Journey To Finding Sanctuary In The Temple Of My Flesh
The human body, like all of the natural world, was creation's masterpiece before it was ever objectified, sensored, slut-shamed, or inappropriate. My art is an act of celebration and liberation from the shackles and shame of the oppression of sexuality and the feminine.
I've not always loved being in a curvy, female body; I've not always expressed myself in this way.
To those that wonder why I present in this way when I work with men's sexuality and to their partners who feel threatened or jealous:
My expression has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me, and your reaction to it is YOUR work to do, not mine. If you feel triggered in the face of a sexually empowered woman, get really honest with yourself and ask WHY.
The answer lies within you, not within me, and as a collective, this is deprogramming we must all take on.
For most of my life, I tried to conceal my curves because they were mocked by my friends and elicited cringe-worthy catcalls walking home from school. I wore pants in 100• weather to avoid the shame of my thighs and ass being the unsolicited focal point of hungry eyes. As I started to develop, my mom banned me from wearing low-cut shirts.
All of this amounted to excruciating body image issues, a refusal to dance or move my body even in the privacy of my own room, and deep shame for what it was to become a woman.
I was vulnerable and disempowered. I lacked the poise to inhabit my body and expose my radiance safely in the world.
Perhaps ironically, I started to find confidence in my body as I began to discover the pleasures of being in this skin through the awakening of my sexuality.
It was an ebb and flow between sexual opening through safe, consensual experiences and damaging or nonconsensual ones that unraveled my progress and shut me down further.
Dance became a potent way to embody these curves and I began to see my body as a living, breathing altar that I could co-create art with.
As I blossomed thru embodied practices of dance and sexuality, I came home to myself, finding sanctuary in the temple of my flesh. It transformed the way I showed up in the world and navigated unwanted attention. I began to live life from a place of agency and self-possession, which consequently, attracted much less unwanted attention.
My first shoot was in nature with my serpents and little clothing and was a completely liberating experience. This was before I had stepped into my current career path and it isn't a piece of myself I would ever stop expressing and finding joy in simply because I now work with men's sexuality. It's where I feel at home because this body IS my home.
These two facets of myself are not at odds with each other, but rather support each other. More on how or why in the next post, stay tuned...