The Embodied Female :Voices and Visions

Kimberly D. Harding, PhDColorado Mountain College

Embodiment of Female Energy

Project Summary

Creative Project format 72 artistic images Poems and Descriptions

…Reality.

Why Female Embodiment?

Marion Woodman

All my life I had hated my body. It was not beautiful enough. It was not thin enough. I had driven it, starved it, stuffed it, cursed it, and even now kicked it, and there it still was, trying to breathe, convinced I would come back and take it with me, too dumb to die (p. 178).

From Science to…

• Emily Martin (1997) in Writing on Female Embodiment

• Textbook passages describing female reproduction – “lack, degenerate, leak, deteriorate, discharge, ceasing, dying”

• Textbook passages describing male reproduction- “remarkable, amazing, sheer magnitude”

…the Paranormal…

Fear and Loathing…

• How long does a woman have before she begins to hate her body?

• A decade? Maybe?• In describing the process of female children

growing up, and becoming aware of themselves, Woodman (1985) writes, “…but at bottom feeling rejected in her own personhood, blaming her ‘ugly’ body for making her ‘unlovable’” (p. 58).

Embodied Female:Voices and Visions

5 SectionsBone and Blood: A Woman’s SpaceThe Vagina: Passageway of TransformationClitoral Power: Desire for the SelfUterine Cauldron: Manifesting PowerSuckle, Swallow, Speak: Expression and Relation

Bone and Blood:A Woman’s Space

Being Skeletal…

• Women are currently rewarded for being skeletal, NOT for having a strong skeletal framework from which to engage the world

• At what cost?

Deathless Nature

• Clarissa Pinkola Estes– Women Who Run with the Wolves– La Loba

• Kay Cordell Whitaker– Sacred Link– Fleshing of the Bones

Please GoddessYes, I lie within the Goddess

 

My Spirit Scoured Clean

by Desert Wind

 

Sun pulls

My Eyes

 

I want to burn to Ashes

 

Others Stand By

 

Afraid to let me

 

FREE

BloodThe Unifying Principle

Unifying Principle With IN DREAM Where you were One, now you are Two.

Unifying Principle With OUTConnection with the world beyond herselfCyclical nature, potential for life

If We would Stop To Think Of IT…

HER FLOW CONTAINS

THE POTENTIAL OF THE WORLD

The Vagina:• Passage through which most

enter life• Adaptable- able to pleasure a

penis and accommodate a new born

• Marker of a woman’s own passages through life - menarche, childbirth, and menopause

• Esoterically serves as reminder of the transformative passageways we each enter long past our initial birth

Passageway of Transformation

Through the Birth Canal

To BecomeTo Be One’s OwnTo Move Beyond

FalteringHesitation

Looking back with cold calculation To TranscendTo Move UpDreams

NightsMyths

FantasiesOf My OwnTo re-write

Labeled falsehoodsLeftAlone

At 40

When I was 40

I lost myself

 

Mirror, Mirror

On the Wall

 

Spoke and said I never had it

 

I dreamed a large

Virgin Mary

At this place

 

She cradled my skeletal remains

in her giant arms

Peace-filled smile upon her face

 

She rinsed my skeleton in the

River StyxThe smile broke and the tear fell “oh this is where we get the River

Styx” my silly thought  Withwavesof her makingshe mouthed I wanted to bear WOMANInstead I bore Man I knew she knew the pain At life of difference.

Clitoral Power:

The Desire for SELF

The Clitoris • Only structure in men or women designed solely for reproductive pleasure

• Applause, please!• Represents woman’s

desire for self• A woman’s hungers and

expression of these desires

Above all else….

• “Don’t eat too much, don’t talk too loudly, don’t take up too much space, don’t take from the world. Be pleasant or crazy, but don’t seem hungry” (p. 110). – Chernik (2001)

• Although others will accompany us for portions of our journey, it is a personal undertaking at the end of it all.

• The clitoris reveals that actions taken with only the self in mind are needed in life.

Restrained

Would you like me more-Needless-

Or with needs, however small-

Expressionless You could belt my mouth

Tie my handsWrap chastity around

No self-creation then I have always been the typeWho heard the call of chastity and

Opened my legsFreely-

My mouth did the sameAn act of volition Corseted until faintedThe unconscious

Has always beenThe desirable type for some.

Uterine Cauldron- Manifesting Power

The Tissue that Must-Not-Be-Named

• Germaine Greer (2000) in The Whole Woman mentions the perception of the womb as a “hollow space”, a space usurped by the abdomen (p. 42).

• Women are more likely to declare abdominal pain than womb pain.

• Even if we refer to menstrual cramps, these are supposedly from some amorphous structure located deep within, emitting random pain signals, rather than the organ with which they are truly associated - the uterus or womb.

• Remains the tissue that must-not-be-named

Manifestation is not cost free. The implanted fetus needs nutrients and it will take them from the mother, no matter if the mother has the surplus to give or not. The husband, kids, lovers, family members may all love us, but do not necessarily always replace what we have manifested for them. We are not simply walking wombs of creation with an endless supply. We must ask the hard questions about what we want to manifest, invest in, and bring to birth.

Storms Mistake Number OneShe thought everyoneShould be Happy

Mistake Number Two

She thought it possibleTo make everyone Happy

Mistake Number Three

She saw possibility as responsibility.

No one bothered to tell her otherwise.

They thought she wore it well.

Suckle, Swallow, Speak: Expression and Relation

The chest and throat area of a woman houses the heart, breasts, voice box, and survival reflexes. The structures in this area represent a balancing act that will challenge most women throughout their lives. How does a woman sustain herself? How does she balance her sense of self in relation to others? How willing is she to express her own truth?

SUSTAIN…From where in life does a woman gain sustenance, physically and symbolically? It can not always be in the act of serving others that a woman gains some semblance of purpose or sense of self. Symbolically, a woman must determine from which breasts she will obtain her nourishment – it may take the form of a supportive group of friends, a wonderful coworker, or a powerful series of books. Whatever the shape, she must find it in her life.

RECEIVE…

But, it is not enough to simply find a place to suckle. A woman must be strong and aware enough to not only suckle but to relax and open throat to receive and swallow.

ASSERT…

FINDING VOICE

• Women’s Way of Knowing (1997) • “What we had not anticipated was that ‘voice’ was more than

academic shorthand for a person’s point of view. Well after we were into our interviews with women, we became aware that it is metaphor that can apply to many aspects of women’s development….We found that women repeatedly used the metaphor of voice to depict their intellectual and ethical development; and that the development of voice, mind, and self were intricately connected” (p. 18).

ISIS APPERS

We stood fullySquare

You in white coat with name tag-

singular identity Me script in hand- identifying Unknown to me

You corralled a white collarAnd attached moral to your authority

We gazed one to another

I became blank to youNo longer name on paper

But Paper identified In your vision

I had become EveWanton woman, fallen and sinned again The rage shattered my bones And I transformed it – a woman since Eve-

To A smile and Thank You Below I seethed

To an identity that was never mine

SHE is PRESENT

“When women are fully in touch with the experience of their own bodies, they can reclaim that full power within and use that power not to manipulate, not to self-obsess, but to reveal the mystery it is, to transform themselves and our culture” (Woodman, 1982, p. 36). Having transformed the world once already, we know enough to do it again.