Help Keith?/Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn"

I hope anyone reading this will consider helping out a beautiful person and member of the Victoria downtown street art scene and a longtime Human Body Project community member.

My dear friend Keith Jenkins, 61, had open heart surgery in the fall. He's still unable to work and needs rest. Keith is one of many Canadians who lives from pay cheque to pay cheque and has very little savings.

I know everyone is sending money every which way and it's that spending time of year. But if you have even a little to help Keith, please do!

The one and only Keith!

Here's the funding web address:

https://www.youcaring.com/keith-jenkins-649425










Also, here's the latest YouTube video of me reading my blog posts.

Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn" (posted Feb. 27, 2006)



I'm following a creative impulse and recording myself reading my blog. We'll see where it takes me...

Here's the link to the original post http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2006/02/pornnon-porn.html

Reading Blog Posts 1: "A Longer Version of the Artist Statement" (Feb. 12, 2006)

I am reading my blog posts written on humanbodyproject.org

The one above is the first one: I'm reading the blog posted on Feb. 12, 2006. I'm starting with the oldest and working my way forward.

I am sitting naked in my basement (but you can only see my head and shoulders).

I am choosing to be as groomed (or ungroomed) as I am in the moment of shooting.

I use physical and emotional nakedness as a medium to create vulnerability or a metaphor for vulnerability or to allow space for vulnerability or radical non-violence...

Here's the YouTube link

An Article from an Audience Member a Few Years Back

A few years ago, an author tried to sell this story but, shock of shocks, couldn't so she recently allowed me to post it on my blog – which is, of course, followed by mainstream news outlets and Woody Allen fans everywhere. (Not.)

People think I'm brave to deal with cancer. But cancer gives no one a choice. Every cancer sufferer is forced to be brave. 

As the person in question, I'd like to point out that I'm much braver to be the Human Body Project lady for the last 10 years. I mean, read the first paragraph.

I'd also like to connect a couple of dots. How women are supposed to look is a place of projection in a male-dominated culture, it is a way of devaluing the feminine and the necessity of dealing with vulnerability. This is at the heart of every problem we face: power and ego over love and cooperation.

Thanks to Thelma Fayle for sharing this article.

The Human Body Project

by Thelma Fayle

When she slowly steps in front of the audience, without even wearing shoes, Tasha Diamant reveals herself to be a plain-looking, naked woman with a couple of C-section scars and plenty of hair in places where the Prada girls have none. She has small sagging breasts and dimpled thighs and a pear-shaped, sturdy-looking body. 

The 49-year-old visual and performance artist seems slightly nervous in the way one might be before doing a high-dive off a cliff.  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and captures a dignified, but still tentative, composure. She explains to the three-dozen audience members of the Fringe Theatre Festival on an island off of the West Coast of Canada – how she came to create the Human Body Project.

“In so many facets of our lives, we forget how vulnerable we humans are,” Diamant says, “and this project reminds me.”  The mother/artist/educator explains that in spite of her discomfort, she is determined to give this unscripted 90-minute presentation at least once a year for the rest of her life. Unscripted, as she is determined to maintain an open heart and a healthy dialogue with the audience in her effort to use her body to create a visceral experience of shared vulnerability.

Before Diamant arrives on stage, a 5 ft tall cardboard cutout, depicting a naked Diamant from her first Human Body Project presentation six years ago, gives the audience a chance to stare at the life-size photo and to climatise themselves before being faced with an excruciatingly bare presence on stage.

The artist welcomes the audience to look closely at her body. She speaks quietly but with strength and walks up and down the center aisle of what was once a church and is now a venue for community presentations. “Please feel free to look at my body,” she coaches. 

Given permission, timid eyes that have been respectfully focused mostly on Diamant’s face, begin to peek below.  Diamant is everywoman – not remotely proportioned to any Barbie doll ideal.

When someone asks a question, she approaches them and warmly shakes hands.  She puts people at ease.  She helps the audience to become comfortable with a plain old, magnificent, aging body.

Her well-documented project shows her foray on stage during her full-bellied pregnancy – an experience that re-affirmed her need to talk about the collective vulnerability that our culture denies and hides in the shadows of life’s many little 21^st Century femme façades of hair-dye and implants and face-glitter and push-up bras and tattoos – just to name a few.

The more she talks the more refreshing it is to listen to her. She mourns what she sees as the “amputation of empathy and connectedness in our society”.

She talks about the impact of having children in her life. Motherhood was a powerful catalyst; only unlike many parents who quite naturally become focused on their own children to the exclusion of all else, Diamant was moved to have a larger discussion with the world through her art.

“How do you feel about your body?” an audience member asks.

“I just try not to go to that place of judgment,” she responds. The way she responds with hesitation reveals her tenuousness bordering on insecurity about her body and also her decision to direct herself away from that same insecurity that plagues almost all women who have been trained to self-hate by years of looking at magazine pictures of what women are supposed to look like but never do.

Watching Tasha Diamant’s 90-minute Fringe Festival presentation reminds me of a line in a movie called Kamataki, where a young man asks an old man if the elder thinks the woman in a magazine is beautiful. The wise elder man slowly looks at the picture and then at the young man and says:  ”I don’t know if she is beautiful”.

The Human Body Project offers its audience a chance to answer the same question as they examine a naked, intelligent and articulate 49-year-old woman.

"Is she beautiful?”

Absolutely. And unlike the Emperor who got fooled, this Empress knows she is naked and she wants you to look at her.

Diamant is a genuine, un-altered woman.

