final body politics zine lol

w o m a n i t y









Warmth, acceptance, constructive feedback and discussion. The basis of a community in whatever sense one reads a family a friendship, kinship, romantic partner all constitute of the said words. In this case the relationships between many women within the Russian society can be interpreted as venomous at the least. Living in a digital age of globalisation where ideas spread like wildfire and with the access to the internet, one can receive more information as they ever could at the tips of their fingers. In the same way though access to information that had once been out of reach, many become global citizens with advancing idelogies. Russia is a country which gas only a hundred years ago been pushing the boundaries of women’s rights, becoming the First Nation to not only legalise aboirtuons, but one the first to truly begin endorsing female emancipation throughout the 1920s. Today it sits as number 85 on the international gender equality index, well below most other post soviet states. In a surge of Neo- traditionalist agendas, the government has since the beginning of the decade moved towards more and more measures to create a leap backwards in the quality of protection for women’s rights. No one has experienced this wave of Neo- traditionalism as much as the younger generations of girls and women, born into the internet age and well aware of their rights to make their own choices about their bodies, lives and destinies. Rooted in feminist approaches shared by internet resources, from the fem-focused website Wonderzine to YouTubers such as Nixel Pixel, more and more geez girls are becmiming aware of the oppressive nature of the Russian ne-patriarchal environment, where the legal terms supporting equality coincide with a society of expatctaions places on their shoulders from the youngest age. An unsurprising part of this pressure forms from the genie remarks, girls receive from their childhood onto adulthood, being raised a practical guide of the ways to become desirable to the opposite gender. Yet the most unnerving part of the nature of this commentary is the fact that so much of it stems from other women, albeit older.

A very well known she airs which has eventually established itself as a part of cultural jargon are groups of older women who spend their days sitting on benches in front of their khrushevka homes, gossiping about the passingly neighbours, specifically younger. However these elderly ladies known as hags on benches, are only the tip of the iceberg counting the pressures felt, starting from inside families, where mothers assumdely guide their daughters through insults and unaccaptance of their choices about their bodies. After having spoken with several of my female friends aged 19 to 21, as well as reflecting on my own personal experiences the subjects g=facing most critique have surfaced as tattoos, body hair, revealing clothing., and reproductive pressure. Exploring these stories made me question why this internal mysoginy expressed in the limitations of freedom for others exists, tuna. State which had previously fheaded in the move towards equality. I myself have directly been a subject of this critique, which felt disappointing considering that my choice of what to with my own body only really affects me, aratehr than anyone else. It is fells that the basis of this tension should sought well below the surface idea of hatred, but should rather be looked at in the historical context of has caused this split. The bias can specifically be looked at in terms f tattoos and the general idea of perceived decency. Several of my friends mentioned the fact that their choices to get tattoos as girls specifically have been viewed very negatively from their families to acquiatcnes. The culture of tattoo art in Russia stems back to the royal time swine soldiers would get tattooed in places where they were serving the government. However the most the most infamous part of tattoo culture began in prisons in the soviet times., the negative outlook in general was formed by the fact that the people who would get tattooed were most oftenn criminals or dissidents of them government meaning that the people who chose to get tattoos were in a way marked for life. The culture of criminal tattoos in Russian often involved indecent themes