I sidste uge var jeg inviteret i studiet hos Bodytalks for at få taget billeder til projektet. Projektet handler om at tage værdien ud af kroppens udseende og at gøre kroppen til det den er – en krop.
Der kom disse tre billeder ud af det og nedenfor er den tilhørende tekst:
My body is a burlesque body, because every body is a burlesque body. Or at least that’s what thin burlesque performers tend to say.
But my journey towards burlesque was different than most performers’ journeys. Because I’m fat.
Since I was 19 years old I have had a dream of doing burlesque but did not know how to make that happen. Because society thinks of fat people like some special kind of people, who are not allowed to many things. So how can you do burlesque when you can’t be sexy because of your fat body? Or how to do burlesque when you never had dance training, because you were laughed at when you tried to dance as a kid? And where to get a nice costume when most clothes doesn’t come in a size that fits your body? It is not easy being a fat burlesque performer in a world where thin people are convinced that everybody are equal. It was never an equal fight for me, for at the same time that I had to find the courage to actually do burlesque I had to fight so many other fights too. I had to fight to overcome many years of being told that I couldn’t dance or be sexy. I had to fight to create my own costumes from scratch. And I had to fight against thin performer’s internalized fatphobia.
Because every body is not a burlesque body. Every body can become a burlesque body, but the fight is so much harder when society thinks that your body isn’t allowed to exist.
But my body exists and I am willing to fight for it to be a burlesque body. Because my body is pretty sexy and nice to dance with no matter what society thinks of it.