that
began in the 1980’s (Phillips & Cree 12). Carrying the same baggage but with a more inclusive
understanding of gender-based issues, artists like Tracey Emin, Marilyn Minters and Geneviève Cadieux
started working during this period. Multiple backlashes also occurred during the Third Wave, which made
issues of representation and agency regress in many ways for women (Phillips & Cree 13). This brings me

14
to the Fourth Wave, happening today with shared concerns with the past two Waves, but also with a renewed
awareness of intersectionality and gender performativity. The ubiquitous presence of the internet as a tool
of both patriarchal capitalism and feminist activism is also particular to the Fourth Wave. It brings to light
a new generation of artists such as Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Juno Calypso, Signe Pierce and Cassils, who
all draw on the aforementioned artists and in return influence me in various ways. Art history repeats itself
along with the history of feminism by means of growth and transformation. By inscribing my work in these
discourses, I carry a message to be heard by an increasing amount of people and that simultaneously gains
clarity, awareness and strength. The repetition then allows for a greater understanding of gender-based
issues through time as well as an adaptation of feminist ideals to the current era.

In Art-Making
As much as art-making is my contribution to the repetition of art history, I also use repetition in a more
literal sense in my material practice. I am interested in the escalating quality of repetition and its long- term
effects on the psyche, be it in language, behavior, movement or images. Concretely, repetition manifest

Figure 4 – It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes the Truth (stills), 2018

15
itself in my artworks through the repetition of gestures. In It Becomes Nonsense / It Becomes the Truth
(figure 4), a two-channel video installation where two projections face one another, two actions are
repeated. On the right, I use a tweezer on my eyebrows until no hair is left. On the left, I rub my hands
against each other continually with lotion, adding more of it every time it is absorbed by my skin. Both
gestures are banal in the everyday life, but become intolerable for the viewer when escalated to excess.
They operate in quite different ways: the eyebrow tweezing coming to a natural end; the hand lotion having
an endless potential. The tension in their difference call to both the incapacity to stop and the unbearable
lack of fulfillment; both coming from the pressures of the beauty myth. This installation is also composed
of the sound of my hands repetitively rubbing on lotion. This sound enhances the abjection of the already
disturbing content. When this piece was shown in a gallery space, it was in a small room with the two
channels each filling the length of their projection wall. Because a lot of viewers came to see the work at
the same time, the affective response was amplified by an overwhelming claustrophobia in parts of the
audience. Some even had to exit the room. Rather than the gestures themselves, it was the repetitive action
that conveyed emotion and critical inquiry.
In my earlier works such as #NoFilter (figure 7) produced in the fall of 2017, the repetition was
operating in the objects. In this case, it was as the collection of my used makeup wipes, on which
confessions about myself were embroidered in the form of sentences and pictograms. The accumulation of
daily wipes called to attention the continuous process of trying to conform to the beauty ideal and its effects
on the body and the mind. Hung in three columns of square wipes, this piece was also a reference to social
media. The trace of my body along with the confessions acted as anti-selfies, but of the feminine abject
rather than of the feminine object.
In Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay says in relation to acts of oppression towards women: “The problem
is not that one of these things is happening, it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly”
(189). In the same way, the gestures, images or objects utilized in my work often seem innocuous by
themselves. It is their accumulation to the point of excess that make them unbearable. My use of this strategy
is influenced by the work of Marina Abramović. Her endurance pieces sometimes take the form of life

16
performance, or photographic and video records of the initial gesture, as she deals with issues of feminism,
failed communication, and the difficulties of human relations. In a way similar to my works, she makes
seemingly inoffensive gestures that transform into heavily charged artworks. For example, in her 1975
video Art Must Be Beautiful Artist Must Be Beautiful, Abramović brushes her hair in front of a mirror. This
rather banal gesture takes exaggerated proportions as she brings in a second brush, and continues with more
and more energy and frustration for over fifty minutes (LIMA). Some of her performances are intense from
beginning to end, the repetition only making it stronger by her persistence and insistence. It is the case with
Balkan Baroque (1997), an elaborate installation including Abramović’s four-day performance in which
she scrubbed 1,500 fresh beef bones as she sang and wept in mourning of fallen Yugoslavia (Pereira). Her
work as a performance artist has an important influence on my practice because it links together repetition,
endurance and abjection. However, my artworks tend to fall more under the label of media art rather than
live performance.

