J.M.K.E
Though without theme, in many ways this issue represents autonomy: freedom from external control or influence; independence. Independence defines Polyester in every sense — it’s an independent publication, free from print advertisement. We aim to be independent from traditional thought or restrictions placed on mainstream media; be it beauty ideals, defined editorial strategy, or callous marketing campaigns. However, while easy to establish, autonomy and independence are harder to maintain, especially within our current sociopolitical climate, and even more so when trying to make ends meet. When faced with chaos in every aspect of our lives — politically, socially, and personally — it can seem near-impossible to remain in control of not just everything around us, but everything inside. For that reason, I wanted our eighth issue to feature those working both collectively and individually, rejecting traditional models of success, and proving it is possible to turn our backs on systems that oppress us and do things on your own terms. And i’m not talking making #GirlBoss moves, here. I’m no longer interested in a callous, pseudofeminist instagram post or #inspirational imagery that places the ultimate importance on emotionally validating content over any sort of discussion that points towards real change. I’m exhausted by both corporations and individuals capitalising on everything from outrage and protest, to self care and self love, for cynical clicks and social media engagement.
hope this zine provides some nuanced perspectives on how to move forward in a meaningful way. Not even in relation to politics exclusively, but in our individual personal lives in regards to mental health, relationships and our careers. I’m bored of seeing everything in its most simplistic form, and am more interested in seeing obvious political messages stripped back in favour of work, people, and collectives that lead by example to create the world they hope to see. From Polly Nor drawing our demons and becoming one of the most successful contemporary illustrators of our time in the process, and Penelope Gazin hoodwinking Silicon Valley and building her own tech empire. Within this issue, you’ll find the people that have kept me hopeful for the last few months Whether that be CupcakKe’s full throttle exploration of female sexuality, combined with her assertion to remain in complete control of her career, or The Slumflower’s unique approach to providing words of wisdom that will surely earn her a future reputation of modern philosopher. Because despite our belief system being capitalized on within an inch of its life and being patronisingly fed back to us at every turn, I want the features and people in this issue to serve as a reminder that there’s still beauty and meaning to be found from those around us. Perhaps more importantly, I hope the pages of this zine prove that there’s methods of creation that move us into the future without relying on tired clichés.
Instead of adding unnecessary flames to the fire of outrage, false despair, and fake girl power — I COPYRIGHT & DISCLAIMER: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in part or whole without written permission from the publishers. ©2017 Polyester Zine limited. The views expressed in Polyester are those of the respective contributors and Editor in Chief, and are not neccessarily shared by the publisher, these parties cannot be responsible for them. For all enquiries contact: hello@polyesterzine.com
Online Editor: Gina Tonic
Sub Editors: Reuben Petgrave Kiersty Boon www.polyesterzine.com @polyesterzine
Ione Gamble Editor-in-chief.
Cover One: CupcakKe shot by Ashley Armitage, styled Laura Gordon. Makeup by Mollie Gloss. Hair by Leatrice Beirmann. Personal Assistant: madeline brogdon. Cover Two: Polly Nor shot by Camille Mariet. Set design by Lizzie Gilbert. Makeup by Mona Leanne. Hair by James Oxley. Editorial Assistant:
Rachelle Cox Special Thanks To: Alfie Gleeson, Tori West, & Jender Anomie.
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“My loneliness is killing me” — Britney Spears, 1998 “My loneliness ain’t killing me no more” — Britney Spears, 2000 What happened to you, during those two years? Did you have an epiphany, Britney? Did you achieve self-actualisation? Can you tell me how you did it? Because in my experience, loneliness starts as small things you hold — an itch on the sole of the foot, an odd number — but it becomes like liquid. Once you sense it the first time, it swells, like the pregnant spider that lived above our door and that we were too scared to move lest her babies swarm our home following a premature, shock-induced birth. Loneliness is like the spider, anyway, Britney. It grows to a size that you cannot ignore. Sometimes I feel it as big as my body — in all its rejections of love — as sure as mortality, as deep as a grave. I understand your use of death imagery, is what I mean, Britney; being lonely is the least impressive vanishing act. But not for you, not now: ‘My loneliness ain’t killing me no more.’ Do you mean that you are no longer lonely? Or that you are still lonely but you don’t mind? I prefer to think of you as having mastered solitude, ordering for one, smiling, and feeling gratified by the appropriate size of the portion, or visiting a foreign place alone, laughing aloud at the realisation that you can do whatever you like. But I suppose that doesn’t make quite good a lyric, or indeed have any of the panache, of a callback to your 1998 hit single.
Photography by Lula Hyers. Makeup and styling by Sateen. Hair by sean michael Bennett. Interview by Naomi Smalls. Introduction by Daisy Jones. Clothes and gloves by Garo Sparo
Every city has a legacy, and for New York that legacy has always been intimately tied to its nightlife. From the anarchic, glitter-and-champagne glamour of Studio 54 in the 70s, to the subversive, extraterrestrial debauchery of club kid parties in the 80s and 90s, it’s a city built upon queer culture and club culture simultaneously, buried within a miasma of disco, house music and punk rock history. In many ways, NYC dance drag duo Sateen – made up of singer Miss Queen Sateen and producer Exquisite – are a product of all that has come before them. Their music is celebratory, but
also wild, and they frequently switch roles and experiment. Some of their tracks, for instance, conjure up classic acid house, with Miss Queen Sateen’s euphoric vocals flying over piano loops. Other times, they embrace ballroom-style phrases and industrial beats, with samples that warp and blend like an alien language. Wherever they take it, there’s a constant thread of fun and freedom that pays homage to their foremothers. Sateen’s music is the sort that sounds best in sweaty basement clubs at strange times of the night, surrounded by friends and prospective lovers, bodies swaying in the dark.
The band’s story is interesting too. As well as fostering an artistic partnership, they are also in a romantic one, after meeting through OKCupid five years ago. Early reportage hastily described them as a “hetero drag couple,” but Exquisite has since come out as a transgender woman, showing that there is no single, fixed way to identify as a couple or as creative collaborators. And while they are not spokespeople, Sateen’s presence on the scene also provides both visibility and liberation to those living outside of societies’ rigid structures, whether you identify as married lesbian lovers, or whatever feels right for you at the time.
For a while, the pair have also been friends with Naomi Smalls, a beautiful soul who you may remember from season 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Throughout her season, Naomi became known for her pristine femme aesthetic and fashion-forward approach to drag, with a delivery that always tows the line between comedic and sweet. This of course made her the perfect person to speak to Sateen for this feature. And so, after getting all three of them together on Skype, here is Sateen and Naomi on the subjects of style, club culture and the nuances of identity politics.
