Femme Mâché Vol. 3: Well / Being / Well by femme mâché

WELL/BEING/WELL

VOL 3. APRIL – MAY 2017

FEMME MÂCHÉ

ABOUT US Femme Mâché is a collective of womxn/femme artists and activists, founded by Pooja Desai & Lilian Finckel. Following the 2016 presidential election, Pooja & Lilian were committed to engaging their fellow artists in consistent and productive conversations about issues that matter to them. This zine is an archive of artistic resistance, solidarity, and self care: a visual documentation of shared resolve. We are committed to inclusivity, intersectionality, and exploring all forms of female identity. Femme Mâché holds monthly collaborative zine workshops. All contributors produce work in the workshop that becomes part of a documentary zine centered around the critical question introduced in that gathering. Stay tuned for the next one! To find out more, get in touch at hellofemmemâché@gmail.com.

ABOUT THIS ZINE The genesis of this issue is inseparable from the creation of the zine / collective – it truly began when we sought to document, deconstruct (and reconstruct) the work, the material, and the conversation, furthering our creative resolve. As we began to plan for this round, we saw just how expansive the topic of health and wellness could be. We proposed questions such as: What is “Wellness”? What does it mean to be “Well”? How can we seek to maintain our health and wellness mentally, physically, and spiritually, especially during current times? Is it a privilege to be able to do so? In the current political climate, issues of healthcare and the cultural/political conversation around “wellness” have visibly risen to the surface. We witness the daily debate around reproductive healthcare, trans rights, pre-existing conditions, disability rights, mental health care, and accessibility (to name just a few), and we feel them coming under attack. If we live by laws that do not allow us to seek medical help when we need it, and do not allow us to have autonomy over the wellness of our bodies and minds, then we begin to question what could be next. Health is at the very core of being alive and well. We are at the mercy of these laws, allowances, and acts. This issue hopes to explore these tensions through the personal lens of our contributors.

WITH WELLNESS COMES AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF anger OF pain OF privilege OF ability OF access of who ‘deserves to feel well’, OF WHO CAN FEEL WELL

This piece was originally self-published on Medium. Our Bodies, Our Selves tw: sexual violence, violence against women “But whatever sameness I’ve noted in my relationships with women is not the sameness of Woman, and certainly not the sameness of parts. Rather, it is the shared, crushing understanding of what it means to live in a patriarchy.” — Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts Many women I know have the distinct memory of the moment we realized our bodies are somehow not our own. I was eight, and the 16 year old son of a family friend thought my body was his to touch. He might have known that it wasn’t really his, because he asked me not to say anything. But more likely he believed so deeply that he was entitled to my body that he thought the rest of the world was wrong, and so he did touch me, often, though over a period of time that I have never been able to frame. I only remember feeling a kind of rupturing, a kind of disembodiment, like there was my body and then there was me, and we were no longer connected, no longer on the same planet. Mostly I remember this feeling because I have since felt it again. My first instinct is to describe it as floating, but that does not accurately convey the heaviness, and it is a heaviness, the way that we are ruptured in these moments. It is like you are watching your body sink. Though instead of being above it, it is as if the Self, separate from the body, is sinking at the same time in the opposite direction. And the further apart you sink, the less recognizable your body becomes as something that is distinctly yours. I sometimes feel this with the men who kiss me in the middle of sentences. Among the many men with whom I have shared first kisses, one has asked permission to kiss me. That’s not to say every man who didn’t ask did something wrong, but when he asked, I felt immediately at ease. Of course, that is naive, because not all the men who ask listen. Many of them don’t. Some of them pretend to. According to a study, there are groups of men on the Internet who advocate for taking off their condom during sex, without the consent of their partner. No matter what you do, you are always at risk for being separated from your Self, from being disembodied. And then the feeling that you and your body are sinking apart from each other creeps in, as you lay there, wondering what exactly about your voice made “no” sound like a suggestion. The sinking feeling happens in the moments when you might have perhaps said yes another night, but were feeling tired this time, but oh well, he didn’t ask, or he did, but he didn’t wait for an answer. Then there are times when it is not a slow wave, the sinking, the separation of your body from your Self; it is sudden and forceful. It is being violently reminded that your body exists in a world where it can become aggressively ruptured, with complete disregard for its occupant. Sometimes this causes deep trauma. Sometimes it is identifiably assault. Sometimes it is not, and often that is because it is what we have become accustomed to, this feeling that we are not really a part of the bodies we occupy. In a culture where we are often most able to understand ourselves through what belongs to us, the rupture feels as though we lose ownership over the bodies that carry us through life. It is not only individuals who do this constant reminding, that we do not belong to ourselves. In the United States, we have a government that devotes its time and energy to claiming control over our reproductive capabilities, to restricting our ability to earn money and become socially mobile, and to rolling back protections for rape and domestic violence survivors (there are so many of us, and if you do not know us, it is because you do not listen). It is insidious, the way this feels in so many ways similar to the hands of a man who thinks you were put on this Earth for him to split you from your Self. As we grapple with this feeling of sinking, this disembodiment, we are further ruptured as we reckon with the ways we are defined by these bodies we do not own. Being Woman is already an invitation for harassment, for battery, for rape, for murder. Being Woman in a way that is not “correct” is an invitation in neon lights, as we are brutally reminded every time another trans woman is murdered, in ways that are unspeakably horrifying. Our bodies are read constantly, and we are asked to exist within them, all the time knowing we are not really the last arbiter of what will happen to them. 10