Media Art
The shift from art objects, such as #NoFilter (2017), to a more media-based practice occurred in the winter
of 2018. The main reason was that I had torn a ligament in my right wrist. Being right handed, this forced
me out of an object-based practice, leaving me with limited options. As I had enjoyed working with video
and photography during my undergraduate studies, I turned to those mediums for what I expected to be a
short period of time. It ended up redefining my practice.
In Until Your Nose Bleeds (2018) (figure 5), a 4:19 minutes video, I used the large-scale projection
as an affective 10 strategy. The image is composed of moving black shadows on a bright red background.
Slowly, it becomes clearer that the moving shadows are actually those of my tongue, licking a red substance,
candy, off the lens or seemingly the projection wall when the work is installed. Throughout the video, the
voice of Cortana, the artificial intelligence on recent PC computers, reads an abusive love letter composed

10

Affective is used here following the definition of Jill Bennett. See Abjection for that definition.

17
of pop song lyrics from the past decade. Here, the large-scale projection operates in two ways: 1. it abstracts
the image more than if it was on a small screen, emphasizing the ambiguity also conveyed by the spoken
words; 2. it overwhelms the viewer in the affect first caused by the bright red cast, then by the abjection of
the gigantic mouth licking the screen/lens/projection wall. Progressively, the ambiguity disappears as the
image becomes clearer and the lyrics form an increasingly violent message. At the same time, an exorcism
from the possession of sexually disturbed pop songs occurs, involving the audience in a kind of awakening.
In his contribution to Art of Projection, David Joselit offers a fascinating point of view on the
political potential of video art. The essay, titled “Touching Pictures: Toward a Political Science of Video”,
references the Bernadette Corporation as Joselit describes the art of video as an exorcism from the “’satanic
possession’ of television” (115). This dispossession occurs in the alienation of the audience from the image.
When a viewer consumes popular media, the level of identification is so normalized that, after a couple of
hours, it becomes hard to dissociate it from reality, thus the possession. On the other hand, when a viewer
sees a work in which the level of identification is dramatized – either giving too much or too little, there is
a feeling of alienation: an exorcism from the mediatized image. It is particularly interesting to think about
this dispossession in relation to the beauty myth. The constant pressure coming from all sorts of popular
media influences some young women in a very powerful way, at times to the point of pushing them towards
psychological distress and self-destructive behaviors (Royal Society for Public Health & Young Health
Movement.8). Then, maybe a representation with which they can identify in a completely different way,
but still keeping a similar medium as in my practice, can act as an exorcism. Consequently, Joselit argues
that:
In exploring the struggles around the possession of one’s own image (which are as firmly rooted in politics
and economics as they are in psychology), the self’s appearance in video is not narcissistic, but rather,
following (Hannah) Arendt, the initial moment in constituting a genuine public. In other words, rather than
narcissism, it is the public – or publics – that is the medium of video.

18

Figure 5 – Until Your Nose Bleeds (stills), 2018

19
Contrary to mass media, where the message unidirectional from constructed image to viewer, video art
allows an interpersonal dynamic from body to body and from human to representation of human. This bring
me back to Jane Bennett’s Empathic Vision, as she speaks of the embodiment of pain in art as orchestrating
a “set of transactions between bodies” (50). This applies perfectly to my practice. When confronted by my
work, the dispossession of the viewer occurs through the alienation from its usual constructed
representation, and its replacement by a presentation of the struggling human body. The image is then felt,
experienced in its immediacy rather than only seen or desired. Video therefore permits an effective
transmission of affect, especially with the use of abjection. It is also true for myself as both artist and model
of the artworks. Seeing my body and my truth being projected in my videos releases me from the haunting
of the beauty myth by allowing me to experience myself on the screen in a very different way than that of
the mirror or pictures. This alienation from my own body facilitates a reconciliation with it: by being the
image I do not need to become it. I am at peace, and I am healing.

