you make me blush but not only

YOU MAKE ME BLUSH BUT NOT ONLY The aim of this project is to raise awareness and open people’s minds about women, vagina’s owner sexuality and masturbation. One of the most important things for me in this project was not to only talk to and help women to be more comfortable about their sexual life and sexual independence, but also not to exclude anyone else. This is why i tried to open my project to queer people who own a vagina. In order to make everyone equal and perhaps more comfortable, the identities of all the people who participated in this project are unnamed.

To collect testimonies from people about their sexuality I created a google form and shared it so it was available for anyone to answer. I have raised 3 500 answers thanks to a french feminist account who shared it on their social media page. I found it important to talk about the topic because it shows that people do want to talk about it regardless of it being a taboo. On the form I asked questions about people’ pleasure, independance, sexuality etc. It was open to women, men and genderqueer people. At the end of the form I left an open comments section for people to talk to me about whatever they wanted or felt the need to, related to the form or subject in general. After reading their stories, opinions and feelings I decided to illustrate them so that the images could create a connection and opportunity for people to feel more comfortable with the subject.

While working on this project I couldn’t miss the fact that 80% of French teenagers did not know what a vulva looks like nor did they know a clitoris is. This is due to there only being 1 representation of it in 1 science book which was only recently published in 2017. In response to this lack of knowledge I decided to shape with food the resemblance of a vulva. Alongside this I also started to sew patterns of a vulva onto the outside of pairs of underwear that I have set up as part of my exhibition.

You will see too some photographs that i took of people in underwear. This is because I think it is important to accept ourselves regardless what society says about hair, body shape, what type of underwear is so called “sexy” or not. Hence the name Super Hero en slip for this series of photographs. Super Hero en slip means Superhero in knickers.

The superhero element was inspired due to the comical vision of them wearing their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Another reason I chose this was because superheroes inspire a sort of confidence that we need more when we are in our underwear, especially when someone is taking a photograph of yourself in it. The golden rule of this photoshoot was to be your most comfortable self.