Activity Fall a girl (FAG)

Tomber une fille/Fall a girl (FAG)

Photography, 2009

Starting at a young age, femininity in a boy is a shocking difference that provokes hatred. Intimidation, harassment and detestation happen in broad daylight, often with consenting (or at least silent) witnesses. Hiding is futile. Social and family pressures dictate the norms, attributing characteristics to gender. There’s a lingering consensus: NO FAGS!

This series of photographs and slide show (projected in the evening) illustrate a metamorphosis inspired by the memory of an anxious dream I had as a child. It was around 1976. I was 8 or 10 years old. I was standing at the top of a stairway, when something invisible startled me from behind. Scared, I hurtled down the stairs, and realized at the bottom that I had “become” a girl. I was ashamed – so ashamed. When I awoke, I was still distressed and ashamed.

Luckily, the realities have changed. But isn’t there still some residue of this prescriptive social pressure – the malicious gaze of “the Other.”