In my work, the affective response is also amplified by the close-up of the image. According to
Mary Ann Doane’s contribution to Art of Projection, “Location of the Image: Cinematic Projection and
Scale in Modernity”, the close-up has the effect of reducing the face and body to a surface, as “the face
itself becomes the screen” (162). She calls this extreme mode of affect a “literal cinematic disfigurement”
(162). In the case of Until Your Nose Bleeds, the disfigurement contributes in the abjection also conveyed
by the other elements.
The importance of the immediacy of video is also argued by Mary Ann Doane, who considers
projection as an abstract virtual space allowing itself to be inhabited by the audience. Therefore, “not only
light in its transience and quasi-immateriality, but something of the self is thrown out at the screen.” (160).
This relation allows a greater identification by the viewer as the line between internal and external, subject
and object, image and self, is blurred in a way that never occurs with popular media. This is amplified by
the scale of the installation, which doesn’t depend on a material object. Rather, it is the projection of the
video that re-organizes the space, maximizing the potential of its architecture (Doane 155). In that sense,

20
as Until Your Nose Bleeds, most of my video installations are projected on the whole wall of the gallery
space. It overpowers the viewer, overwhelms them, and implicate their body in the scene. If the projected
image was a window, the whole audience could jump out at once.
These are strategies that I often favor when showing my video works. As most of them are diptychs,
I project them on opposite walls, forcing the audience members to choose a side while not leaving any rest
to their gaze. To achieve this inescapable effect, the projections have to be really big, taking up the whole
length of the wall. Sometimes, a bench is provided, but never comfortable enough to make the viewer at
ease - just like I am never entirely at ease as a woman. The unease is also amplified by the sound coming
from two different sides of the room with its abject haptic quality. Then, as aforementioned, repetition is
another important factor of my installation. The videos are set in a loop, which contributes to the
impossibility to escape. A lot is asked from my viewers, the works being uncomfortable and quite long –
most of them around 22:30 minutes 11, but staying for more than a few minutes is rewarding. Not only is it
necessary to let the work grow from a didactic critique of the beauty myth to an affective launch into critical
inquiry of everyday gestures, some viewers also have reported a strange satisfaction in seeing the end result
of some of these performances. This calls to more reflection on the reasons why we continue to conform to
what patriarchal capitalism asks of us, and on our role as both victims and perpetrators.

Process
I use the same process for most of my video works. In my washroom, I set up my camera 12 on a tripod or
on an object to hold it in the right position. A lot of times, as for I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should Be
(figure 3), It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes the Truth (figure 4), and Mask (figure 8), the camera is pointing
at the mirror so that I can see myself perform the gesture while I make it. I use the lighting from the room,
sometimes with help from flashlights and lamps if important parts of the image are too dark. Also, I always

11
12

The average time western women spend on hair and makeup everyday (Kelley).
I use a Canon EOS Rebel SL2.

21
prepare every prop necessary for the gesture in advance. I make sure to have enough of each item and to
put them close enough to be able to take them without exiting the image. The most important thing is to
record the gesture without ever stopping the video until my body is exhausted by the performance.
Sometimes, my body has obvious signs of exhaustion, for example in I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should
Be (figure 3), when my eye starts tearing up. Other times, it is subtler, as in It Becomes Nonsense/It Becomes
the Truth (figure 1) with the swelling of my formerly injured wrist. Editing the film is also an important
aspect of my work. 13. Because I want this series of videos to conform to the 22:30 minutes duration I set
for myself, I sometimes edit the duration of the clips. For works where the gesture is quick and requires a
specific prop, like I Got a Hole Where My Heart Should Be (figure 3), I edit out the times when the prop is
out of the picture. This amplifies the overwhelming effect of the restless repetition and helps me control
the duration of the video. For videos with a more continuous gesture, I simply manipulate the speed of the
gesture, as long as it remains reasonable. For example, I slowed down a little bit the sequence for Mask
(figure 8) to reach the 22:30 minutes. This manipulation amplifies the abjection coming from the sound and
the haptic quality of the serum in the sheet masks.
For my photographic works, the process is more flexible. If the photograph can be taken at home,
I do everything by myself, sometimes contorting my body to be able to get the right angles. Otherwise, if
the work has to be done in a public space, I ask for the help of another person. This helps me save time and
prevent my equipment from being stolen. For example, for my most recent series Ghost (figure 6), I have
the help of undergraduate student Jae Lew to take the photographs. Every time we meet, I bring reference
images to show them the kind of composition and light I would like to have for the artwork. I also direct
them and teach them how to use effectively the DSLR camera. It is important for me to make sure that this
is an exchange of services in the form of a mentorship rather than just an artist-assistant relationship.

