Lili
For just a taste of Lilith
For more, contact lilith.zine@gmail.com to purchase a full copy of Lilith
4
Growth by Caitlin Warren
8
Picturing the Body by Malaika Ibreck
12
Photographic feature on the female form
Self Care by Natasha Evans
3
I am ten or eleven years old. I sit on a bench, in a part of the playground that had been made into a little garden of sorts. Fenced off, with potted plants and all. But in this peaceful place, a hole is punctured inside of me. The boy walks up to me, and derisively points out the hairs that grow on my legs. Short and fluffy, but dark and noticeable. “Gross!” His face wrinkles in disgust, “Why are your legs all hairy?”
Growth
Words by Caitlin Warren Illustrations by Jess Vaughan
His words make a little fracture inside of me, in what must have otherwise been blissful ignorance, or at least disinterest. This sheet of glass was already fragile, but now it is starting to crack, ready for new holes to be made. With his words, he reminds me of my body’s imperfection. His legs are the same as mine, they have hairs, and yet this is okay, this is normal. But it seems what naturally grows on my body is wrong, disgusting. I was already getting the impression that I wasn’t good enough as I was, but now I know for sure. His words tell me that the female body is wrong from the start. Naturally imperfect. Born flawed. As a girl, I am not suitable as I come. I must be improved. I must alter my appearance. Just to become normal. I must become unnatural to be normal. And even then, that’s only acceptable. With real work, maybe I’ll be pretty. Attractive, desired, and if I really succeed, loved.
I complain to my father that I wish there was a procedure to remove all the hairs on my legs permanently. He says something about lasers. My mother says she will help me remove the hair. Veet and a showerhead. I would like to know, how did she feel? I first remove the hair on my legs on the day of my year six leaver’s disco. I wrap plastic over the shattered glass inside of me and stick it together with masking tape. My legs are smooth once again. How they should be, how they were, when I was younger, before the changes started. Forget these new changes, everyone says they are not how I should look. I do wonder why the changes happened if they are so wrong, but never mind. I don’t realise how disturbing it all is until years later.
My legs are lovely and smooth, normal and acceptable. As I sit on a table at the school disco, I draw them proudly up to my chest, my three quarter length jeans showing them off. Behold, classmates, my legs now conform to beauty standards! A boy asks me to dance, I suspect mainly out of pity, but also clearly due to what must be an increase in my attractiveness now that my legs are hairless. Besides this, no one seems to notice my transformation.
As time passes, the cracks inside me grow larger, deeper. More holes are made as more words strike the surface, and more images weaken the exterior. Occasionally a whole section shatters. I do my best to keep the pieces taped together, but it is so fragile. It wobbles and shakes. I need to find a glue to secure them together, but I’m yet to find anything strong enough. Every time I notice the prickle of remerging hairs, I am reminded how I alter myself. How I am expected to. I sigh, adding another thing to my to-do list. What a chore it is, to drag the blade across my skin. So why do it? I am starting to forget. All I know is that I like the smooth feel of the skin, and hate seeing those black hairs. I have had more than one nightmare of being in public and suddenly realising my that my bare legs are unshaved. Oh, the horror.
Then the sun doesn’t even come out, and I pull on tights. I can’t believe I shaved my legs for this.
Words by Caitlin Warren Illustrations by Jess Vaughan
Picturing
This project is informed by ongoing issues of the representation of women. I dislike the common portrayal of the female nude as something still and beautiful. The body is an active space, inhabited by our continuously changing personalities, always working to sustain itself. Our bodies are never completely still until after we die
the Body Words and Images by Malaika Ibreck
Drawing lines over my own photographs in Photoshop, mapping out the sensation of being touched and how the body reacts to this I was able to acknowledges issues of objectification of women's bodies,
I also use the turquoise lines to admit that the still image objectifies, drawing the viewer’s attention to that.
Words and images by Malaika Ibreck
Self-care is
I am a people pleaser and I have been from such a young age, and so I tailored my life around what I thought I was supposed to do. I helped my parents, I volunteered, I made good grades. I pushed myself as hard as I could because I had a reputation to live up to; I was a smart girl and nothing else, a good education is, after all, everything. I needed to push myself as hard as I could to get the best grade, a running competition between me and a friend being who could get the best grade in Science tests (it was me 9/10). And I achieved what I had to and pushed everything else to the side because education was the most important thing in my life. In the process, I completely neglected myself because forgot I was important too completely ruining my mental health. This was my ultimate downfall. My age 12, I was diagnosed with depression, by 14 I was self-harming, and by 17 I had been hospitalised with my first suicide attempt. I was burnt out, I had over-extended myself so far to fit this idea of intelligence that I forgot to take care of myself, I forgot it was sometimes okay to be selfish. As a society, we teach women not to be selfish; to forgo your own needs and to take care of others: your family, your significant other, your friends. After all, women by nature are supposed to be nurturing, or so we’re told. You put the needs of others before yourself, and forget to practice what you preach; we forget about ourselves and fail ourselves daily. You forget to eat lunch or skip your exercise class, you forget to text that friend back or fall behind on your favourite tv show. It happens, sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes societal beliefs gets in the way, and we tell women to be nurturing and caring and motherly and wise
the hardest thing you can do Written by Natasha Evans
and poised and remain graceful and ladylike at all times. And between all of the behavioural expectations we as a society force upon women, we ask women to be beautiful. We ask women to wake up every morning and do their hair and makeup, ensure they’re free of all body hair and are dressed in a way society deems flattering to their body type. We expect women to give up their time to meet these needs, and condemn them when they don’t fit this archetype of femininity and then further shame women into feeling vapid or lacking when they meet the feminine ideal. We as a society break women down. We teach women to be smaller, quieter and submissive and as such, we fail so many people everyday. As women, we then sometimes forget how fundamental it is to be selfish and look out for number one. Self-care is so important; taking care of yourself and taking the time you need to relax and recover from the stress of life is of the utmost importance. Self-care is taking a couple of hours out of your busy day to read a book or watch a film, to journall, take a bath or go cycling. Really, it’s taking the time to do what you want regardless of other commitments or stresses, to recharge yourself after you’ve been run down. I personally have decided to make my 20s my selfish years- to do things that are good for me and in my interest, to put myself and my health above all. It’s interesting, however, that I automatically labelled this decision as selfish, rather than anything else. Thinking deeper, I think because I have spent so long doing things to
please others that the thought of doing something for myself is foreign and out of character. Self-care is, therefore, one of the most difficult things to do. For me, self-care is actively choosing to drag myself up from the pit that is my depression and anxiety to actually be nice to myself and it is so contrary and different to what I am used to it’s difficult. An attitude adjustment and self-care is what I need. But self-care is, above all, completely the opposite of what I have always been told to do, and so I struggle with it. I know at a conscious level I need to take care of myself both mentally and physically but at some subconscious level, We fail ourselves over and over again because we think we’re being selfish. The difficult thing about selfcare, the most simple of all things, is choosing to pull yourself up from that dark place, and making the conscious decision to treat yourself with basic respect you deserve when you feel you deserve none at all.
Self-care is always going to be difficult for me, but it is also the first step into recovery, and so i’ll keep trying.
Images by Katherine Tudor
If you would like to submit work send an email to lilith.zine@gmail.com Front cover image by Katherine Tudor