I Am A Sex Goddess (Sometimes)

I write this blog to share myself in a way I don't feel permitted to in my "real life" and to offer a connection to other people who may also find themselves unable to come out of various closets. I also write to expand human dialogue. I am primarily motivated as a mother. Before I became a mother, yes, I was a feeling, sensitive person but I allowed myself to mask it with cynicism. I just don't feel comfortable in that mode anymore.
Real sexuality is something I don't often discuss with anyone, not even my husband, the guy I have great sex with. I am embarrassed and I am probably over-prudishly not interested in titillation; there is, for me, no in-between, no comfortable place to discuss this part of who I am. But, God knows, we need more health in this world around sex. And, I know, healthy sex can be very healing. So the good news in my sexuality department is that my husband and I have really great sex. Like many working parents, it is not "all the time" like I often wished for as a horny, mostly single gal in my 20s and 30s. But whenever we do get it together it's always a revelation. We're a good match.
As soon as I wrote this I thought of people reading it and I feel all sorts of uncomfortable feelings. Most of them related to me imagining they are thinking how can such an attractive guy have sex with such a tired old crabby flat-chested hag? See, there's the bad news already. I have a hard time reconciling my unfortunate image of myself to the sex goddess that I sometimes am.
I never wake up in the morning after a night of great lovemaking thinking: I am a sex goddess. I barely even think about sex (unlike my 20s and 30s) until I find myself doing it. I don't allow myself to bask in that revelatory, expansive feeling that I get for free as part of my marriage. I mean, really, I do get that it's a big bonus, so what's my fucking problem?
So much of not allowing myself this opportunity is part of a habit or learned way of being joy deprived that I suppose I am always up against. Part is about self-image, part is about tiredness, and part is about discomfort with letting my mind ramble along in sexuality-land--there are so many minefields of self-judgment there! I'm a fucking prude, for God's sake! I am a person who has never looked at Internet porn or gone to a porn store. I'm not sure, since I don't talk about this stuff, but I think in this day and age I must be a rarity, right? I find much porn and the idea of porn offensive but maybe there's something fun there too? Just the thought of watching people having sex makes me unbelievably uncomfortable, partly or maybe mostly because one of my feelings will probably be arousal. I feel like I couldn't just enjoy that feeling; I'd be thinking too many other analytical and self-critical thoughts.
As a longtime single gal for most of my adult life, I yearned for touch and love and sex. I was not one of those women who got all luxurious about pleasuring themselves, however. No, I was more of the school of: get drunk, have a one-night stand, repent for several months, repeat. In other words (surprise, surprise): fucked up.
I must return again to the good news: I now have a healthy marriage with a loving man. Since my 40s (contrary to every message breathed into us by the culture), I've been having the best sex of my life. Maybe in a future blog I will write about what "best sex" looks like (it's not all g-spots and sex toys, people; it's about attitude and process). I still struggle with the basic problem of integrating joy. But the news is pretty good, really.

A Post From Megan (Re: Joining Me Naked at HBP3)

Hi Tasha,

It's taken me a bit of time to digest this whole process, but I think I can put it down on paper and do it enough justice to justify making it tangible by putting it on paper. Ha. So, yes, if you want, you can post my comments.

This whole experience was gigantic for me. First and foremost, it was a spiritual journey, and I wasn't exactly sure why, but after months of shuffling through it, I think I have slightly put my finger on it.
I have always had body image issues. I have always felt "told" by "the big bad media" and my peers, that I wasn't good enough. That my body wasn't the right body. Ha. That my skin wasn't clear enough, my breasts not symmetrical enough, my hair too dark, my legs too short. And I have believed all those things. When I would compare myself to models and porn stars... other women as portrayed by our society as what "beauty" is... I always looked different. And I have always thought that was a bad thing... because I have been told that that is a bad thing.

The months leading up to the Human Body Project were preparation for it. Those months were filled with self hatred, and crying until I ached, because the lies that I believed about my body just kept repeating in my head. One day, I just got so fucking sick of it (ha. I swear because I'm passionate... it oozes out, a million pardons). I knew the things I believed about my body were lies. I wanted to love my body! I wanted to accept me! Life passed, and a million synchronistic things occurred and when I saw the poster for the Human Body Project, I knew I HAD to be there. I even had a funny thought that if I could be naked in the middle of the room with Tasha, that I would. Which scared the SHIT out of me. But I knew I would do it if the opportunity arose.

So, I went to the HBP. And the Funniest thing occurred... the opportunity arose. Ha. So, I'm sitting in my chair, with a Fire in the center of my chest, knowing that I HAD to do this thing... be naked in the center of the room, with everyone else just staring. Ha. I knew the Divine was asking me to do it... that it would be healing. And I was thinking that it was a nightmare come to life! Ha. But I did it, and it was one of the best experiences in life.

The whole time I was sitting naked on that chair, the thought that kept repeating was "I can't believe I am doing this" and "my grandmother would have a heart attack". But I walked out of there not believing the lies that I had walked in with. It was so beautiful to sit next to three other lovely ladies, and just be seen. I had never spent time naked with other women. Ha. I plan on doing more of it now because it broke down so many barriers for me! Now I know in my deepest heart, that there is no such thing as "the right body". There is no such thing as "the way I should look". There is just me. There is just what I am and who else can I fucking be? Ha.

In a nutshell, I was able to confront my fears. I was able to show others all the things I was afraid were the "wrong things". I was able to recognize that all my "flaws" were a complete fabrication. There is no such thing as a flaw when it comes to who I am. I am just me. And I was able to come to closer grips with that. It scared the hell out of me... and I LOVED every second of it.

A word of warning... It also unleashed the streaker in me. Ha. Watch out, Lethbridge!

Tasha, I just want to say thanks. This project has really affected my life, and I am so thankful that you are doing it.
Megan.