Naomi Smalls: Hey! There’s been a surge in mainstream appreciation of queer artists. Have you noticed there being a surge in fans? Miss Queen Sateen: It’s funny because, in my opinion, we’re not one of those artists lumped in on a queer playlist. We’re always resisting any sort of trend or wave of popularity. Our fans have always come to us organically. Exquisite: Yeah, I think there’s a mainstream queerness that’s becoming palatable and entering people’s living rooms. We always say, “Who do you let into your living room?” and I think we’re too risqué for that. Some of our fans will tell us their parents don’t like them listening to us, or looking at our pictures, and we think that’s a compliment. It’s punk rock. What kind of venue would you love to see Sateen play in more frequently? Exquisite: There’s this place in Brooklyn called ‘Elsewhere’ that takes chances and has queer shows and drag shows in a venue also structured for big bands – Charli XCX played there for example – and that’s the perfect world for us. Miss Queen Sateen: Yeah, it can feel like the music and nightlife world are two seperate things, and we want a happy medium. Exquisite: Sateen fans aren’t comfortable in traditional spaces. We want them to know there was a queer party there, or at least something safe and inclusive. You always turn up to your shows in full ‘looks,’ and from hanging out with you both I know that you’re always thinking about what to wear next. How has your style evolved? Miss Queen Sateen: We started out as club kids... Exquisite: Yeah, we worked multiple parties every week and had to turn constant looks, which can be more stifling than helpful because you have to embrace messiness. That works for some people, but as Virgos, we wanted to be able to zero in on the details. Miss Queen Sateen: There were nights when I’d be, like, messy as fuck and crying in the club. I remember wearing this latex corset and frizzy wig and I’d drawn on a unibrow. But that doesn’t really happen anymore. We’re more glam and fully-realised. We take inspiration from Amanda Lepore. When I play shows I can spot a Naomi fan from a mile away. Can you spot a Sateen fan? Exquisite: Oh my god, yeah. We did a meet and greet in Portland, and I look over and see this one girl with pink hair, a septum piercing, a torn-up denim jacket and this lipstick lesbian pride flag and we were like… that’s a Sateen fan. Miss Queen Sateen: They’re these young, chic, queer
kids who are super woke. Exquisite: We know those bitches from a mile away, we love them. You both have such a beautiful love story. I’m interested in whether you meet many other lesbian couples who have a similar one. Miss Queen Sateen: Yeah, people reach out to us to say things like, ‘My partner is transitioning and I’m really inspired by you being representational of couples like us.’ Exquisite: Queenie is a unicorn – in that she’s pansexual, where you love someone for their soul – so I was lucky in that way. I think a lot of people are unicorns and also transness has diversified. You don’t have to be someone like me who has “medically” transitioned and presents this way. You might identify with certain aspects of a gender. It might not be clear whether someone is ‘this’ or ‘that’ – we really identify with those sorts of relationships, often more than straight up lesbian relationships. How do you think your experiences with identity have shaped you, or your music? Exquisite: When I started taking medication, it felt like slipping into shoes that finally fit. And
having Queenie here to talk about what I’ve been going through has been important. We’ve gotten a ton of ideas from the conversations we’ve had. I think most of what we write deals with either being queer or trans. Miss Queen Sateen: And also being who we are in this world that we’re in. Since Exquisite has been transitioning I can tell she’s really happy. It’s like this big piece that was missing, and I never knew what it was, or thought to ask. She never smiled or wanted to take pictures. But now she laughs all the time. Empowered! Do you make a conscious effort not to assign gender to your music? Miss Queen Sateen: I’ve never really written love songs, even though we are so in love. But we try to make our music about dancing and looks because that’s our experience. But they’re not gendered. We make music inspired by 70s disco and 90s dance music. Exquisite: Honestly, that’s our absolute favourite. It cannot be denied.
Photography by Chloe Sheppard. Styling and all clothing by Daniela Ge Set by Lucy Cooper. Ma raci. keup by Lindsay Low. Tea rs and hair by Jender An omie.
From million dollar chairs and getting kicked out of art shows, to fake male CEOs and getting a mo vie made of her life - enter the artist's weird, wonderful world...
To try and categorise Penelope Gazin’s work is a near impossible task. In short; she’s an artist. But take a quick scroll down her Instagram grid, and you’ll see to label her in any way just that is merely simplistic. Her traditional practice covers painting, animation, comics, and merchandise. She’s also the co-founder and co CEO of a techstartup, Witschy (more on that later), member of LA City Municipal Dance Squad, and one half of her band, Slut Island. In other words, she’s doing the most. And that’s without mentioning her newest venture, a full blown clothing label aptly, ironically, and hilariously titled ‘fashion brand company’ — complete with Comic Sans and clip art logo. Even reading her roll call of creative outlets is enough to inspire fatigue, but as we chat over the phone, it becomes clear no task she takes on becomes a chore. “At the end of the day everything I do I have fun with and I’m doing it for fun.” She explains, “if I ever felt overwhelmed I would just drop one of the hobbies or something.” It seems like such an obvious answer — in the best way possible — that I feel taken aback for even asking the question. But Penelope’s enthusiasm for everything she does is rare to find. Most of us are more than prone to burnout, or taking on too much, or feeling pressured to be in a constant state of creativity, that simply not seeing something out to its completion seems like the last possible conclusion. She finishes, “I get so much from all of it that it almost gives me the opposite feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s just knowing that I’ve got options, if I ever stopped enjoying doing something I’d just stop doing it all together.” The confidence Penelope shows in putting herself first is, quite honestly, a breath of fresh air. To have your fingers in as many pies as Penelope does, and impressively remain near-equally successful in all of them, requires some form of a strong personal brand — in terms of the fact her audience remain invested in all of her various exploits. But the very concept of a personal brand is so cynical and cold it seems disingenuous to attribute one to her. She’s clearly as skilled a business woman as she is an artist — something she attributes to “ following my gut, which I think is a good way for any artist to lead their practice.” Her online presence is also warm, her work laced with humour and a slight irony that inspires hundreds of followers to engage in the comment section. “I keep myself happy by not taking myself too seriously. I think all art and all creative fields
"I think all art and all creative fields are both important and stupid at the same time." are both important and stupid at the same time,” she explains. Penelope’s paintings are most commonly depictions of sci-fi heroines that manage to remain delicate and violenct all at once; a theme amongst her work that has become a mainstay. However, on the more playful side of things, she’s not afraid to experiment and poke fun at art world institutions whilst doing so. “There was a bunch of people fighting over a chair I made once, and it was because I specifically painted the chair to look like an outsider made it. I did want it to be on that blurred line where people were like ‘did a mom make this for her kids?’” After Penelope posted it to social media, the chair quickly went viral, landing on the front page of Reddit. “Anytime anything you make goes on reddit you’re gonna get a bunch of men yelling at you for no reason,” she explains. “ But I had all of these random people saying, ‘oh you’re charging $800 for this chair. Fuck you! I could make this.’ Then I kept increasing the price and making them angrier to the point where people were telling me I deserve to die.” While in instances like this she usually finds the mindless criticism easy to shake off — “I see them as little ants” she says — there was one occasion in where her sense of humour was being misread that cut slightly deeper. A few months ago, Penelope hung one of her paintings in a group show she was participating in — only to have it pulled down by the brand sponsoring the event, in front of her own eyes. The result left her leaving the exhibition crying, with her work tucked under one arm. “They were censoring me but not paying me,” she says. The reason they withdrew the piece so dramatically? She had signed off the work Penelope ‘Nike’ Gazin — the exhibition was sponsored by Adidas. Penelope continues, ”I’m not super sensitive, a lot of my
friends haven’t seen me cry. But there was something about it that really tapped into a deep childhood memory of being told ‘oh, your art is weird.’” “I learned at a young age to hide my humour. I was actually kind of quiet and hide my creative side, I just learned from an early age that people didn’t respond well to it, at least where I grew up, so decided to not share it with other people.” Through sharing her work via social media, Penelope gradually became more confident with who she is. That said, she asserts that it wasn’t a quick evolution, “now to this day I’m still like, I can’t believe I live this life where people want to look at my art. It’s still just ingrained in me that people believe the opposite. I’m just always pinching myself.” She continues, “even in college I was still super shy and it was a really gradual thing, like a coming out of a cage.” Now sharing so much of herself online — everything from late night dance sessions in her living room to outlining her artistic process step by step — Penelope feels “fully immersed” from the cage that once restricted her creative vision. But both before and after the Adidas exhibition debacle, Penelope has been and is committed to finding ways to generate her own income that don’t require cashing out with big companies. “Brands feel like they have this control over artists just because they’re like ‘oh for some artists this is the biggest pay cheque that they’re going to get, so we can tell you what to do.’” She explains that through her various mediums, she’s “figured out ways to really sustain myself in a way that I don’t have to worry. I don’t need to work with brands when I work for myself, I get to do whatever I want and that’s how I like things.” Not just working to liberate herself, Gazin has now co-founded, with business partner Kate
Dwyer, Witschy; an independent ecommerce platform for independent artists deemed too odd for Etsy. Gazin made the move after having her personal page pulled down one too many times. “I couldn’t figure out why and they wouldn’t tell me why either. So we went through and we covered anything that I thought they could find offensive and I still kept getting censored. After finally garnering a response from Etsy, Penelope was told it was “the most unpornographic thing i’ve ever drawn in my life,” that took her shop off the web. A simple, charcoal figure drawing, she explains, “I was like ‘oh you mean a few wisps of charcoal lines that I put to imply her pubic hair is the reason why you cut off my income for a week?’” While setting out to build their own alternative, the pair found themselves running into one major setback: no Silicon Valley tech bros would take them seriously. Instead of admitting defeat, Penelope and Kates invented a male CEO alter ego — Keith Mann — to ‘take over’ all correspondence with the developers. The project ran smoothly from that point onwards, and Witschy was born. “In my mind I was like women do this all of the time, which they do,” Penelope says. But what the duo didn’t expect is their story to go viral worldwide, “I guess for some reason I didn’t realise people were gonna be this surprised.” After an article outlining the the pairs approach was published online, Penelope and Kate suddenly found themselves on TV Networks, and making headline news. But now the site is live, Keith Mann hasn’t retired just yet, in fact, he’s about to make the biggest move of his career yet — as is Penelope. “Kate and I are writing a book about it and we did sell the story rights to Hollywood,” Penelope teases. “I guess it showed two underdogs dealing with the common struggle most women face, but tackling it in a creative and fun way. But, honestly until this day, I tell Kate that we got so much mileage out of this one dumb joke we had.” And while it is possible to write off Keith Mann, and many of Penelope’s other endeavours, as pure entertainment — that would be undermining the real life change Penelope’s actions force in the art industry and beyond. Her small, tongue in cheek, forms of resistance are changing the world around her — one “dumb joke” at a time.
