My first conflict that I wanted to bring attention to was Female Genital Mutilation. I had just learned about it a few weeks prior to this project and felt the need to somehow bring some light to this topic since it’s not widely talked about, let alone known of. FGM is popular in some Middle Eastern and African cultures as well as parts of South East Asia to “emphasize purity.” Different types of FGM include partial or total removal of the clitoris, partial or total removal of the clitoris and labia minora, narrowing of the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning/ sewing together the inner or outer labia, etc. Although nowhere in any of their religious scripts does it mention this procedure, it has developed and become a ritual for many cultures. Females are subject to this non-medical procedure from as early as infancy to the age of 15 and sometimes even early adulthood. It is supposed to keep them pure and conform them to religious ideas of virginity and promiscuity. The results of this procedure have no health benefits and can be very harmful to females and cause complications in childbirth, infertility, cysts, UTIs, and future surgeries to re open the vaginal opening for sexual intercourse and childbirth. I chose to represent this horrific procedure with images portraying the pain and trauma it causes young women, hoping to reflect it into the viewer’s eyes.
FGM Bibliography:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/
http://www.endfgm.eu/en/female-genital-mutilation/what-is-fgm/what-is-fgm/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20circumcision-t.html?_r=0
http://www.dofeve.org/living-with-fgm.html
Click to access FGM-Islam-Leaflet.pdf
The second conflict I chose was Anorexia (Nervosa). I have been aware of Anorexia since I was about 13 years old. That’s when my mom left for a rehab center for women with eating disorders, and when I first realized what they were, and that my mom had one. I’ve read books on it and studied it here and there over the years, as well as witnessed what it’s like to live with someone with it. So needless to say, this conflict is very near and dear to my heart. Anorexia is a mental disease that can be caused my many things but is more commonly caused by a traumatic event in a person’s life. It effects both men and women. They eat very little, if anything at all. The results of this are an abnormally slow heart rate, low blood pressure, dramatic weight loss, brittle bones, fatigue and fainting, dry skin and hair, hair loss, sever dehydration, etc. This mental illness is often glamorized and some people even consider it “a lifestyle”. I wanted to show that there’s nothing glamorous about starving yourself to death and that it’s something people struggle to overcome every day of their lives.
Anorexia Bibliography:
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/anorexia-nervosa
http://www.anad.org/get-information/get-informationanorexia-nervosa/
This Mean Disease by Daniel Becker and Joel Yager MD
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/inside-the-world-of-anorexia-blogging/
The last conflict I chose was “Abortions versus Gun Control”. This was definitely the hardest one to do research for and even to explain. What I tried to portray was how hypocritical it is of people to be pro life and also against gun control. Guns are one of the leading weapons used to kill people, especially in mass shootings, which are becoming increasingly common in America right now. And yet a lot of people are still against making gun laws more strict and making it harder to obtain them, as other countries have done and are doing. These same people are typically against abortions. Of course this is just a generalization, but it’s common that the two are related. These women are accused of being murderers and heartless. Due to the fact that it’s hard for women to receive abortions, they’re often forced to do it themselves or to get one from an untrained or unqualified person and it can result in injury or even death. I believe women should have the choice to what she wants to do with her body and to have a right to available and quality medical care, and that guns should be better controlled to prevent mass shootings and murder in general. It was difficult to portray this without the use of words and propaganda or quotes so I tried to mix them equally and use text to my advantage. I don’t feel confident about this piece compared to the other two but I redid it twice and this is what I ended up with. 
Gun Control Vs Abortions Bibliography:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/05/3467650/abortion-rights-compare-gun-rights/
http://www.numberofabortions.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
http://www.upworthy.com/trevor-noah-points-out-the-hypocrisy-of-being-pro-life-and-anti-gun-control
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts/
I decided I want to solely focus on Anorexia after making these collages because it was the conflict I am most interested in. Also I felt it would be to difficult to work with the other two for different reasons. I had to come up with two different models to represent my conflict. I had two ideas. I’m very interested in Ghada Amer’s work which is paintings done with needle and thread. So I wanted to use that aspect in this piece. My first idea was to make lips out of red fabric and a plush interior and have words or quotes sewn onto the outside to make a statement. I’d also sew the lips shut to represent not eating. My other idea was to take three black and white pictures of specific parts of the body looking emaciated and blow them up to look life size and sew a poem about either recovery or anorexia into the negative space of it. The parts that I wanted to emphasize are the ribcage, the face with a feeding tube, and the neck, which I planned to have a tape measure wrapped around to represent how the obsession with becoming smaller is killing the person. I want them to look as realistically anorexic as possible. So finding a model for that would be a challenge. I wrote about my idea for the pictures and created a small model for the lips. 
The lips didn’t come across as something devastating and I even had some people confuse it as me promoting anorexia. So I tossed that idea and followed through with my idea of the pictures for my final piece. I borrowed a really expensive camera and asked my roommate to model for me because she is the thinnest person that I know.
* I want to note that this illness effects both women AND men. I chose not to use a male model as well simply because I didn’t know any males that were thin enough to represent an anorexic male.*
After contouring my roommates face to make her cheekbones look very prominent and also her ribcage to emphasize it, I found out that she doesn’t know how to suck in to make herself look super skinny. So I ended up having to be the model and asked a photo journalist friend of mine to photograph me for it. I did the same makeup routine to myself and had him snap a few pictures at different angles of each area I stated above. These three were my favorite.
I had them blown up and sewed a poem about anorexia into each of them with thin, pale thread so that from far away you only see the images, but up close you can read the poem. It took around 6 hours or so and I probably stabbed myself at least 25 times with the needle. Here’s the finished product on display. I wanted it to show snapshots of the progress from beginning to end.
The poem says:
Empty Stomach, Busy Mind
Disease, But not the usual kind
Birthday cake and joyful songs
Tiny bites to hide her wrongs
Make work from hospital beds
Worksheets essays taking mess
Saw herself through eyes less clear
No word from her since June last year
If I could change a few things I’d make the pictures portrait style instead of landscape. I’d also find a better model for this and make sure the background is entirely white and empty. I’d also make it look less glamorous. I feel like the picture that my face is in looks somewhat pretty because I have diamond earrings in and lipgloss on. I don’t want anyone to get that idea from it. At the beginning of this project I had a very vague idea of how I wanted it to look. I was just going to play around with it. But after seeing them and getting reactions from everyone else I realize how tiny changes to the setting, lighting, angles, etc, could’ve made larger impacts to the piece. But overall I am very proud of it.
joeysackenheim 