LADIES - Some help with the new Living Canvas
Don't worry I'm not asking you to get naked. Literally anyway.
Living Canvas has always been a vehicle to approach issues hidden beneath the surface, body acceptance, and the beauty of the human form outside of sexuality. By stipping down to our skin we remove some of our preconceived notions and can speak honestly and openly about ourselves.
The piece I am writing for this summer is focusing on issues adolescent girls face with relational aggression ('female bullying') and body image. I'd like the piece to be personal to me, but I understand that every woman has faced her own unique battles and demons growing up. So I am writing you to see if you would be willing to share a story from your youth, something that frightened you, shaped you as a woman, destroyed you, lifted you up. Whatever you feel the world needs to know about the issue of aggression among women.
I became interested in this after reading "Odd Girl Out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls," by Rachel Simmons. Cruelty by women and against women is an issue very personal to me from my own experience, and one that I feel is largely ignored by teachers and parents as being a phase in adolescents. I think many of us will agree though, that the same petty psychological undermining, exclusion, and competition is just as prevalent in our jobs as adults as it ever was in the halls at school.
If you have a story you would like to share, you may email it to me at lmadams06@hotmail.com with the subject "Canvas Story," or post an annonymous response on my livejournal here.
Thanks for your contributions to what I hope will be a compelling and enlightening work of art.
-Lisa