WORDS BY IONE GAMBLE. PHOTOGRAPHY BY GINA CANAVAN. MAKEUP BY DAPHNE DEL ROSARIO. HAIR BY RENA CALHOUN. PHOTO ASSISTANT: SHANLEY KELLIS. ALL CLOTHING BY PENELOPE GAZIN’S FASHION BRAND COMPANY UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE.
Photography by Christina Poku Art Direction by Tabloid Art Hist ory. Makeup by Grac e Ellington. Introduction by Gina Tonic.
Tabloid Art History are taking on the prejudices of the educated arts with pop culture. Their Twitter account - @TabloidArtHist - boasts almost 50k followers and finds the trio of recent graduates likening imagery from Love Island, Lorde and Lauren Pope with Matisse, Menez and more. The analogy is more than just drawing the golden ratio swirl over a paparazzi pic, and instead points out the similarities between highly esteemed artwork, and the often shat upon world of adoring reality tv as well as the show’s stars. But moving beyond a quick off the cuff comparison, Tabloid Art History want to educate people that these similarities are so noticeable because having white people in the forefront of cultural significance has lasted for centuries in the west — be that in the works of Picasso or on the front of Hello magazine. “The privilege of the western canon is to think
that its visual devices are absolute and wholly natural.” The team sums up, “But it has been constructed through years of visual conditioning, the systematic repetition of patterns and symbols, and the erasure of alternative compositions and representations.” In this collaboration with Christina Poku, the team have reimagined iconic — as well as underrepresented — pieces of art, taken from across the course of history, in a more modern (not Modernist) view. This series considers a non white perspective, one lacking in the male gaze. While finding beauty in the same frames, the photographs aim to convey how the world really looks beyond traditional, narrow art historian values.
In order, the following images reimagine: Haijime Sorayama, Leonor Fini, Helmut Newton, Yoko Ono, María Izquierdo and Keith Rankin.
Photography by Jender Anomie. Concept by Ione Gamble and Jender Anomie. Makeup by Mona Leanne, assisted by Georgia Hope. Hair by Terri Capon.
All clothing: Beyond Retro.
Getting to know the woman behind the devil drawings, we sit down with Polly Nor...
You may not — until now — know her face, but Polly Nor and her twistedly honest depictions of femininity really need no introduction. Using devils and other motifs to shed light on the turmoil that many, many of us feel within, Polly draws from her own experience to create work that touches the darkest corners of our minds. “It’s easier to point out your insecurities with illustration than it is with photography, especially if you are photographing yourself,” says the London based artist. “I wouldn’t feel confident enough to be posting a photo of the bits I don’t like about myself. However, with illustration you can do that — it’s about you, and how you feel, but there is still some level of hiding behind your artwork.” To hear her speak on hiding behind her artwork, or succumbing to the pressures we all feel from social media, is somewhat surprising. We are talking about the artist that has perhaps become the most relatable illustrator on instagram — hitting one million followers earlier this year, at least in part due to drawings of women masturbating or peeling off their own skin.
"Most of the work is inspired by my teenage years of feeling lost and not completely comfortable in my own skin.” But despite her enormous following, and the fact her work helps thousands of girls feel comfortable with who they are, Polly isn’t immune to feeling like an outsider — in many ways, she grew up one. “Most of the work is inspired by my teenage years of feeling lost and not completely comfortable in my own skin.” Polly explains, as she delves into the context of her work, “feelings such as anxiety and depression, which I still feel now, but certainly when I was in my teenage years I found it more isolating and lonely.” Raised in North London, Polly left the city to studio an illustration degree in the midlands
Dress b y Clio P eppiatt
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during her early twenties. Unable to secure a creative job post-graduation, she took to temping as a secretary.“I found it really fucking hard to get any kind of art job. You’d always have to be an intern and there was never a clear route as to whether you could make enough money to live.” Unsurprisingly, the monotony of a 9-5 became too much to bare, and she took the dive into freelance life. Soon after. she opened an online shop, and organised her first solo exhibition ‘Sorry Grandma: An Exhibition of Obscene Illustrations’. “At that point I had around 1000 followers and that just doubled over night and continued to grow,” she explains. “Then a lot of my artwork started getting used in memes which at the time drove me mad as I wasn’t being credited. But slowly people would come across my artwork and be excited that they managed to find out I was the artist.” It’s easy to see how Polly’s work is so memeable. Her illustration may not initially read as overtly political — you won’t find one of her illustrations adorned with a pseudo body-positive quote or accompanying drawn out caption cashing in on social issues. But, her feelings first approach to creation ensures that what she does evidently means so much more to people than a quick double-tap. “My work is largely about representing a feeling. I normally imagine it as a female character’s emotional state at the time.”
Dress: Rokit Vintage.
Whether its a red, hairy demon arm reaching out a laptop screen and grabbing a ladies leg, a group of devil-women wringing out their outer skins, or simply someone drawn with a beer in one hand,
cigarette hanging out her mouth, and hand down her pants — Polly’s illustrations normalise the thoughts and behaviours many of us experience, but most are ashamed to admit to. However, her illustrations of purely unfiltered, unnerving, gross-girl femininity weren’t immediately understood. “When I was first putting it up, people just thought it was really weird. But as time has gone on there’s been a lot of people who do relate to to what i do.” She elaborates, “When you’re younger and you suffer from depression you can often feel as though you are the only person feeling that way. As I’ve gotten older I realise that every single person I know has some sort of mental health issue and it just becomes more apparent as you grow up.” It’s difficult to tell if Polly’s work is increasingly well-received due to our growing acknowledgment and awareness of mental health issues, or if we are more open to talking about mental health due to artists such as Polly persistently pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Now branching out from illustration into sculpture, installation, and animation, her work is no longer just an image we can relate to through our phone screens, but a tangible representation of the most hidden crevices of our minds. In many ways, Polly and her work are the perfect examples of how Instagram has fragmented the art world - for the better. “Instagram is good in the way that you no longer have to prove yourself to an elitist institution, you no longer have to prove your work is of value or interest to the world.
