Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
QHow much does our body weigh? How demanding is it, every day, for us women? Someone took the trouble to calculate it: Caroline Heldman, a professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, claims that almost all of us check our physical appearance every 30 seconds. So the answer is always. And always with greater dissatisfaction and frustration as time passes.
We therefore inflict the first form of slavery on ourselves with what is called “body monitoring”.“, obsessive control of the body. But this body, a source of daily anxieties, is precisely the first to disappear in the eyes of those who look at us, if that someone is a man.
Yet we are so much more, everything that is erased by our worries, by the sense of inadequacy, but above all by stereotypes: being beautiful, being mothers, just to give two examples, are models that dispossess us of our bodies. Thus nudity is experienced with fear first of all by us, who progressively lose confidence with our appearance and, in the end, with who we are.
Freeing the body, undressing it, offering it to our gaze and finally loving it is the collective exercise proposed by the theatrical performance Unveil yourself, an evening for women only and those who feel like onehosted by the Auditorium Parco della musica in Rome (INFO: auditorium.com).
Seven women on stage and their director and author Silvia Gallerano thrilled an all-female audience who, at the end of the performance, vibrated with emotion, said thanks, and never wanted to leave. Silvia and the others, offering nudity naturally, retraced the path of our feelings of guilt, inviting us to declare them in front of everyone, amidst laughter, tears, liberating screams and applause.
A ritual reminiscent of the old feminist collectives, which Silvia Gallerano confessed to having been inspired by. “I feel proud to be a woman” said a young spectator when, at the end of the show, which culminated in a liberating and engaging dance, we found ourselves in a circle to have our say. And how light we felt as we left. Immediately afterwards, the first glance given to her in the mirror reflected a smile. The body as joy. How long has it been since this happened to us?
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All articles by Antonella Baccaro
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