Sometimes an opportunity comes along your way and you meet someone with a vision, a vision to change the ways people think about things and maybe history itself. One such individual is my dear friend Lillian. I call her my dear friend because after meeting and talking with her, she is such an amazing women.
Her vision is to place small 8 1/2×11 size posters in front of every magazine on a magazine rack in a bookstore (or anyplace that sells magazines) that you find offensive to women. It could be any magazine that makes women feel uncomfortable with themselves, or their own bodies and/or that “we are objects (women) yet we are flawed in some manner…”
From Beautiful Just the way you are
”...an art action to protest the relentless objectification of girls and women throughout our culture. Launched on May 30, 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, BEAUTIFUL Just The Way You Are takes place at any magazine rack, the most common place where we encounter the message that we are objects yet we are flawed. With an infinite variety of images, words, films, and products, the female body is used as a tool, an object, a device. “It” can sell anything, including the idea that all girls and women need to fix the one they have. We know this culture. We get it. We absorb it. We rant about it. We adopt it. We ignore it. We normalize it. It robs us of our humanity and affects women, girls, boys, and men…”
The Action:
“You walk up to a magazine stand and place one of the BJTWYA posters over every stack of magazines, that uses the female body to sell something – to sell the magazine, or to sell an article, or to sell a product, or to sell a lifestyle, or to sell a promise, or to sell the idea that you need to match your body to the picture. You decide which covers qualify. You place a poster over them. Then you walk away. That’s it…”
Please spread the word around, start your own BJTWYA project in your own state or country or grassroots organization. All it requires is to print a large quantity of posters from the BJTWYA web site and just do it!
Let’s change history by getting involved and moving with this amazing “history changing” event and do it at the same time as Lillian starts, by synchronizing our watches on Saturday May 30, 2009 at 12:00 AM (Noon) EST. Thank you.
