As a single woman I suffered through years of family members and strangers alike telling me to settle down and pick out a husband. So I went to the store and bought one.
Spend months planning a picture perfect wedding, only to leave her groom, cold, on the steps of the altar, after a speech announcing to the congregation why she did it. Who would do such a thing?
That girl was me.
It was actually a renewal of vows. Chauncey and I had been together for fourteen years. Chauncey is a mannequin, and our marriage was a photographic farce. I started a satirical series of self portraits when I began to face what seemed to be universal pressure to hurry up and “make it happen” before I shriveled into a spinster. “Spinster?” Really? I thought we had moved beyond that decades ago. Come on, I was a successful career woman! But as I got older, the suggestions became stronger. It appeared that I’d be considered more successful if I found any available body and quickly settled. So I made a point of doing just that, in a peculiar, funny way that would point out what’s wrong with that picture.
Even though I play the main character, look twice and you’ll notice that it’s not about me at all. It’s about what is expected of all of us. Judgment, both of each other and ourselves, is actually the starring role. Sounds heavy, huh? Yet, I think this work goes to show that a good ribbing is the only way to get at the heart of utter nonsense.
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The coalminer’s daughter. The bartender. The police brutality activist. The grieving mother. Each looked at the man representing her in Congress and said, “I can do better.”
Amy Vilela lost her daughter when she couldn’t afford the medical bills. When her Congressman told her he wouldn’t support universal healthcare, Amy said, “I’m running.”
Cori Bush is a registered nurse, a pastor and a mom. After taking to the streets to protest police killings, she looked in the mirror and said, “why not politician, too?”
In early 2018, we introduced you to a bartender from the Bronx trying to pull off what many said was impossible. Here’s how AOC became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
Paula Jean Swearengin has seen West Virginia’s land exploited, its people fall ill, and its politicians do nothing. So she decided to do something herself.
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