The city and the hero

Trying treatment, mood board, scenarios...whatever you call it.

The seed of an idea

I look around me. I am surrounded by women. Larger than life; these women will not leave me alone. They beckon me with their flawless complexion, their abundant hair, their impossibly petite shape. They are gloriously perfect and clearly very happy; one can see in their divine smile.

I look at myself and realize I am all wrong. My body is standing between me and the brand of eternal happiness that those women have. Look at them! They are lawyers (Boston legal), doctors, mother of three children (Any sitcom), CEOs, chemistry professors, even tomb raiders; sometimes all at the same time. Their pert bust, small hips, hairless bodies, long unending legs, blemish less, ageless skin have become to me, the symbol of power, the symbol of happiness and dangerously enough, the symbol of ‘NORMAL’.

So what now? My body has become a personal DIY project. I must cut, squeeze, paint, tear and forge this freak until it becomes ‘NORMAL’. No matter how uncomfortable, unhealthy or even traumatic the process may be, I must fit myself into the unforgiving box of narrow measurements. I shall build my own hell around me, until I learn to despise my body and be anything other than who I am. Even if I manage to reach the unreasonable standards I set for my body, I remain in constant fear of falling off them. I spend my life worrying on this tight rope walk. And shame on me if I fall! If I fail this mission, I deserve to be undesirable, ergo unhappy, ergo unwanted. I would not choose failure; not even over death.

But failure is inevitable. Only 5% of women in this world fit into the media ideal of ‘NORMAL’. Yet the size of fashion models continues to shrink; from 8% below average to 23% below average in the last decade. Popular media cannot tolerate to represent women as anything but gloriously beautiful. Even when shown as victims of violence, women almost always look painfully beautiful in their agony.

It is such a pity! In the century that women learnt to win liberty and equality, their primary engagement remains battling against their own body. And while they are busy losing that battle, when will they find the time to be the real heroes that they were meant to be?