“Imposter syndrome is certainly more of a fear amongst women, especially thinking that you’ll do something wrong. Whereas with men they’ve been told that they are brave and can do what they want their whole lives.”
It allows for a more diverse range of people to break out into the art industry,” she muses. Prior to social media, the art world was an arguably near-impenetrable industry controlled largely by the upper classes. And the same is still true today in many senses, with art industry elites largely ignoring those who make their name on the internet — and those who’re popular online choosing to curate their own shows and create their own opportunities outside of traditional power structures. Despite the barriers still in place, Polly thinks ”that the main galleries are realising that they have to make themselves more interesting and accessible to younger, or different kinds of, people. But then there’s definitely going to remain a distinction where the art world considers the more highbrow stuff as real art and the other stuff as Instagram art.” However, what Instagram has achieved, and Tumblr before it to a lesser extent, is creating an alternative method of building your career, finding an audience, and garnering the attention of those outside the art industry. Glittering reviews from critics, an access to the social elite, and a formal education are no longer requirements for creative success. Instead all you need is a phone, followers, and a vision. “I couldn’t see a gallery owner, before I had a following, predicting that anyone else would be interested in what I do,” Polly says. Although follower count may not be the perfect means test of talent, her work is adored by not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of people — both online and off. In turn they buy her merch — perhaps not an original drawing as most of Polly’s fanbase are young women — but most likely a t-shirt, pin, or print. Creating low-price point merch is not only a smart business decision for the illustrator, but a moral one. Pins and
other wearable offshoots cultivate an inclusive environment around her audience, and assert that enjoying or participating in the art world isn’t a pastime reserved for those that can afford to buy into it. While remaining cynical of how much the industry will change, she asserts that “art doesn’t have to be one way. it doesn’t have to be super respectable highbrow stuff that you’re going to see in a gallery, which most of the time I wouldn’t find that interesting anyway.” Polly continues, “there’s something nice about going online and seeing stuff that you find relatable because that used to be so hard to come by.” For all the positives, finding success via social media comes with its own specific set of difficulties. “There is the new pressure to keep producing art constantly in order to keep up,” Polly admits. It’s something we all feel, creative or not. “There are times where you are just not feeling particularly creative or you are going through a bit of shit, and you may start to feel a constant pressure that you’re falling behind or that people will start to lose interest.” Admitting to feeling burnout, or social media exhaustion, Polly herself is working on how to avoid succumbing the never ending content cycle, without contributing to the negative environment Instagram incubates. “I definitely want my Instagram to not be a toxic place for young girls to be looking at. I want it to show the opposite side of the whole Instagram, Kim Kardashian, filter thing.” She says, “instead I want to display our feelings of vulnerability or anxiety; all the things that we all feel but don’t talk about on Instagram.” With that in mind, Polly is mindful of who she chooses to align herself with. While being put in the ‘feminist artist’ box may not rub perfectly
“There's something nice about going online
and seeing stuff that you find relatable because that used to be so hard to come by.”
with her personally, it’s undeniable that her main body of work deals with the ins and outs of being a woman. While thematically focussing in on the things that make us most vulnerable, she refuses to become part of the commodified feminist generation. “I do think brands and certain artists have realised that there is a wide and lucrative audience for politicised work. so they will co-opt it ,and that can be disingenuous,” she explains. Hyper aware of brands co-opting feminism to sell products, and not wanting throw her audience under the bus in favour of an easy pay cheque, Polly chooses to generate the majority of her income through merchandise and sales as opposed to commissioned work with big companies. “A lot of the commission work that I was being offered was from brands that wanted to, on a very surface level, look like they care about women because they want that female audience. You’ll get companies that don’t care about women using politicised messages aimed at them, for example. But I do feel that a lot of people see through that. It’s definitely become quite trendy to come across as political.” Currently planning her second solo show, expanding on her hand made, latex skin suits and continuing to bring alive the world she’s created with pen and paper, Polly will continue championing those among us who feel as though we’re always working to conceal what lies beneath. Because whether you’re hiding in your human skin suit or not, it’s hard to fight imposter syndrome being a 2018 twentysomething — but at least we have Polly Nor to prove our nasty little demons are just as worthy of affection as our accomplishments.
Words by Ione Gamble. Photography by Camille Mariet. Set design by Lizzy Gilbert. Makeup by Mona Leanne. Hair by James Oxley. All Illustration by Polly Nor.
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MOLLIE GORDON. MAKEUP BY E. STYLING BY LAURA AG DON. MIT OG AR BR Y E HLE LIN AS DE MA BY PHOTOGRAPHY RSONAL ASSISTANT: PE N. AN IRM BE ICE TR GLOSS. HAIR BY LEA
So many features on artists we admire begin with a fancy restaurant or hotel suite, the humble but intimidating interviewee welcoming the writer into their inner circle, as they sip coffee casually in a £3000 sweater. When I FaceTimed with CupcakKe, she wore an iridescent hoodie that cost $55 - which I found out through the incredible talent of @ cupcakke_style on Twitter - with a pink cotton bra and skirt two piece underneath. Seeing CupcakKe’s face filling up my phone screen is less surreal and more familiar, with the rapper often seemingly living on her phone to fill the timeline with Instagram lives, captions to piss your pants over and an honest interaction with any and all fans that get in contact with her. Last year, CupcakKe offered to put a fan up in a hotel when he told her that he was thrown out of his home for being LGBT. A frontrunner in being a queer ally, CupcakKe’s song ‘LGBT’ is one of her best loved tracks, and her actions prove that the Chicago born and bred star isn’t simply talking the talk for YouTube views and Buzzfeed headlines. The term ‘ally’ can feel divisive at times, when many celebrities are attributed the title with very little effort, but Cupcakke literally put her money where her mouth is. “I vibe with the LGBT community, I fuck with the community and have since high school. I’ve always had a lot of LGBT friends and I wasn’t closed off to anybody.” CupcakKe explains, “I’m an open minded person and I treat everyone as equal. That’s why the community got behind me. I’m not close minded - I’m very open minded when it comes to love.”
What CupcakKe recognises as a strength in herself and what her fanbase adores is her sincerity; an authenticity that may not be possible without CupcakKe acting as her own manager and producer - an act of choice, rather than necessity. “It’s very important being my own boss,” CupcakKe gushes, “You don’t have no-one to tell you to do this and do that, do this and do that. You’re in control of everything yourself and that’s something really powerful.” As CupcakKe’s fame grows, the fear of the commercialisation of CupcakKe looms over her fans. Imagining watered down lyrics, less titty pics and an intern controlled Twitter sends shudders down my spine and it does the same to CupcakKe too. Superstardom comes with a price, but CupcakKe considers this, “I just hope I don’t lose me. I’m crazy, and I hope that everything stays me. I want to stay upbeat and humble. But what does this CupcakKe consist of? The 21 year old Gemini was made homeless at 13 years old, has been working on music since she was 16 and hit the scene with the vulgar track ‘Vagina’ in late 2015. Her big break was at 19, when ‘Deepthroat’ - the explicit anthem of the queer community and video meme fodder - went viral. The reasons behind the song’s popularity mean little to CupcakKe, as she raps on ‘Budget’, “With no team, I chase my dreams. Funny how the world think it’s funny making me into memes. But they don’t know, that’s free promo.” The hustle is the focus of CupcakKe’s career and as long as these songs gain popularity, she’ll continue to make them. Not solely for the coins however, but to dissipate the taboo
y, “I just hope I don't lose me. I'm craz e. and I hope that everything stays m e.” I want to stay upbeat and humbl
behind the reality of a millenial sex life, and most importantly, to express herself. “I write explicit songs for myself.” She insists, “I don’t go half way out, I’m full on and i have that shock value in my music and that’s a form of power. I say to myself, why are people so shocked? But I think that’s cool. If you’re not out to shock people then you’re not really doing your job.” Midway through discussing this, CupcakKe starts rapping the beginning of ‘Deepthroat’ off hand. Being the ever chill journalist that I am, I scream. I gush. She laughs it off. This kind of adoration must have become normal to her now.