Our inability to define ourselves is visible in the very way many of us make ourselves up, the way we perform ourselves as fuckable. Some of us don’t, we make ourselves ugly, we rebuke the social order that has defined what our body should look like. Ultimately, it does not matter, because none if it will save our bodies from being read, either as good or deviant, and then being ruptured. It is crushing that regardless of what we decide to do with and to our bodies, we are always doing it in compliance or opposition. We are never doing it free from patriarchy, and we are never doing it free from our first memory of being severed from our Selves. Whether or not we can convincingly tell ourselves otherwise is another conversation. And how do you mediate any of this in the body of an eight year old girl, who does not yet understand herself as sexual, and who certainly does not yet understand herself as plural? What can she understand about being defined by her body and simultaneously being fractured from it, other than the fact that that is what is happening to her? And how do you realize any of this as a 25 year old woman, whose belief that, for years, she was defining herself only for herself is shattered? What does this mean for a trans woman who might finally have felt that perhaps her body did belong to her? The violence in occupying a body read as Woman or “incorrectly” Woman feels almost never-ending; the sinking does not stop for us. Every day, 3 of us will be murdered by men who once claimed to love us. Murder by a spouse or partner is among the biggest threats to the lives of pregnant women. The data is inexcusably thin, but even still 2016 was the deadliest year for transgender people, and 2017 does not look as though it will be better. Rape is underreported, but reported enough that at least 1 in 6 of us will know that specific violence, though among 18 of my friends, the number of women who understand it is far higher than 3. Most of this violence is perpetuated to a higher degree against women of color. We are a part of groups of varying Otherness that have been defined, for what seems like forever, or what at least historical memory has made seem like forever, as people who can be taken, who can be beaten, whose bodies can be ruptured. In the worst moments, in thinking about these violences and the specific, explicit ways they make themselves known to us, and the constant ways they implicitly bear down on us, in thinking about the memories that obscure statistics and become lived experiences, it is sometimes tempting to lock the door and throw away the key. The idea of entering the world, of being asked to claim your body as legibly Woman, to let it be defined for you, and to risk the chance of being disembodied, is daunting in ways that evade precise language. So I’m hesitant to find a silver lining, because for too many of us, there isn’t one, and there won’t be. Still, I find comfort in the women I know who have watched their bodies sink away from their Selves and have since come to reacquaint the two. The bringing back together, the Self-definition, the refusing a forever rupture, has to be some kind of miracle. It is not something we will all do, and it is something many of us will only be able to do for moments, but it provides some kind of understanding that perhaps we need not be taken from our Selves for all of eternity. I wonder if that is the kind of mediation that might have made me fourteen years ago feel better moored to myself, knowing that another, later version of myself could understand how to reconnect with the body that did not at the time feel mine anymore. This hope for reconnection is of course itself another battle with patriarchy, as none of this undoes how the world will define us, and as we will be asked to get to re-know our bodies in a world that will tell us only specific bodies deserve to be knowable. If you are a woman who has desires, or even one who seems like she might, for food, for love, for physical touch, you are seen as gluttonous in your want for things. Your defined body will always be a little further out of reach as you try to meet it again. And maybe all of this hope of re-knowing hinges on the chance of meeting a person who teaches you how to give your body back to yourself. A friend who has come back from this disembodiment and shares her story, a lover whose touch does not feel selfish and who will allow you to slip in and out of knowing yourself, a therapist who will listen to you untangle all of the thoughts you have about yourself and help you build a roadmap back. Can it be done, sustainably? I don’t know. It is an aspiration, that I am lucky enough to live to have, and I have to hope, for myself at eight, for myself in all of the moments of rupture, for myself in the future, for the women I love who have felt the sinking too, that our bodies will be brought back to our Selves, that it is already being done, that it will eventually stick. 11

‘WELLNESS IS FOR THE RICH. IT’S A LUXURY THAT PEOPLE ASPIRE TO. SHEET MASKS, DETOXES, HOT YOGA, MASSAGES –THIS IS A LOT OF DEDICATION TO ONES SELF AND HEALTH. NOT MANY PEOPLE HAVE THE LUXURY OF CARVING OUT TIME OUT OF THEIR DAY TO MAINTAIN THIS LEVEL OF “WELLNESS” AND SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE THE FUNDS TO DO SO.

