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A place for me to surrender to my unrelenting baser instincts and do what I am meant to.
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Asking For It: 6%
It is estimated that only 6% of rapes and sexual assaults are actually reported, which is a frightfully low number. I have started a new project aiming to explore the reasons behind this, which started from the #ididnotreport hashtag on twitter - where survivors or rape/sexual abuse tell of their numerous reasons why they didn’t report it to anyone. This is the first series of images - numerous things that victims are told time and time again whenever they do actually report their abuse to someone - be it a friend, parent, family member, stranger or the authorities. We live in a society of rape culture where the victim is almost constantly blamed - told that they drank too much, wore too little, were out too late by themselves, flirted too much, are too “slutty”, are too “frigid”, are making a big deal out of “nothing”, the rapist was their partner so it obviously wasn’t rape because you can’t be raped by someone you’re in a relationship with. The things that victims constantly get told by the media, the people they know, rape “jokes”, songs, the authorities…they are painted on them so that they can never forget. To remind them that it is all “their fault” - if they hadn’t gone there/drank alcohol/wore that skirt/flirted etc, it wouldn’t have happened. Obviously.
I intend to expand on this series of photographs in the near future, and there is a lot more to come from this project, this is only the very starting point. My aim is to bring the idea of rape culture, slut-shaming, and victim-blaming to the attention of more people. To try and examine why 94% of rapes/assaults/abuse are never reported to the police, and to try and make that number decrease.
this is an amazing project because it is impossible to ignore. you are looking at the thing you see the most and confront first on a person: their face. more than their face though, their mind and their emotions.
Amazing.
I just want to be myself
and I want you to love me for who I am.
Je suis me cheveux
J.K Rowling created a better love story in one chapter than Stephenie Meyer did in an entire series.
Occasionally there are momentary lapses in the piercing sting of everyday reality. A dim beam of beauty is found there, wedged between the grey. This happens when the warm breezes of summer slip across your abraded skin, when you notice the gold flecks in your lover’s eyes after moving together in the dark - but before he returns to his wife, or when you experience the wholeness and glow his promises leave in your organs before he rips your hope away and the weight of his body descends upon you. You know in the end you’ll be left emptier than before, your face no longer full and soft with youth, but worn from years of coming down from the rush of his toxicity. But there are still those moments, moments so pure, you actually manage to forget.
That morning was one of those moments.
Whiskey and tears formed the mask of self-loathing I wore so often in those days. The night before was another when I flooded my hollowed core with every poison in the liquor cabinet. I found myself surrounded by people, friends, or so I thought. I made sure to inundate myself with wine in the presence of company, deluding myself that that would make it acceptable. I drank until my every cell vibrated, sending the flush to my cheeks which I never ceased to use to my advantage.
My lips found there way to another’s, someone who wasn’t you, only for me to discover a ring on his finger. As per usual. I didn’t care. He said the things all the married ones say, looked deep into my eyes, thinking he spoke to some vulnerable piece inside of me… as all the married ones do. He said and did everything I wished you would say and do. Everything I wished you’d say and do to me, and no other.
But I know you’ve rehearsed those lines before; the manifesto of the betrothed to his mistress. His whore. His secret.
Your words to me.
And so again, I fell into the arms of my part-time lover; the one who was not frequent enough to take your place, yet more so than the nameless and faceless nighttime substitutes. I went to him after I sufficiently drowned my wandering mind, after I acquiesced various players to audition for the role I eventually forfeited to him.
I rarely allowed myself to feel beauty back then, but that morning was different. That morning I was there with him, in solitude. I worked my way into his arms the night before, after I parted with the married man and he with the girl from out of town. We drifted apart and rested on opposite ends of the bed - I still don’t sleep in any arms but yours. But when I awoke, I opened my eyes and felt I could see through the haze of my world for the first time in ages, and all I saw were our hands.
Intertwined.
Only they touched, holding onto one another for safety from the bleakness of our lives; from those who ate our dreams for sport. Safety from you.
I let that moment wash over me, where neither he, nor I, struggled to maintain our rigid exteriors. I let any barrier between us be extinguished with the simplicity, let myself hold his hands, and let mine be held. It was brief, only in that phase between sleep and wake, and it was gone as soon as it came.
We both went back to consciously pretending, my part-time lover and me. I pretended I didn’t ache at the very thought of you, that I enjoyed wasting through meaningless affairs, that I wasn’t burying myself alive with the damage and violence I subjected my body to. I pretended that moment between he and I meant nothing, and that I didn’t wish he could replace you. I know he pretended there was nothing there, as well.
But I remember it as it was, all these years later. A small, dim beam of beauty in an otherwise dismal life.
You are in the process of becoming. ”