13

I use Adobe Premiere Pro.

22

Figure 6 – Ghost, 2019

Self-Representation
After my wrist injury, media art was a way for me to work with performance without showing my cast,
which would have carried a lot of misplaced visual and conceptual weight. Self-representation has always
been an important aspect of my work. As my research is mostly autoethnographic and based on my own
embodiment of social issues, it is logical to work with my own body. By doing both of these things, my
body becomes a tool to measure the world: one that is controlled by patriarchy and capitalism. As a woman
living with mental illness, I use my symptoms and emotions to assess the influence of the beauty myth on
a somewhat vulnerable feminine body. Then, I use theoretical research to discriminate what is a
manifestation of a larger societal problem from what is simply an unrelated effect of my illness. This is
where my creative research is rooted. Similarly, I use myself as a tool for embodied research in the very
making of my work. The reactions of my body to different performances and gestures are integral parts of

23
my investigation in better understanding the impact of
repeated acts of beautification on a feminine psyche.
This is transmitted to the audience visually and
becomes an inspiration for further works.
As Joselit argues in “Touching Pictures”,
referring to Vito Acconci’s recurring presence in his
video work, appearance “must be understood not
merely as an individual’s act of self-representation but
the primary – even primal – act of politics” (116). In
Figure 7 - #NoFilter (detail), 2017

agreement with Joselit, I like to think of my physical

presence in my work as a political action. Indeed, when I put my body into my work, I do so in opposition
to the culture of self-representation initiated by social media. By using it in my work, my goal is not to
increase my value as a commodifiable body. Rather, as in #NoFilter (2017 figure 6), the series of makeup
wipes on which I embroidered confessions, I represent myself while staying the furthest away possible from
the “best self, best life” trope. This choice serves three purposes. First, it participates in shifting the male
gaze by showing a feminine body in abject, allegedly undesirable, conditions. My agency as an artist and
as a woman are essential here. It is easy to find unflattering images of women. However, it is much harder
to find women who willingly showcase this side of themselves. Consequently, I see it as an act of resistance
to own these sides of myself and to use them to make art. Second, it is a way to re-appropriate my own
body as a living thing rather than an object of representation. When I produce an artwork using my body as
a tool, I exorcise myself. This is a form of dispossession, from self-absorption to self-care. My body
becomes worthy of attention, worthy of care, worthy of being on the screen. It is an affirmation of it in all
of its majesty: acne, eczema, cellulite, and all. It is a repossession of it, despite the illness telling me to
refuse it. In other words, putting my body in my work, especially going through all of these gestures,
facilitates an analysis that eliminates very slowly my own internalized misogyny.

24
Thirdly, in this Fourth Wave of feminism, using my body rather than anyone else’s keeps me away
from instrumentalizing others. Even if the issues approached in my work touch a lot of people, I could not
pretend that my understanding and ensuing representation of it applies universally. In that sense, I would
not want to impose my interpretation on another woman’s body. Self-representation allows me with more
freedom without the ethical worries of consent and appropriation. It also has an important precedent in
feminist art history. From the 1970’s to her death in 1993, Hannah Wilke used herself as a model in most
of her performance and photographic work, being both the subject and the artist. Moreover, she came up
with the term “performalist self-portrait”: photography created by the artist and in which she appeared, but
that was taken by another person whom she directed (Hannah Wilke Website). Among her most influential
work in regards to my practice is her series Brushstrokes, drawings she made of her fallen hair as results of
the treatment for her lymphoma, a year prior to her death (MoMA). Its simplicity and strength in regards to
the failures of the female body and the loss of femininity is particularly relevant to my work. In a similar
way, my photographic series Forecast, started in February 2018, shows in abject close-ups my colored hair
fallen in the shower. In this case, the line between normal and worrying, healthy and sick, is blurred. “To
exist as a woman, even as an adolescent girl, is to be damaged” (Wolf 96). By taking these pictures, I
reassert my normality and that of other feminine bodies. By willingly showing what society has adjected, I
gain back control.

Art in the Time of Patriarchal Capitalism
There is a continuous debate among the feminist activism community since the Second Wave concerning
the use of the tools and languages of patriarchal capitalism. While some have been advocating for a place
within the men-dominated world, others are fighting for the destruction of this world at the benefit of a new
one (Phillips & Cree 11). A fresh, clean start. Meanwhile, feminists following Luce Irigaray’s “When Our
Lips Speak Together” advocate for an idiom specific to women (205), completely refusing patriarchal
colonialist languages and spaces. Not only is this problematic in its essentialism, it is also incredibly naïve.