"I'm full on - I have that shock value in my music, and that's a form of power." For the fans on the fringes, CupcakKe’s music is a detailed and seductively disgusting mastery of both sex and linguistics. For those who track through her albums, freestyles and mixtapes on the regular, these lyrical love letters to the grossness of bodies and debauchery is only the tip of the iceberg for CupcakKe’s discography - the exposed nipple but not the whole titty. ‘Picking Cotton’ is a song about being black in America. ‘Pedophile’ is about child sexual assault. ‘Expectations’ is about a failed relationship. All these songs utilise Cupcakke’s uncanny way with words and wit to touch you. As visceral and vulgar ‘Spiderman Dick’ might be, the lyrics to ‘Biggie Smalls’ preach self love. A CupcakKe album is so much more than its memeability, but recognising the value in the lighthearted and the meaningful is what keeps a CupcakKe fresh.
“I want people to love themselves in every shape, form, you know? You ne ed to love yourself. It’s who you ar e!” “I want people to love themselves in every shape, form, you know?” Cupcakke muses, after I declared her a body positive icon, “Any shape or size, you need to love yourself. It’s who you are!” She elaborates, “I don’t fuck with negative comments you know. I fuck with body positivity.” Speaking of negativity, we briefly blow through the rapper’s feud with Azealia Banks, who controversially claimed that CupcakKe needed a boob job and kicked off when CupcakKe and the rest of the internet called her out. (Sound familiar, Azealia?) The hostility ended with CupcakKe in the lead, posting screenshots of Azealia in her DMs making little sense and essentially, chatting shit. There was nothing left that needed saying. “I can’t feed into other people’s negativity and insecurities.” Shrugs off CupcakKe, “I definitely think she should listen to ‘Biggie Smalls’ and love herself and think about what she’s doing. If she wanted her titties done, that’s fine but don’t vocalise that against every other female vocalist.” Lingering over a dead feud seems counterintuitive to this interview and who Cupcakke is as a person and artist. CupcakKe is genuine and generous, an authentic sweetheart who finds the time to compliment my lipstick during a ten minute FaceTime call. We go back and forth on style for a while, a topic that it’s clear CupcakKe takes seriously. She turns Fashion Nova ‘fits into full on looks, inspiring the aforementioned Twitter dedicated to location the what, where and cost of CupcakKe’s killer looks.
CupcakKe commits to colour blocking her outfits like no other and the intensity of her style is another factor in drawing in an adoring fanbase. If you’re killing every aspect of your career, it makes sense to look good while you’re doing it. But just like the rest of us navigating away from our teens and into our early twenties, CupcakKe’s giving up on the more elaborate and unnecessary attempts to feel fabulous. “A year back I tried to wear crazy wigs; I think it was a mental thing like ‘you want to wear blue, so you’re gonna have blue hair!’ I started going out and getting blue wigs, green wigs, yellow wigs and then I realised maybe four, five months ago that I thought, ‘let me toss all this shit away, it’s not me.’ It made me feel like a clown.” CupcakKe continues, “Then I started doing natural colours like maroon and blonde and black.” She has maroon curls when we chat and they look radiant framing her face, “I just think rich black is so beautiful on me. I feel more mature when I wear a natural colour wig. When you got on the blonde you just feel sex; with the black you feel ice and elegant; the maroon you wanna have fun.” This straightforward view of the world is one that’s lacking in many but bursting out of CupcakKe. It’s this kind of attitude that leads to such diversity in her discography, touching on topics like colourism and classism, she refuses to shy away from anything: “I just want to be totally different from anything else. I’ve never done the same thing twice in my career. I try to do everything different and keep everything fresh and fun.”
“I’d still be doing the same thing even if I wasn’t successful,” CupcakKe continues. “I was about three years in before the industry picked up on me. I had no money but was still going at it. It all goes to show I would be doing this even if I wasn’t successful.” CupcakKe’s honest when she says she doesn’t want to change, and the hope that she doesn’t is palpable in her fanbase, the Slurpers. When quizzed on what she thinks is her best song proves her honesty; the thrill in her sex anthems doesn’t come from her millions of YouTube views, but a genuine enjoyment of writing and performing taboo tunes.
“I just want to be totally different from anything else.” ”‘Duck Duck Goose’ is definitely my favourite song even though people get mad at me for not choosing ‘Deepthroat’. ‘Duck Duck Goose’ is very creative and it still has shock value.” She exclusively reveals, “You know, it encapsulates what everyone loves about me and the song has the best hook. It screams out. ‘Duck Duck Goose’ is just so creative and clever even when it’s about giving head.” CupcakKe lights up, “Performing it is always epic — since it came out right up to now. It’s so epic when the crowd hears the song and goes crazy, and its entertaining and fulfilling.” Our FaceTime call ends with a barrage of compliments, as I can’t hold in my inner Slurper from slipping out. CupcakKe takes it graciously, humbly and happily, she makes sure to counter with her own adorations. If you judge people by how they treat those beneath them and not their peers, consider CupcakKe by how she raps about the world - “Ain’t no confusion, everybody human. Get to know people instead of just assumin’.” Words by Gina Tonic.
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The Slumflower, aka Chidera Eggerue, is wise. Take the wisdom of your mates
after a couple of wines when they’re trying to remind you that you’re the most amazing girl in the world, combine it with the motivation of an auntie and add in a splash of Igbo proverbs (Her favourite: “When the rat follows the lizard out into the rain, it’s only the rat that gets soaked. That means you’ve got to be mindful of the company you keep.”) and you’re nearly there. But what’s most important about the wisdom of The Slumflower is that the advice she spills is so uniquely her own.
Dress by Savanna Avery
This uniqueness is also applicable to her pseudonym, which she adopted in 2014 after watching a short film of the same name by US filmmakers Street Etiquette which follows a young black boy in New York who’s an aspiring botanist. As a Peckham native, the name resonated with Eggerue. Tired of people asking her if she “had a gun” because she lived in South East London, she adopted the name because it “suggests the idea of a beautiful thing growing out of something that doesn’t necessarily promote its growth”. And so The Slumflower was born. It’s hard to explain to someone who is unfamiliar with her work what she has achieved – it’s easier to explain what she hasn’t, because at 23 years she’s already achieved so much. As well as bestowing us with her wisdom through her social media accounts (she’s racked up 55k followers on Twitter alone), an advice column on Dazed’s website, columns and interviews on websites including Teen Vogue and The Metro, she’s also inspired a new body positivity movement through the hashtag #SaggyBoobsMatter, and has a book coming out on 26th July. The book, “What a Time to Be Alone: The Slumflower’s Guide to Why You Are Already
Enough” is everything the Slumflower represents - it’s vibrant and full of life. Just like her pseudonym represents “something” grown out of “nothing”, it’s a book that stands out compared to what you’d expect to find in your local bookshop. The book contains some of The Slumflower’s mottos, mantras and wisdom, as well as Igbo proverbs, divided up into longform essays and brightly coloured illustrated infographics. She tells me that she wants the book to look like “a children’s book, but for adults - I want to make reading fun again!” And fun it certainly is. What a Time to Be Alone is less about changing everything about yourself but more from realising that you don’t necessarily need to change - you just need to accept who are you. The Slumflower’s key aim with the release of this book is “to make solitude fun again”. At the end of last year, she began to realise how valuable and important she was, despite (and also perhaps because of) not having a partner in her life. She’s well aware that many people are terrified of dying alone, but wants to spread the message that being alone is important, and solitude is beautiful. In 2018, we’re all trying to do the absolute most - trying to juggle full-time jobs, part-time side hustles, freelance gigs and a healthy social life. The Slumflower’s secret to juggling it all? Taking some time off. She tries to make sure to keep at least one day a week free to have time to herself, plus tries not to work on weekends wherever possible. “The world will not stop, and the stock market will not crash if we wait until Monday”, she says. As well as the power of solitude, she’s also a strong believer in the power of no. We discuss the fears we both had early in our respective careers of saying no to opportunities, and thinking that rejecting an offer of work is a door closed. “Recently I’ve actually starting saying no to things a lot more than I’m saying yes,” she tells me. “Saying no doesn’t mean
“I want to be someone people can relate to, and be a black woman who’s starting conversations.”
