What Beauty Feels Like

"What beauty Feels Like" (2017) live action during CALA fest 2017 | Cori (Italy)

photo by Emanuele Bencivenga

FROM VIDEO TO INSTALLATION TO LIVE PERFORMANCE

In January 2015, I created, in collaboration with Daz Disley, a short video under the title: "What Beauty feels Like". I performed for the camera, whilst filming the process in which my partner, Daz Disley, waxed my legs to remove the long hair left unshaven almost for 6 months (if not more). Warmed wax was applied on the surface of the leg, strips on the top and then with sharp and sudden movement Daz was removing the strip.

The hairs really are attached very firmly to their roots and are a part of our body. Pulling them out means tearing them out by the root. It leaves a tiny wound just under the surface. Longer and thicket the air are, more intense the pain is. It was quite difficult filming and screaming from pain at the same time. At some point, eventually, I got used to the pain, depending the area.

The visual composition of the image was not as I imagined before the process. Though, I edited the footage, and the final output was rewound to give the impression that instead of hair being removed, hair were inserted back to the legs. As soundscape, I used the Lynch's style in "Twin Peaks" (Reverse Speech: reconstructing sentences from the end to the beginning turning every word in an opposite direction, recording them and then play them reversed.

"What beauty feels like" is the slogan/logo of the famous hair removal product. A slogan that persuades the audience to believe that they will be "beautiful" as long they use this hair removal product for touchable, soft, desirable, extra smooth, moisturized and shiny legs that can proudly show off. Here the same slogan is used to celebrate: The pleasure of "failing" to conform to certain presumptions about female appearance. The pleasure of "failing" to satisfy basic expectations of public presentation and image. The pleasure of "failing" to follow social standards for beauty. The pleasure of showing off real touchable, soft, desirable, moisturized,shiny, beautiful, hairy legs.

Because at the end of the day:

What the Fuck is wrong with having hair on your leg as a woman? Hair is hair, natural part of the body. But the issue here is not the hair. The issue here is that these are woman's leg.. A female body with body hair does not conform to the imposed beauty standards as defined by patriarchal societies, in which hair are seen almost as abject: something disgusting...you know, similar to the unsavory products that our body produces—like excrement, urine, saliva, tears, and other fluids, which as Kristeva states, we reject and prefer to see those unpleasantries as separate from ourselves.

There is still who considers that body hair is waste, as useless leftovers from human's body evolution. Personally, I don't. I own my body. I own my hair. I choose my hair. I put them back here they belong: to my legs and my armpits. For as long as I desire.

The wax stripes with hair from my legs, leftovers of the performance for camera, were kept and in 2017, "What Beauty feels like" became an installation - video, photography, artifacts- within the exhibition: Stations of (un)becoming by Fenia Kotsopoulou (in collaboration with Daz Disley). The exhibition took place in the Museo della Citta' e del Territorio in Cori (Italy) during the CALA fest 2017 (a festival platform for the full diversity of expression in contemporary dance and performance art from Italy and around the world.

Museo della Citta' e del Territorio (Cori, Italy)

During the festival, I also performed an action related to the initial idea of "What Beauty Feels Like" to confront heteronormative ideals of beauty. The action was a "beauty mask" for hairy legs:

I climb and sit on the Pomegranate tree in the garden of the museum, after placing a big red tomato in one of the spiky branches of the tree. Isadora helps me by taking off my shoes. Then with a cutter I cut my black tights, revealing my hairy legs. Then the action consists on pouring slowly milk, oil and balsamic vinegar on them. At end I take the tomato and I squeeze it on the top of my legs. I come down from the tree, I water my feet, put all the remains in a metal box and I walk away.