cheesecake ยท (noun) nothing of nutritional value
womanhood has felt like a war that i got drafted into against my will, at far-too-young an age, with far too few resources. i'm outnumbered and outgunned. so much of my sexuality has been defined by assumptions, remarks, and actions done to me against my will— sexual abuse, verbal harassment on the internet, being followed by strange men, being groped in cosplay. every event caused me to fear contact with strangers, or to hesitate wearing something, or worse, to look at myself differently.
it's been an ongoing project of mine to take back this part of my life and turn it into something fun and for-me... especially in the wake of these anti-education anti-sex anti-pleasure laws. i do not want to feel gross about my body. i do not want to forfeit my pleasure. they can't take away my cheesecake.
besides my line quality, the strongest feature of my work is the americanness. i owe this directly to my art style's hip hop lineage, which you can read about in my previous artist statement, and also to pin-up art.
i learned about what pin-up can be from olivia de berardinis— olivia's girls exist when you look away. her girls hold the power in your brief exchange. her girls do not submit, comply, or cede to the audience behind a one-way screen. if you want some homework, compare oliva's work to sorayama— see what i mean?
i believe much of the internal conflict that lead people to misogyny can be resolved if we collectively viewed women as existing when nobody is there to observe. we exist outside of motherhood. we exist if we aren't fertile. we exist if we aren't sexually available to you. we exist whether or not you can stand us.
my husband and i are both first generation americans born in new york city to south american immigrants. no matter what happens in the next few years, we are still better off than if our immigrant mothers stayed in their countries. (of course this is not true for all immigrants, but it's true for us.) to my understanding, this was the basis on which america was founded: an opportunity to change your life.
the people in charge would love to send our immigrant mothers back to their countries. the people in charge do not want my husband and i to have kids. the people in charge do not want our kind in america, no matter how "hard working" we are. the people in charge don't want anything that deviates from the white heritage american nuclear family. but my values are not christian. my blood is not pure. my mother was a suicidal dancehall queen and all i inherited was her pain. i have no precedent in america, nor have i shoes to fill.
so what happens to the rest of us, who live on the outskirts of their god-given mission? where do we fit in, in this master plan?
if you're an immigrant, queer, mentally ill, or any distance away from heterosexual, athletic, white, and christian— you probably don't fit into their master plan. there won't be room for you on the last shuttle to mars.
the people in charge want to outlaw your lifestyle. they will draft laws to make our lives uncomfortable, inconvenient, and deadly. they speak of unwanted pregnancy as the punishment for pleasure while mothers die needlessly in hospitals.
but they cannot get rid of us so easily. let them wage their war against our health and our mind and our pleasure. i've been called an optimist, but maybe there's some freedom in this discard pile. our bodies cannot be instruments for their white american eugenics, so we have the opportunity to define the meaning of our own lives, on our own terms.
there is no such thing as a "good immigrant." the illusion has been shattered. all we can do now is look out for one another. we have to take up space. we have to keep cooking our cultural dishes. we have to keep speaking our languages.
