Solo show: BIG!
This is, in many ways, the most vulnerable piece of work I've created. After years of making work celebrating the bodies of other women, I began to wonder what I was avoiding, and the answer was staring at me in the mirror. Like so many of us, I spent a long time trying to be smaller, both literally and figuratively. I tried my best to be quiet, to avoid attention, to follow the rules and be a good girl. I wore the right clothes and I stayed silent in meetings and I laughed at bad jokes and I waited on my husband hand and foot. I lost 120 pounds and spent years hiding the severity of my eating disorder from the people who loved me, and I have never been sadder or sicker or more alone than I was at my smallest. The crazy thing is that none of it worked! It turns out that being rewarded for pretending to be someone else doesn't feel like affirmation, it feels like fraud.
These days, I'm committed to being BIG. I have big feelings and big opinions and a big voice. I like my music loud and my clothes bright and my food spicy, and I'm done pretending to be a sparrow when I'm actually a flamingo. I'm big, and I'll wear the red lace and take up space if I want to.