What do we risk in exposure?
We’re (me, ReveRso, Clea Cutthroat and Lady Gaby) in Vienna putting up our artwork and getting ready for our performances with Lady Gaby’s Sexflies. Clea gets another photo erased from her site, even though x’s are across her tits .. maybe we’re out of touch, but we’re having a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about. Why are people allowed to hate and gay bash and post mysoginistic myspace profiles but women aren’t allowed to show their own tits? And then again, other women who wear headscarves in school are asked to uncover themselves more … cover this, uncover that, this is feminist, this is not, this is empowering, this is not! I mean! Who gets to decide what women are suppposed to be wearing and why is there apparently a magically thin fine line that we’re told to walk when it comes to how we dress our bodies? Moreover, what is so dangerous about exposure and what the hell does “exposure” really mean?
“And she fell to thinking what as odd pass we have come to when all a woman’s beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head.” (Virginia Woolf, Orlando)
What is exposure—literal, figurative? Is literal exposure as expositive as figurative exposure? What do we risk in (literal or figurative) exposure? How do these risks correlate to socioeconomic class? Who exposes, who is exposed? Who studies? Who is the studied? Do women empower other women by studying them, by exposing—literally or figuratively—them? What do studiers risk in exposing themselves? How is this risk different than the one taken on by the studied? Is choice involved? Who decides which kind of exposure is appropriate or inappropriate? Who decided which women should be exposed and for what reasons? When does exposure devalue the body and why? When is exposure or lack of exposure disempowering to women and who decides when and why? What do we risk in exposure and who takes the risks?