Research: healing my sensual feminine self

BOUND TO BE FREE

by Pamela Wells

My work as artist-healer is supported by artists who challenge cultural taboos. Both Frida Kahlo and Daniel Barkley also struggled to transcend personal identity issues. For Kahlo, being a woman artist in the 1900s in Mexico meant she would be mostly ignored for her talents and overshadowed by her famous artist husband Diego Rivera. Daniel Barkley struggled with his identity as a homosexual man. Paintings by both artists are figurative self-reflections of their own painful physical and emotional experiences and evolving self-identities. Kahlo struggled with chronic pain due to a serious injury that nearly killed her. She nearly lost her life at the age of fifteen in a streetcar accident that crushed her pelvis and spine. She survived another twenty-nine years but lived in nearly constant pain and needed thirty-five operations throughout her life. Her physical trauma determined the themes for much of her art.[1] Like Kahlo, I have struggled from cultural limitations, as well as chronic emotional pain from childhood trauma and physical pain from crippling injuries due to a hamstring avulsion and hip dysplasia. 

In her painting the Wounded Deer, Kahlo represents her physical pain and emotional suffering with a dark ominous sky and arrows piercing the body of the deer. In my painting Wheel of Life, the mood is ominously set off with a dark blue background. I represent my own suffering in life with the blood dripping from the horns of the bull. The red ropes tied around the nude figure represent both the constriction of the body and possibility of death, alongside the gift of living. In both paintings, the possibility of transcending the suffering of being in a human body is represented by the vibrant aliveness of the figure’s physicality. For instance, the deer is running despite the bloody arrows, and the restrained, wheel-tied figure is in an extreme athletic pose, glowing and smiling. 

Daniel Barkley struggles with the cultural taboo of being a homosexual man. His artwork reflects that struggle through portraits of gay men and people with difficult lives. He said in an interview with “Body • Poetry • Prose • Word” online magazine, “The ideal of the evil homo didn’t exist in the past; it’s a relatively new concept constructed by the Christian right. Homos have always been a part of society. Gay civil unions are well documented in Roman times and early Christianity.”[2] Similar to Barkley, I have struggled with the cultural taboo of being a woman who expresses feminine sensuality and confidence during my photoshoots and in my artworks. In Daniel Barkley’s painting Le Bain Bleu, the nude male figure’s stance is openly vulnerable and accepting of the viewer’s gaze. He doesn’t try to hide his nude body but rather seems to enjoy the paint on his face and body. He has a slight smile on his face as he looks downward. Le Bain Bleuis erotic and provocative because it leaves the viewer with questions about the male figures’ purpose and sexuality, such as why is he painting himself with blue paint? Why is he boldly standing in a doorway nude? I get the sense that the figure would be comfortable talking about his identity and sexuality. Similar to Barkley’s painting, my figure in Phoenix Rising is sexually provocative, semi-nude, and I have a smile on my face. I am comfortable displaying my body and the decorative ropes binding me.

I am not alone in reclaiming an empowered, sensual feminine identity. Popular modern-day artists like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce represent “sex-positive” feminism challenging the more conventional views of a female's relationship to sex and sexuality while taking on the world stage. For example, despite receiving criticism from both men and women that she is too sexy, Beyonce continues to play off that criticism by choosing to embody taboo roles. In her music video “Partition,” Beyonce embodies a stripper and asks her audience, “Don’t feminists like sex?”[3]

Another modern example of a sexy, empowered feminine performance is the February 2nd, 2020 Superbowl LIV halftime show at Hard Rock Stadium. The show featured artists Jennifer Lopez and Shakira pole dancing and using ropes to pantomime bondage. Here, both women were using traditional mechanisms of female repression to their advantage by showing they were  in charge of their sexuality and emboldened by their own agency. While over 102 million people watched that Superbowl halftime show, their performance only triggered 1,000 FCC complaints—just 55 more complaints than singer Adam Levin’s nipple exposure during the 2019 Superbowl LIII halftime show.[4] These massively televised acts of sexual control and agency give me hope of the public’s growing acceptance of empowered representations of female sexuality in art.

Women are indeed starting to take responsibility for defining their sexual needs and identities rather than being victims to how others define them. Eloise Monaghan, founder of Honey Birdette, is normalizing bondage in the fashion world by taking the idea of the sensual, empowered goddess icon and portraying her as both a dominant femme and lover. My views about a confident goddess and lover-seductress are supported by her company, a global luxury lingerie company with a stated mission to empower different sexualities, ethnicities and gender identities through storytelling in their lingerie ads. Similar to my performance photos and artworks, Honey Birdette presents women’s bodies in advertising to celebrate the feminine power of choice, rather than reducing women to decorative objects, by contextually photographing them in ways that convey sexual confidence and the power of choice. 

[1] Nancy Heller, Women Artists Illustrated History (Abbeville Press Publishers, 2003), 147.

[2] Jessica Mensch, "An Interview with Painter Daniel Barkley" in BODY Poetry•Prose•Word Online Magazine (2016). https://bodyliterature.com/daniel-barkley/.

[3] Janell Hobson, "Feminists Debate Beyonce," in The Beyoncé Effect: Essays on Sexuality, Race and Feminism (2016): 19.

[4] James Dator, "The 21 Worst Super Bowl Halftime Show FCC Complaints from 1,500 Submitted" (SB Nation, 2020).