And just who is that person she wants to be? Quite simply, she wants to dominate. “I want to be in television, media, publishing… I want to dominate as many facets of the media as possible.” But it’s not an absent minded domination that The Slumflower wants - she wants to use a position of power to create conversations and motivate black people. “I want to be someone people can relate to, and be a black woman who’s starting conversations. I want to help keep people educated and entertained at the same time.” She’s certainly already done a lot to educate people, not just through sharing her own journey with body positivity through the hashtag #SaggyBoobsMatter, but also by using the attention this hashtag has garnered to create a platform for wider discussions of body positivity, specifically from fat women, who the body positivity movement originated from. As a fat woman, I’m used to seeing slimmer women dominating the body positivity movement to talk about themselves. That’s why it’s so vital to see what The Slumflower is doing. “I can’t change the system and remove the structures in place,” she says. “But what i can do is share my voice, and know when to stop and not to overstep a boundary.” She’s keen to highlight the voices of people like our shared favourite, Bethany Rutter aka Arched Eyebrow, a fat blogger. “She’s amazing! She’s the queen of yellow and stripes”.
Arched Eyebrow’s not the only fashion queen The Slumflower is also somewhat of a fashionista herself, regularly sharing photoshoots encapsulating her favourite looks on her blog alongside her writing. She describes her style as “consistently inconsistent - you never know what you’re going to get!” When we sit down for this interview, she’s dressed in sportswear, but feels just as comfortable in a bodycon dress, perspex heels and a platinum blonde wig. Fashion for The Slumflower is about three things - “control, and authority and autonomy.” She loves to wear her aforementioned platinum blonde wig but she’s equally as obsessed with her natural hair or an afro wig that she loves to wear for public appearances. As with everything she does, she wears the afro wig with motivating black women in mind - “I want young black girls to see that they can have big, afro hair, and still be in a position of success.” So once you are in a position of success, what’s next? The Slumflower wants to continue helping people. “Once you’ve reached the position in your life when you’re comfortable with yourself, it make sense to want to try and help other people too”. As she tells me towards the end of our interview with a grin - “it’s only 6 months into 2018, and it’s already been such an exciting year!” It’s no wonder she’s grinning. With a book out in the very near future, and the knowledge that you’re regularly helping black women - and people across the world - help themselves and learn to love the joys of solitude, she’s got every right to keep smiling, and to keep sharing that wisdom.
Opposite: Dress: William Dill-Russell. Above middle — Dress: William Dill Russell, Body by Sinéad O’Dwyer.
never. If someone really wants to work with you, they will reach out to you again. I’m trying to be mindful of who I am, and I’m trying to curate my future to become the person I want to be.”
Dress: Fabian Kis-Juhasz
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Do you ever feel sad? Do you wish you could be someone else? Of course you do! Try our handy guide for five fresh makeup looks you can attempt in the comfort of your own home! Start with the first one and work your way through and by the end you might not be sad anymore! Might still be though, nothing is definite. Perfect for dreamers, fashion gals, backto-school season, day-to-night looks, club kids, divorcees, recovering alcoholics, gays with depression, anyone suffering with trauma, OR EVEN ANYONE WHO HAS EVER JUST FELT A LITTLE BIT MELANCHOLY! Be the best you you can be! Channel our five fierce looks, be a fab gal! Treat yourself! Approved by your Gay Best Friend! Transform from Debbie Downer to Party Polly! Makeovers! MAKEOVERS!
By Misha MN.
She is a tree that grows hearts, one for each that you take. You are the Intruder’s hand. She is the branch that you break. She is Mother Nature’s arm, her spirit, her will. She is the whisper of prayer, the offering to Persephone. She is the promise of new life, the return of beauty to the hard lands. She is the one whose body must die, and rot, and become fertile earth so that she may be reborn with rainwater in her veins and sunlight in her lungs. She is the scent on the air, the heady perfume of nihilistic hedonism, the call to arms. She is the buttonhole blossom pinned to a child’s jacket by his mother, she is the bouquet given in romance. She is the white rose, the absorber of heavy emotion. She spreads her fingers like roots and draws
life from the earth. She stands tall and proud, despite knowing that she might not weather the storm. She accepts that this is not her final form. She knows that there is so much more to come. She may be plucked from her stems by greedy children, she may wither in the frosts of a malignant winter, she may be crushed under the wheel of harsh realities, she may be pruned back by overzealous authorities, but she will always return. She will always stand tall and turn her glorious face to stare her oppressors in the eye. She will slash at them with her thorny teeth, paint her petals red once more with the Blood of The Guilty. She will always bloom in adversity. She will grow again. This earth is hers.
She watches YouTube tutorials on how to do makeup and tries to follow along, but it’s not easy. She never has the products the bloggers have, but she tries to make do. She contours with eye shadows and highlights with dazzle dust. She knows that her nose is big, so tries to slim it down, but hasn’t quite got there yet. She likes it when she looks shiny and metallic, like the disco ball she chases at the weekend. Her lip liner is overdrawn and wobbly. Her lashes are always skew-whiff. She’s a hot mess, but she’s trying. She goes out dancing a lot, it’s one of the only times that she feels alive. She knows that she drinks too much and is trying to cut down; the hangovers just aren’t worth it anymore. Instead of drinking, she turns to the internet to find things to do. She curls her hair like Farrah Fawcett because she found an instructional video, she burnt her hand on the tongs but it still came out well. She practices her make up a lot, she wants to be better, she wants to finally hit 1000 instagram followers. She tags her pictures with #bossassbitch, #dancingqueen and #CEOofmyownlife. She makes instagram stories of her bobbing around in her living room before going out to the club, and when people say she looks good it makes her feel better inside. She knows that she has been hollowed out, but she is gradually refilling herself with something other than drink and self-pity. She hopes.
She’s out every night, dancing like its Studio 54. She thinks that
if she’s enough of a bomb, no one will realise she’s just a shell.
The Goddess is drunk and out of control. She imbibes spirits because she wants a soul. She is always there, lurking beneath the surface (find your inner sex goddess!), just waiting to be called. Her skin is always clean, heavy with the morning dew (moisturise yourself healthy!) and she likes the feeling of grass beneath her naked feet. Her body is a temple, her flesh is like silk, rolls and folds of creamy marble (love the skin you’re in!) She draws witch marks all over her body with red lipstick (ten minute face for £10! Top tips!”) so that she can protect herself from the evils of the world. Take the force of the blow. Protection. She weaves through the night, ghost white legs winking in the moonlight. She is a priestess
looking for supplicants. She wants to be worshipped, she knows her worth and she wants to share it with the world. She wants men to fall to their knees in reverence, to take her beauty in their mouths, deepthroat. She knows what she is running from; the internal darkness, the sadness, and she leaps from flesh to flesh, like driftwood after a shipwreck. For every man that has hurt her she will find a hundred who will love her, even if only for a night. Her devotees are legion, why wouldn’t they be? She is the Love Witch, born from the fever dreams of sailors and degenerates, Queen of the Burning Bushes, Anointed by the Semen Tears of the Not Yet Forgotten.
