False Accusations = Insecurity

Identity Project

Dimension: 1.5 feet by 1 feet

Material: Miniature Manequin man, food, wire, paper, tissue paper

I did my identity project on something that happened to me back in 7th grade. I was in P.E. class running when my teacher stopped and asked me if I was bulimic.Now, I ahve always been really skinny but never relaly thought much of it...until that point. After that I became really self conscious about my weight and then proceeded to try and gain a couple pounds. From then on I found myself eating, and eating and eating. I have never had any eating disorder, I've just always had super fast metabolism and to this day I still struggle to gain weight. Fortunately, I don't worry and stress about my self image as much as I did back then. I have come to accept the way my body works. Anyways, back then I had a hard time coping with such issues and was always insecure.

So my piece is of a little art figure manequin in the running position and I have it vomitting to signify the fake assumption. Instead of puking food, words relating to self image, insecurity, and weight issues are pouring out of the manequins mouth. I have the head wrapped in red tissue paper to symbolize bashfulness and feeling the need to want to hide myself from everyone. The food scattered around is mean tto symbolize the large amounts of food that I would eat daily in a feeble attempt to gain weight to assuage such false accusations. I have the shadow visible behind the manequin to symbolize how this self image issue of weight seems to follow me.