WELLNESS IS DEFINED AS A STATE OF BEING IN GOOD HEALTH. HALF OF WHAT HAS BEEN SOLD AS A WELLNESS NECESSITY (CRYSTALS, MOON DUSTS, AND VAGINA STEAMING TO NAME A FEW) IS BULLSHIT THAT IS NOT NECESSARY FOR MAINTENANCE OF ONESELF. IN ADDITION, THERE IS NO SCIENCE OR PROOF OF SUCH ACTIVITIES HAVING LONG-TERM RESULTS. SO WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO DESIRE THESE UNESSENTIAL REATMENTS AND PRODUCTS?

QUITE SIMPLY, IT’S A STATUS SYMBOL. FINDING THE TIME TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR SKIN MEANS MONEY. TIME IS MONEY. THEREFORE HAVE THE ABILITY TO INDULGE ONESELF AND THEN POST A PHOTO OF IT IS THE EQUIVALENT OF POSTING A PHOTO OF YOUR NEW CHANEL BAG OR BMW. WELLNESS IS CONSUMERISM AND PRETTY MUCH A SCAM MARKETING TERM. IT’S SHIT YOU DON’T NEED.’

Don’t Freak Out We were smoking pot on the floor of my new roommate’s single. The week before, I had returned from summer quarter at Stanford University, where I studied film photography and marketing. It was sophomore year; I had just turned 20. I smoked a lot of weed during this period in my life. That very summer, in fact, I attended San Francisco Pride with a good friend of mine who introduced me to “dabbing,” or smoking extremely concentrated THC. I became a marijuana connoisseur–my tolerance got scary high. My new roommate was a spitting image of Debbie Thornberry from “The Wild Thornberrys” and she smoked as much as I did. We had smoked and had edibles, and we had so much THC in our bloodstreams my best friend starting seeing shit. My new roommate noticed her panicking. “Hey, hey,” she said to get her attention. “Don’t freak out.” It was both a joke and a way of life, hilarious in its simplicity but profound in its implication. “Don’t Freak Out” became our dorm mantra. My best friend even illustrated a beautifully elaborate word art sign to add to our new roommate’s boho wall deco. It was the first really stressful semester of college. I was trying to recover from a plummeting GPA–I had failed a class the previous semester after a very old friend of mine died. I was taking my first real film production class, cranking out a movie a month. I had fallen in love with someone who took advantage of me. I suffered an eating disorder and hated my living situation. I had sleep paralysis almost every night. It was probably the worst semester of my college career. But every night, my new roommate and I would smoke together on her floor, and we would talk about everything that had been bogging us down. We would let it off our chests and validate each other’s feelings. And that made it possible for me to check myself when I became overwhelmed, when shit got too real. I would just say to myself: “Hey man, Don’t Freak Out.” The result: I didn’t freak out. The Manchester bombing on the night of May 22nd was a solemn reminder that terrorism is alive and rampant in the West. When there’s a bombing or attack in, say, Baghdad, we tend not to bat an eye–that stuff happens there all the time. But the Middle East is not the hot zone for terrorism. Bombings and mass shootings are legitimate concerns for many Westerners, particularly considering America’s lax stance on gun control. Keeping up with the news is crucial to being an informed citizen, but how do you keep your cool when every bit of news is bad news? When nowhere is safe, not even a pop concert, a church, a nightclub, or a fucking elementary school? In a world where the expectation of meeting a violent end is not so far fetched, how does one not freak out? Contrary to popular belief, the answer is not to disregard the news. On the contrary, it’s to analyze, understand, and interpret it. Read as much as you can, from as many points of view as you can find. Release yourself from your echo chamber and look elsewhere, to other sides of the aisle, to other countries, to other worldviews. Even if you don’t agree, more often than not, it will help put the issue in perspective, and it will break what seemed like a huge, hulking, frighteningly unsolvable situation into digestible pieces. This is step one to not freaking out. After you’ve interpreted what happened in solitude, talk to others about it, whether they be friends, family, coworkers, or even strangers. Politics should not be a taboo topic to bring up in conversation, and it only is because it’s easy to misinterpret opinion for character. Remember that your opinion is not necessarily “right;” in fact, be ready to be wrong. And when someone else is wrong, remember that just because they may believe something bad does not make them a bad person. And if you simply cannot reconcile your views: Don’t Freak Out. “Don’t freak out” is still my mantra. It took me through my eating disorder recovery, my work placement with the BBC in London, the making of my first film, college graduation, the series of shitty part-time jobs I racked up subsequently, and the shitty first full-time job I’m sitting in right now. It took me through the mess that we called a presidential primary and the election of the most unqualified and incompetent presidents in American history. It took me through coming out, breaking up, and that terrifying conversation with my parents when they announced they would no longer be supporting me financially. And it can get us all through the next four years. The weed helps, too, though. 27

