Canadian artist Tasha Diamant, creator of the Human Body Project, hopes to alter our perceptions of beauty by using her 45-year old pregnant body as her work of art. I have to hand it to her, most women want to run and hide when naked, or pregnant, but especially when both, excepting of course the lovely airbrushed Demi Moore on the 1991 Vanity Fair cover, shot by Annie Liebowitz.
What I like about Diamant is that she's not just presenting the same old tired arguments about women and their shame and their poor body images. She poses nude and pregnant in a studio in her small Alberta town hoping to prompt her audience to reach a deeper understanding of humankind's fragility and physical vulnerability.
Anyone who has held a newborn knows what she's talking about -- the bobbly head, the soft spot, the oft fawned over teeny tiny hands and feet, the wee quiet cry.
Humans are fragile. Indeed.
But what of cankles? And veiny bumpy areolas? And pregnancy ass? And hormones?
I'm bowled over by her courage. When I was pregnant, I used to avoid my full length mirror (or any mirror) at all costs. I wasn't ashamed. I didn't feel badly about myself. I just didn't want to see what was going on. You can call me immature or deluded, but some things are better left to the imagination --preferably one filled with the image of pretty Demi at seven months pregnant.