25
In my opinion, feminist activism should aim for a genderful society, not for segregated spaces and
languages. I believe the only way to achieve this is to reach out to the people in power, or to empower the
less privileged to do so. Therefore, at this point, my response to the dilemma is these questions: Would the
people in power even notice if we don’t speak the same language? If we don’t use the same tools?
It is a conscious choice for me to use traditionally patriarchal mediums and exhibition spaces. I
acknowledge that the media that have popularized the objectification of the female body use video and
photography, just as I do. I also acknowledge that traditional exhibition spaces such as the art gallery and
the museum have an history of prioritizing male artists, whom I am not. But I also believe that by making
these choices, my work operates in spaces where breaking the expectation is productive, and where the
audience is receptive.
In my experience as a feminist, I noticed one thing: issues concerning young girls don’t matter. In
a patriarchal society, they are often trivialized, dismissed, and ignored. As result, it is in my experience that
most cis men do not care. They do not need to. Some pretend to care to gain social capital – being a feminist
is trendy (Peretz); some do so to extend their collection of women - being a feminist is sexy (Moore); some
just to keep the peace in their private and professional relationships – being a feminist is good (Spratt).
Others are completely plain about their hatred, from dismissal (Wesley), to hate speech (Valizadeh), to hate
crimes (Kohn). Every day, many cis men choose to risk their reputation, their family, their jobs, just to keep
objectifying women. A great example is Jan Singer, former-CEO of the multinational underwear company
Victoria’s Secret, who preferred resigning from the prestigious job rather than hiring models with bodies
outside of the beauty ideal (Lang). It is easy for cis men to do this sort of things in a patriarchal society.
Not only is the view of women as second-class citizen – or even objects - internalized 14, it is also
institutionalized. It is so much easier for men to be forgiven for their actions when they are in control and
supported by the justice system, the educational system, the government, and seen as the leading member
of all heterosexual nuclear families. And so far, the privilege gets passed from fathers to sons without much

Not only by men, but by people of all genders. Women carry internalize misogyny in many ways, from shaming
other women, to being anti-feminist, to being accomplice of hate crimes based on gender.

14

26
trouble 15. As result, the people in power are cis men. Men rule our country; twelve of our thirteen provinces
and territories; and 22 of the 23 countries on our continent. Men also make up all of the top ten richest
people in the world. In order to make real change happen, we need to speak to them, and we need to do it
in ways they will understand. These ways are the ones they know and trust.
I also choose these spaces, theses audiences and art itself because I believe that art has a power that
other mediums do not. I have had the chance to contribute to the feminist movement by writing and
speaking. For example, my essay “Empathy, Hope and Instafeminists” was published last year in the online
magazine Femme Art Review, where several other Canadian feminists have been able to read and reflect on
my ideas. However, this is an audience that most likely already knows and feels the ideas fueling my
research. I had a similar experience when I spoke at the 2018 TedxECUAD event. There is a didacticism
in disciplines such as non-fiction writing and speaking that is hard to avoid. This unfortunately alienates
more ambivalent members of the audience and often fails in conveying an affect that words cannot express.
On the other hand, art allows me to play with different levels of abstractions. In The Aesthetic Dimension,
Herbert Marcuse speaks of “the aesthetic form which gives the familiar content and the familiar experience
the power of estrangement” (41). I agree with his statement that this is how art can reach “the radical,
transcendent goals of change” (xiii). By alienating the viewers and drawing them back again, by blurring
the line between didacticism and affective experience, I hope to be an agent of this type of social change.
If we believe the world can change – and it is necessary to do so – it is not so naïve to believe that art will
have a role to play in its transformation.

The house may be haunted, but that won’t keep me from trying to exorcise it. Every possessed
entity has a way of being dispossessed, even if it may be at the peril of both the entity and the exorcist. I
am willing to take that risk.

Based on traditional gender roles of men being allegedly better with finances and having higher leadership skills,
and on the gender pay gap still present in Canada in 2019 (Press).