WITH WELLNESS THERE CAN BE IMMEASURABLE pleasure content care joy resolve

DESERVING in multitudes

Last weekend I attended a panel about smashing the glass ceiling when something within me clicked. The event took place at New York’s latest Nasty Women exhibition, in which one of the speakers happened to be Mindy Abovitz, the founder of Tom Tom magazine. As the creator of the only publication solely dedicated to female drummers, Abovitz spoke of the nebulous of power that exists around all of us. You have to take hold of it, she firmly declared to the women in the audience. A few minutes later, I watched her take part in a drum performance, in which drummers played throughout the venue, even in the bathroom. But Abovitz had been tasked with performing outside the space, just as icy rain and snow started to come down hard. A little bad weather and frigid cold temperatures didn’t stop her from playing, though. Hood up, hair flowing in the freezing wind, she banged that drum set harder than I had ever seen a woman hit anything before. Here was a powerful woman sitting right before me, shattering the glass ceiling. In the last few weeks, something has felt different. Good different. It’s as if as soon as the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2017 I literally left all of my fucks behind. The next morning, I looked at my hung over self in the mirror and saw the same young woman staring back at me. While I hadn’t brushed my teeth and my makeup and outfit were still on from the night before, I felt different. And yet, I couldn’t put my finger on what had changed. It wasn’t too long ago that I was full of inspiration and limitless ideas, but I was too lost and afraid to do anything about it. Like so many other mid-twenty somethings, I hit an all-time low around age 25. It was then that the fear of putting my ideas and myself out there had exhausted me to such an extreme that I finally had to make a change. Although my sense of self had been bruised so deeply, little by little I found a way to rebuild my identity. I reprioritized my time and started following through on various creative pursuits. With little idea of what it would be, I bought a domain and started a passion project. From there, I began interviewing other creatives, organizing events, and eventually started writing personal essays. With hard work and dedication, my life changed drastically – And for the better. Over time, I came to know myself, and I started to believe in that person. After two years of hustling, I had collected a laundry list of life lessons and finally found a community to call my own. With over 20 events, 30 interviews, and several published essays under my belt, I had proved to myself I could actually make shit happen. And yet, this summer I realized I was drowning. In the same week, I unexpectedly lost a family member and had a negative experience with a guy I was dating. For too long I had not listened to my personal needs, until those tough experiences stripped me raw and left me completely bare. It was then that I realized I had overextended myself to an extreme. It took my body falling apart to realize that I physically and emotionally needed to take a break. So, I stopped overloading myself with commitments, projects, and plans, and instead, I laid around for days, doing absolutely nothing. I took long, hot showers; watched ‘90s movies; and bawled my eyes out. It was the first time I allowed myself to actually relax and not be productive in two years. It was the first time I gave myself space to rest, process, grieve, and heal. 30

