'To be in the body', in Russian, Ukrainian, and several other languages, is a euphemistic phrase, meaning 'to be plump', reserved mostly for women. In a way, being 'in the body' is a clever play on words: it means taking up space, and it also means feeling and acknowledging your own bodily existence.
As a project team, we felt like this phrase worked best to convey the main idea we had in our minds: that body positivity doesn't imply looking a certain way, but rather feeling, existing in your own body, and seeing your body as yourself in the first place.
The aim of this project was rather small and local. Using focus group method of sociological research, we asked women in a big city and two small towns about the procedures they performed to look beautiful, or perhaps at least acceptable, as well as about the way they felt about those procedures, why they felt the need to do them, and what they thought of the standards of beauty in general.
At the end, we didn't make any big conclusions. We selected the quotes from the focus groups that we felt were the most expressive and telling, whether they aligned with the feminist perspective or not, and organized them by big topics: what it means to be beautiful, what a woman must look like, specifically the practices of femininity, why we do that, what people say, what we have been through in our bodies, and what practices we reject. We presented those quotes in the form of an exhibition of informative stands, as well as a paper, accompanied with critical feminist commentary.
The exhibition was presented in all three cities that took part in the project, in different parts of Ukraine. At the opening events, the team members guided the audience through the thought process behind the project, held live libraries, and offered free Be in the Body merch.
On the final stand of the exhibition – and on the back of the poster inside the paper, – we put the topic that was the most important to us and that we felt the need to emphasize. There, we put the quotes of feminists and non-feminists alike on resistance – any kind of refusal to comply to the common standards of beauty. Even if it's a little, quiet rebellion, it is something to be proud of, as any little step can be the beginning of a way to ourselves.
We also made a small set of illustrated postcards with the most heartwarming stories of the women's pleasant experiences with their bodies, be it actions they did or general positive feelings they have. After all, being comfortable and feeling good with ourselves is, at the end, the core goal of the body positivity movement.
The project was made possible thanks to the grant from Ukrainian Women's Fund.