15

27

Conclusion
When I started the MFA program at Emily Carr University, in September 2017, the most often repeated
feedback was that I was putting myself in danger too much. I was told it was risky to disclose so much
information about my past and my health, as well as to be so upfront about my feminist political beliefs in
a professional or academic environment. I wanted to, and should have said that, in art, I never put myself
in danger as much as I do when I walk out my door in the morning, when I go on public transit, when I go
to parties, when I drive by myself at night, when I lose my friends in a bar 16. Having my body and my
gender identity puts me in danger, not doing auto-ethnographical research, not working with selfrepresentation. In How to Write an Auto-Biographical Novel, Alexander Chee gives the advice: “You write
the novel because you have to write it. You do it because it is easier to do than not to do. You can’t write a
novel you don’t have to write.” (136). I have this creative practice because it is the practice I need to have.

It is nonsense. It is the truth.

16

See Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth

28

Figure 8 – Mask (stills), 2019

29

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30
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Emin, Tracey. My Bed. 1998. Tate, London.
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31
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Appendix I – Statistics on the Feminine Youth
-

199%: the rise of hospitalisations due to eating disorders between 1999 and 2006 in the United
States (Hendrick).

-

55%: the rise of ADHD diagnostics in girls, compared to 40% in boys, observed between 2003 and
2011 in the United States (Anderson).

-

68%: the rise of incidences of self-harm in girls aged 13 to 16 between 2001 and 2014 in the United
Kingdom (Davis).

-

3,000: the approximate number of ads seen by American teenagers on all sources of media every
day (American Academy of Pediatrics 2563).

-

15%-25%: the number of Canadian girls who will be sexually assaulted during their college or
university years (Sexual Assault Center Hamilton and Area).

-

94%: the proportion of self-reported sexual assault committed by a man in Canada in 2014 (Conroy
& Cotter).

-

87%: the proportion of self-reported sexual assault committed against women in Canada in 2014
(Conroy & Cotter).

-

$40 millions: the approximate amount American tween girls spend on beauty products every month
(Orenstein 82).

-

40 000: the number of Americans under 18 who surgically altered their appearance in 2008, most
of them female-identified (Orenstein 139).

-

1/3 of their income: the amount urban professional American women are willing to put on
improving and maintaining their appearance (Wolf 52).

37

Appendix II – Letter to the #MeToo Movement
Vancouver, January 25th 2019.
Dear #MeToo 17,
You were born thirteen years ago now, but it took almost a decade for you to be noticed. Yet, when
you were finally seen, oh how incredibly visible did you become. For a brief instant, you were hope. You
were light. You made me come forward. Not to the police, not to my family, and not to my friends. You
made me come forward to myself. By putting the hashtag on my Facebook feed, I was being honest and,
for the very first time, I was compassionate to myself. “Things are finally changing”, I thought, because
you were hope.
But then, they started spitting on you. The pendulum had gone a little bit too far, a tiny tiny bit too
far. And maybe it didn’t even go that far, but it was too far for so many people. And maybe it was not that
many, but enough. And they are loud. And they are mean. And they are everywhere. They wrote comments
on social media, fine. They made bad jokes at family dinners, fine. They made remarks on the bus, fine. I
am used to it. But then, they made the same comments on national television. And on the radio. And in
universities. And in court. And in congress. The pendulum is falling so fast, and me too.
#MeToo, I know what you think. Men 18 are going to prison. Men are being held accountable. Men
are paying for what they did to us. Except these men are celebrities, public figures, icons. They don’t
represent hope, they represent fear. And men are scared. And their moms are scared. And their wives are
scared. And “Blurred Lines” is playing on the radio, and me too, I’m scared.
I’m scared because #MeToo is not for me. It is not for us, the nobodies, the unknown. If we come
forward against a rich man, we will be gold diggers. If we come forward against a poor man, who will
listen?
I’m scared because over a decade after your birth, they still think they have a right to my body.
And I’m scared because when I say I’m scared, they laugh. And then “What Do You Mean?” plays on the
radio, and I don’t laugh at all.
Sincerely,
Marie-Pascale

I am not addressing Tarana Burke here, but the #MeToo movement as an abstract entity. I have eternal admiration
and gratefulness for Mrs. Burke, who has the purest of intentions and the most beautiful strength.
18
I acknowledge that not all sexual harassment and assault comes from men, and that not all of their victims are
women. See Appendix I – Statistics on the Female Youth for the most recent estimation.
17