The thing is, I realized then that I needed to stop saying yes to everything in order to say yes to me. It was time to reprioritize again, to start saying no to shit, and to let go of things that were no longer serving me. After much internal debate, I decided to let go of the passion project that had become my entire identity and changed my life in so many amazing ways. And at the same time, I let go of so many other things that had been buried deep inside me for so long — like resentment I felt towards my parents’ divorce, feelings for men who didn’t respect me, and the feeling that I am not enough alone. Letting go was totally freeing and I came out of it with a greater sense of self. Finally, I felt permission to trust myself and be worthy of being an independent female building her own fempire. With that, I ended a defining chapter of my life, and began writing the next one. In a few months time, I shifted my focus on a new female-focused project, whose responsibilities I could share with friends. Plus, I signed up for Girls Write Now, a mentorship program for teen female writers. To my surprise, I even landed a new job more in line with my skills and interests. I was inspired and excited to be moving, and growing, forward. That was until the presidential election. On the morning of November 9th, I again found myself back in that dark hole of gloominess. I admit I’ve never been very politically inclined, but Hillary’s loss hit me hard. Like so many others, I was shell-shocked and completely frozen in fear of the future ahead. But this time, I knew how to take the space I needed to process the upset. First, I rested, then I wrote, and then, I got back to work. Quickly I realized I had an obligation to my mentee, to my fellow females, and to myself, to keep going, work harder, and use my voice as a platform for change. With that, I pushed myself to stay more politically engaged, readjusted my latest project to give back and help other women in need, and I bought a bus ticket to attend the Women’s March in D.C. Today, my intentions are clearer than ever. While I now know when to let myself take a pause, I can feel a new sense of purpose pulsing through my veins. At once, I am completely at ease and yet, I also feel totally relentless. In fact, I have never felt so fearless or self-assured. It’s as if the election has lit a fire under me unlike anything ever before. And it’s starting to pay off: Lately, I’ve been feeling even more confident in my work, my writing and my voice. Plus, my side hustle is taking off, and I am meeting new collaborators, friends and men much more in line with the me I am now. Looking back on the last few years, it’s as if I went from feeling powerless, to feeling empowered, to feeling powerful. Today, I have finally come to know my own Power (power with a capital P). With this new revelation, I am adjusting my New Years’ resolutions and now, my only goal for 2017 is to be the power I wish to see in the world. Although it may be against everything we’ve been conditioned to believe, us women must teach ourselves, and each other to see, and seize, our own power. There may still be so many glass ceilings to shatter, but if we put our power out there, we will get power in return. This essay was originally published by BUST Magazine online in January 2017 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY Texts, articles, images, and more that we read, cut up, collaged, drew on, spilled on…

The Huffington Post // What Is Mental Wellness Under Trump? // Amanda Gelender New York Times // Trump Signs Law Taking Aim at Planned Parenthood Funding // Julie Hirschfeld Davis CNN // Trump Privately Signs Anti-Planned Parenthood Law // Dan Merica Trump Hotel Collection to Debut Wellness Collection Press Release // Jay Austin & Jamie Donovan JustJasmineBlog.com // Steps to Self Care After Emotional and Psychological Trauma Acts of Helplessness // Rumi Rewire // Reproductive Justice and ‘Choice’: An Open Letter to Planned Parenthood // Monica Simpson Postcolonial Melancholia // Paul Gilroy Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position // José Esteban Muñoz Employee Benefit News // How is the Benefits Industry reaction to the Trump Presidency // Kathryn Mayer Self Care List: How to Care of Your Self While Learning About Oppression (With Unaware People) // Fabian Romero Enhancing Transgender Healthcare // Emilia Lombardi, PhD Psychoanalytic Dialogues // A Dialogue on Racial Meloncholia // David L. Eng, PhD & Shinhee Han, C.S.W. Medical Care Research and Review // Can Cultural Competency Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities? A Review and Conceptual Model // Cindy Brach & Irene Frasirerector Community Physician Education Partnerships: One Strategy to Eliminate Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities // Melanie Tervalon, MD, MPH Cultural Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law // The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics // Lauren Berlant All About Love // Bell Hooks Culture, Trauma, and Wellness: A Comparison of Heterosexual and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Two-Spirit Native Americans // Kimberly F. Balsam, Bu Huang, Karen C. Fieland, Jane M. Simoni, Karina L. Waters DailyUW.com // 100 Day of Trump: When Politics and Mental Health Intersect // Ester Kim

CONTRIBUTORS POOJA DESAI LILI FINCKEL editors CARSON REY (8 – 9) ZOE SCHWARTZ (36) SUNITA BADIGA (17 – 19) ELIZABETH SCHOLNICK (38 – 39) REBECCA TEMPKIN (37) LIZZY WOLOZIN (20 – 21) KAITLIN GU (25) AMY DECKER (34 – 35) SIERRA SHADE WAXMAN (6 – 7) YASMINE PANAH (23 – 25) JESSICA CANNON (12 – 13) SARA R. RADIN (30 – 31) JESS GREENSPAN (22) MARIQUIT LU (26) NIEVE MOONEY (10 – 11) HANNAH BOYSKO (32 – 33, 40 – 41) LIV SENGHOR (27) ALEX SHANNON (14 – 16)

We would like to thank New Women Space for hosting our workshop; Art Girl Army for their incredible platform, which connected us with amazing contributors; And endless gratitude to our community members, who opened their hearts to us, to this space, and to this work.

hellofemmemâché@gmail.com @femme_mâché