She’s glam, she’s absolutely fabulous and she’s a little bit sad. She only wears blue eye shadows and red lips, because primary colours are important. Classic style never fades; a thing of beauty is a joy forever. She always wears mascara (black with a full face, brown on ‘natural’ days) so that when she cries, which she does frequently, her tears leave thick dark track marks down her cheeks. She once tried to use Botox to partially paralyse her tear ducts so that she could only produce one tear at a time; it’s so much more elegant that way. Her cheeks are rouged either by pinching them or adding just a fingertip of pink eye shadow, blush has always been superfluous.
She drinks ouzo (two ice cubes, no water) in the middle of the day at home in her flat, wearing an open kimono or chiffon robe. She totters around her small rooms bumping into things and catching her sleeves on door handles. She lies on her bed and listens to Maria Callas records (the coloratura arias) and lets the tears flow freely onto her satin pillows. Sometimes, to help them along, she pricks her thigh with a safety pin. She sits on her balcony with an ice bucket of cheap prosecco and spears pitted kalamata olives with long red nails. She mourns for the husband she never had, the youthful promise of beauty that was never fulfilled, and the years of living that were stolen from her.
I feel the sun blazing down above me, Beating summer bruises on my lilywhite shoulders, My skin beaded with a suffocating morning dew And no shadowy shelter to shield me. Apollo shines too bright; My eyes are watering. I wade into the sea And feel the lap of the waves against my flesh. A coolness that engulfs, an ocean that divides Me from the harsh climates of this mortal coil. Take me Earth, take me Ocean, Take me Gaia, Protect me from Heaven, protect me from Sky, Protect me from Uranus. I baptise myself in the Waters of the Womb, I drink from Hope Springs Eternal And I fell well again. I feel the Salt Mother breathing, The tides drawing me in and pushing me out, Healing my limbs and regenerating my spirits As she bites vicious chunks from the shoreline. Take my tiny body and love me well, I am an orphan of the storm And all I want is to no longer be alone. I laid siege to Heaven in protest; I shook my beads in the face of Uranus And cut him deep. His blood fell into the ocean And from that I was reborn, From the Aphros foam On a giant clamshell. I am alive again.
Wo atic. Illustration rds by Maggie M by R ene Matić. A few months ago, while I was writing my literature review for my PhD thesis, I came across a doctoral dissertation titled “From Punk to the Hijab: British women’s embodied dress as performative resistance, 1970s to the present” by Shehnaz Suterwalla. I found it suuuper interesting and thought it was such a shame that, as someone’s thesis, not many others would come across it. I decided to share the dissertation on my Instagram story and ask if anybody wanted me to email them a copy. I couldn’t believe it when over 50 people asked me to send it to them. I wanted to keep up the momentum, and so I decided to make a separate Instagram account (@maggiematic) dedicated to sharing resources and short summaries of particularly interesting articles and books that I come across. The account links to a Google drive where I share e-books and pdf copies of the texts I post about (and some extra ones for good measure). I started my academic career studying a BA in philosophy and psychology, after which I went on to specialise in the philosophy of art for my masters. After focusing on feminist aesthetics during my MA, I was approached to carry out a PhD project researching the contemporary
feminist movement, and of course, I jumped at the opportunity. As a feminist researcher, I think it is vital to produce research that is open, accessible and useful, so that it may serve the community whose experience it addresses. That has always been really important to me, and Instagram felt like a good way to do this. Not only has my research account allowed me to connect with people all over the world, but because social media is a part of people’s daily lives, they don’t have to go out of their way to find these resources. They just pop up on their timeline as they go about their business. If they scroll past something I have shared and they want to save it for later, they can; if they don’t like it, they can comment and let me know their thoughts; they can dip in and out of it, but it still fosters this sense of community. In this way, setting up the account has allowed me to make my research open, interactive and accessible. I think we need to do more sharing in the feminist community. If you read something you think your friend will like - send it to them! If you come across something that has changed the way you think - signpost it to others! We have never had the ability to share things so quickly and easily, so let’s use it to break down some of the barriers
to knowledge and information that have been strategically built to keep minorities out of academia and positions of power. I always say that there is so much hidden in the history books. So much feminist work and writing has been buried away, and feminist ‘waves’ or generations are pitted against each other. So every time that there is a rise in feminist consciousness (like we are witnessing now), we feel like we have to start from scratch. I feel like that happens deliberately — to limit our progress and inhibit the accomplishments of the feminist project. There are so many incredible theorists in vast and varying fields that have done groundbreaking work exploring queerness, disability, race, gender, class, transness, body politics, activism, resistance, sexual and reproductive health, capitalism, neoliberalism, nationality, solidarity and aesthetics. These literatures can help us understand and come to terms with our own lived experience, but can also help us forge new means of resistance and activism. What I hope to do with my research and with my Instagram is to share some of this incredible wealth of information that gets kept out of reach, so that people can develop their own voice by tapping into the great pools of knowledge that are already out there. By way of introduction, I thought I would share ten texts that I recently featured on my page;
‘Empowerment/Sexism:
Figuring Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertisi
ng’ 2008 by
Rosalind Gill (journal article ): This article written by Ros alind Gill is one of many groundbreaking piec es she has written on postfeminism and the neo liberal co-option of feminist rhetorics of choice and empowerment. I only came across the term ‘postfeminism’ when I started conducting aca demic research into feminist culture. In essenc e, it denotes the ‘Sex and the City era’ which was characterised by the idea that women had ach ieved liberation and empowerment and no long er needed feminism. Naturally, this notion has close ties with neoliberalism and consum ption, which is what Gill draws out so well in this piece. This article, a book she co-authored with Christina Scharff on the topic, and some rejoinde rs to her work are available in the ‘postfeminis m & neoliberalism’ file on the drive.
‘Post-postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times’ 2016 by Rosalind Gill (journal article): Particularly relevant to us as contemporary feminists, Gill has recently responded to academic work which proposes that new feminisms have signaled a departure from postfeminist ideals. By analysing The Evening Standard’s 2015 “NEW GEN FEM” issue, Gill examines how problematic postfeminist ideologies and discourses still lurk within mainstream representations of the contemporary resurgence in feminist thought. As a feminist, I found this piece particularly important in thinking about how we can resist mainstream media’s capitalist revisions and trivialisation of feminist organising. This piece is also on the drive in the “feminism now” folder.
‘Packaging Girlhood’ (2006) by Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb (book): I came across this book when I studied contemporary marketing during my first MA. It is a thorough examination of how the marketplace enforces and imposes gender norms on the bodies and minds of girls from a very young age. There’s also an equivalent for boys called ‘Packaging Boyhood’ from the same authors. I always recommend these to people with young kids who are trying to avoid the early effects of gendered marketing. It’s an important but easy read, and is well worth sharing with any of the open-minded parents in your life. It’s available on Amazon for around £11.
Becoming the Third Wave’ & ‘To Be Real
ion”: Riot
‘We ARE the Revolut by Rebecca Walker (essay and book): Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment and DIY
I only recently learnt that the term “third-wave” (Alice WalkerD‘“We by Kevin by Rebecca coined g’ (2012) Publishin was Selfreportedly Walker’s daughter) in these texts. Although the “wave” metaphor of feminist history has been contested by many academics, these texts are well worth a read to get to grips with different ideas about the so called ‘third wave’. The book features contributions from Naomi Wolf, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Greg Tate and Gloria Steinem amongst others. The essay is available on the google drive (in the ‘3rd wave feminism’ file) linked to my Instagram, and the book is available for about £12 on amazon.
