A Weekly Link Round Up of Body Image, Politics & Body Justice News

 

• Eve Ensler writes for Guernica magazine about Bodies of Revolution, convened by One Billion Rising, African American policy Forum, and  Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies(CISPS) . The participants were many and varied including Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a transmedia artist and activist; Sara Milena Ferrer Valencia, a human rights expert and researcher at Dejusticia and Racial Discrimination Watch; and ZOYA, a women’s rights activist who has worked extensively in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “It is our hope that this vibrant conversation will serve as a catalyst for the next stage of a global women’s solidarity movement, born of an understanding that the deep connections between our individual struggles from the bedrock and power that can sustain us as we remake the larger story that affects us all.”

 

• Congratulations Mya Taylor! “Mya Taylor just made history: On Saturday afternoon, she became the first transgender performer to win a high-profile Hollywood accolade. Honored for her work in “Tangerine,” Taylor took home the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. It marked the culmination of a lengthy awards season for the movie, whose distributor, Magnolia Pictures, staged a low-key Oscar campaign that also garnered Taylor a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor.” Mya was featured the day before her win on Cosmopolatin.com.

 

• Shamsia Hassani, a painter who teaches at Kabul University, is also a graffiti artist who in the dangerous streets of war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan creates murals at night.  She is currently on a two-month residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. “I call my latest body of work ‘Birds of No Nation,’… People in my country are all the time traveling somewhere to stay safe and find a peaceful life. And we are missing a lot of our friends and family who have left the country. Usually, birds are traveling all the time; they have no nation. And I thought maybe also we have no nation because everybody has moved to different countries. It doesn’t matter what country that is; the thing that’s important is just feeling safe, staying alive. Art — I can tell that story.”

 

• Dazed Magazine interviews Dark Matter, the NYC-based art duo using poetry and performance to dismantle society enforced gender binaries and restrictions. They talk about their latest project during NYC Fashion week, ctrl/alt/gender. “We thought it’d be a neat interruption in the usual parade of bodies and aesthetics that occupy fashion week.  It’s frequently the case that gender nonconformity and ‘androgyny’ are valued as ideas in fashion week, but trans politics/issues have little appearance in how those concepts are laid out or presented. The representation of trans-aesthetics in mainstream fashion often renders trans people as spectacles or tokens.”

 

• Andrew Gurza writes a beautiful essay about self-realization for Out. “I’d never considered the price of intimacy until I hired a sex worker. Though I’d been learning to embrace my life in a wheelchair—a result of cerebral palsy—going without touch, or even access to my own body was taking a toll. Even so, I didn’t come to my decision lightly. I was worried about shame, stigma, and fear, and concerned I’d pay for time and still not get what I needed.”

 

• “On Friday, March 11, Black Muslim women will take to the internet, posting selfies and sharing how the erasure of Black Muslim women from the Muslim narrative has affected us, using the hashtags #BombBlackHijabis and #BombBlackMuslimahs. When this idea was first introduced, I was immediately overtaken with excitement to participate, but my reasons were not the ones you might expect. This isn’t just about sharing selfies through the void of social media. This is about taking back our narrative….  I want to reclaim my space as a BLACK WOMAN in Islam. I want to remind everyone that we, Black Muslim women, have always been a part of the story of Islam.” – Safura Salam via muslimgirl.net

 

• Pop Sugar introduces us to Tara Houska. Houska is the new Native American Advisor to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. “I hope to elevate Native American issues at a high level,” she said. “Too much of America is unaware of the plights our communities face, and we are tired of hearing more of the same from politicians. I look forward to continued and expanded outreach in Indian country. Our voices and our votes matter.”