Persuasion

June 16, 2020

‘P E R S U A S I O N ’ grapples with the nuances of female sexuality and its socially permissible forms. This staged photograph exposes the fraught interplay and blurred lines between desire and possession. To exist as a woman within a culture that simultaneously fetishizes, shames, and mystifies ‘the’ feminine is to be positioned as a pawn in a zero-sum game of power and desire.

Having one’s social value tethered to one’s outwardly perceived desirability is akin to what psychologists call having an external locus of control—a forfeiture of agency wherein value (i.e., power) is made conditional upon external affirmation. The paradox is thus laid bare: if a woman’s power is said to reside in her adherence to conditions of desirability, then to affirm her ‘power’, is synonymous with submission (i.e., relinquishing control to an external locus). Both compliance and resistance to satisfying the patriachal gaze are woefully met with the same subjugation–only in varying forms and at the hands of various actors. To embody the feminine is a political act in and of itself. Put plainly, there is simply no way of existing as a woman without having one’s ‘womanness’ chastised.

With the camera positioned on the ground, the frame tightly cropped, and the violent act marginalized within the frame, the image visually reinforces this dynamic. The assault is not dramatized but diminished, treated with a discomforting degree of nonchalance and casual matter-of-factness–rendered almost as an afterthought noticed only on second glance. My limp body and dissociative gaze suggest passivity, yet I defiantly returns the viewer’s gaze, drawing them into complicity in the act. Gradually, the viewer is made aware of

their voyeuristic participation and indulgence in the spectacle. These visual and embodied gestures accurately reflect the perplexing ambiguity of embodying ‘the’ feminine and call attention to how unremarkable such a gaunty display of power and posession is for both witnesses and participants.