The Me is a mere stereotype, an ideological battleground, a fracture along party lines, an emotionally-laden symbol of the nation, a mother who needs protection against the outside enemy, a coup d’Etat.
The me is the background urging, praising and supporting.
The Me is a dichotomy, a binary system, purity-impurity, honor-dishonor, a perfect-broken vase, bda3a 7elwe-fessde.
The Me is weakness, fear, ignorance, encroachment, conquest, invasion, intrusion… An internalized oppression.
The Me is permeated by violent imagery, thought, emotion and cognition… A mangled and charred body.
The Me is a percentage, a quota, a commodity, a property… Exchanged, bought and sold in some form or another… A territory to be conquered, claimed or marked, indelibly imprinted.
The Me is a ghasha2, a piece of flesh, a flesh in pieces, a plowed land into a gray mass, an arena of real conflicts and imagined differences.
The Me is a highly erotic entity, an exotic fantasy, a complex eulogy, an object of desire, a candle around which the lover hovers.
The Me is others’ depiction, definition, reality… A myth, a threat and an impending doom.
(…)
The Me I Am is a whole different story.
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I had a nice conversation with a friend of mine this morning about women’s bodies, and it inspired me to write these few words, accompanied by one of my latest artworks using oil, acrylic and ink on canvas.
The identification of women with their physical bodies and the fact that female bodies are constantly under pressure to conform and mold into prescribed social/cultural roles are part of the root causes of their oppression. The demarcation into mutually exclusive categories of mind and body results in the loss of womanhood/personhood, loss of control and autonomy, and violation of one’s integrity.