‘It definitely felt very white’: Race, gender, and the performative Conceptualising Gender: Eurocentric
politics of assembly at the Women’s
Foundations of Feminist Concepts
March in Victoria, British Columbia’
and the Challenge of African Epistemologies’ (2002) by Oyeronke Oyewumi (book chapter): I came across this text on a conference reading list and it has really helped me view feminist scholarship with a critical eye. It is a brief but insightful run down of the eurocentric nature of feminist concepts of womanhood, the gender binary and the nuclear family. Oyewumi demonstrates how African experiences and epistemologies present new potentials and futurities, and how they undermine the Western universalism that is implied in a lot of feminist gender discourses. This text is included in the ‘black feminism, womanism and critical race theory’ file on the drive alongside texts by Angela Davis, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
(2017) by CindyAnn & Reuben RoseRedwood (journal article): This recent paper looks at the women’s march and examines the challenges and performative limits of solidarity. Drawing on the work of Chantal Mouffe, the paper makes a case for the importance of agonistic spaces of ‘conflictual consensus’, difference, and disagreement in truly radical and democratic political movements. Reflecting on her own experience as a woman of colour at the women’s march, CindyAnn examines the limitations of white feminism, and proposes that white allies must go above and beyond performative gestures of solidarity and ally theatre, and must engage in mutual aid and reciprocity to forge a truly intersectional movement. This piece is also included in the ‘black feminism, womanism and critical race theory’ file on the drive.
“We ARE the Revolution”: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment and DIY Self Publishing (2012) by Kevin Dunn and May Summer Farnsworth (journal article): This article recounts the history of riot grrrl zine culture. Until I started my project, the only knowledge I had of riot grrrl was pieced together from tumblr and obscure YouTube videos. I have really enjoyed learning more about the history of riot grrrl, and simultaneously discovering the massive effect it has had on my own personal style and politics. In this text, Dunn and Farnsworth explore the genesis of riot grrrl, the power of zine culture, and the long-lasting legacy of the riot grrrl era. This text is included in the ‘3rd wave feminism’ file on the drive, along with work looking into the commodification of riot grrrl, race and inclusion in the riot grrrl movement and riot grrrl culture today.
Marketing Images of Gender: A Visual Analysis’ (1998) by Jonathan Schroeder & Janet Borgerson (journal article): This is a very old paper which is worth considering if you read it. However, this was one of the first papers I read when I started my PhD and was trying to get to grips with consumer culture and advertising literature. It blends the conventions of feminist aesthetics/art criticism and social science methods to visually analyse and decode gendered advertisements. Drawing on Berger, Mulvey, and Goffman’s work on the male gaze, it analyses how women’s bodies are positioned, how their faces are obscured and how they interact with men in adverts to demonstrate how such images feed into and perpetuate violent patriarchal articulations of women and the feminine body. What’s scary is that even though this paper is now 20 years old, a great deal of the patriarchal tropes it uncovered are still rife in advertising today. This paper is included in the ‘consumer culture’ file on the drive.
Feminist Aesthetics (2005) by Mary Devereau: Again, I didn’t know there was such a thing as feminist aesthetics until my third year of my Philosophy BA when I had an amazing teacher who was a feminist philosopher. For those who are unfamiliar, feminist aesthetics is a school of philosophical thought that examines and resists male domination and masculinism in the spheres of art, art theory and aesthetic experience. This piece is a brief run down of the history of feminist aesthetics, as well as a summary of the key themes that emerge from it. It’s perfect for those who are unfamiliar with feminist philosophies of art, or for seasoned pros looking to jog their memory. It is available in the ‘feminist aesthetics’ file on the drive.
The Culture of Privilege: Color-blindness, Postfeminism, and Christonormativity (2012) by Abby Ferber (journal article): This paper looks at the interconnections and similarities between color-blindness, christonormativity, and postfeminism, arguing that the ideology of color-blind racism is part of a broader, overarching ideology of “oppression blindness” that serves to uphold systems of inequality. Tbh, I am not 100% sure whether we can truly liken color-blindness to postfeminism and christonormativity, as these are distinct and complex issues with very different, (although intertwined) histories. Having said that, this paper raises some incredibly interesting and important points. It’s one of those texts that takes something you have been experiencing or thinking about for a while and helps you better articulate it.
The Origins and Evolution of Miss Meatface. Words and Images by Kat Toronoto.
Last week I realised that 2018 marks the five year anniversary since I underwent a total hysterectomy for cervical cancer at the age of 32. The last five years have been a wild emotional and artistic roller coaster, and it was out of this tumultuous period that my photographic alter ego, Miss Meatface, was created. In 2010 I was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer and my doctor gave me an ultimatum: if you want to have children do it now because you need to have a total hysterectomy to remove the cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes before the cancer spreads. I waited three years before I decided to go ahead with the hysterectomy and during those three years I had a constant battle back and forth in my head about whether or not I wanted to have children. I was in an an incredibly unhappy marriage at the time and there was absolutely NO WAY that I was going to have children with that person. To top it off, I’d never had any kind of maternal instinct whatsoever. While many of my friends were off having babies, I sat back and looked on in total indifference. What the heck was wrong with me? In 2013 I decided that the time was right- I was going to have the hysterectomy. Fast forward a year later and I found that I just couldn’t shake off the horrible mind fuck of the whole experience: on the outside I looked just like any other person, but on the inside I no longer possessed certain organs that the world seemed to place an annoying amount of importance on. I was furious at society for forcing labels upon us - instead of “male” or “female”, couldn’t we all just be human beings without layers upon layers of gender stereotypes heaped upon us? I was overwhelmed, frustrated, and depressed. I had deep, dark morbid thoughts on a daily basis and sometimes suicide felt like an easier solution to a messy divorce. I worked 40 hours a week as a librarian and then another three to four hours a night at home on my own art, so finding a therapist and somehow working that into my daily schedule didn’t seem realistic to me at the time. I was lucky to have one close friend at the time that I felt I could talk to about things and she suggested that perhaps I could express these dark feelings not through the act of physically
'On the outside I looked just like any other person, but on the inside I no longer possessed certain organs that the world seemed to place an annoying amount of importance on.'
"The camera acted as a way for me to pull myself out of my own horrible reality.” harming myself, but instead through artistic self expression. I’d been a photographer all my life but had woefully put down my camera years earlier to focus on my day job and other forms of art. I took my friends suggestion to heart, and began thinking about exploring photographic self portraiture. Shortly thereafter, I went on eBay and purchased my first Polaroid camera. I began taking self portraits that reflected how I felt inside: emotionally battered and bruised. I taught myself the art of special effects makeup and painted bloody gaping wounds on my face, black eyes and bloody noses and used all of the outward signs of domestic violence in order to make a visual statement about how I felt on the inside. It was also at this point that I came up with the name Miss Meatface due to the grotesque, bloody nature of the makeup in these early photographs. It was a brutally intense time — and looking back upon it now frightens me to see just how close to the edge I was. But I now realise that the camera acted as a way for me to pull myself out of my own horrible reality, and create a world in which it was ok for me to explore all of the questions, fantasies and anger that I had floating around in my head. I began to post my self portraits on Instagram and, (much to my surprise), people responded in very positive ways. The more I posted my photographs, the more people I met
who had gone through, or were going through, similar situations and who were interested in similar subject matter — which was amazing. Through the development of my Miss Meatface work, I finally began to feel like things were going to be ok in the end and that this was going to happen through my photography. Since then, Miss Meatface has gone through numerous evolutionary developments; she began as a much more sexually raw organism than she is today and I expect her to change and mutate into something completely different in a year — or five years — from what she is right now. She seems to adapt to each emotional state I am at in the moment, and how I portray her in the images is a direct reference to what is going on in my own life as Kat Toronto. She is my therapist and my imaginary (or perhaps not so imaginary) friend. I like to think of Miss Meatface as a wonderfully kitschy — and kinky — imaginary grandmother that I get to play in an ongoing drama. When I reflect back upon the last five years, although at points it’s been a harrowing experience, I am thankful to have gone through it and that Miss Meatface was there with me throughout the entire journey. I am eager to see what sort of adventures she will take me on in the next five years... Opposite page: Megan Tatem