Contributions wanted for a zine project about body image/body normativity
Our daily life is normalized: our bodies, our thoughts, our tastes …
We judge ourselves and others due to internalized body norms. The ways people are affected by internalized body norms vary as much as the methods they use to deal with it. While the terms “bulimia“ and “anorexia“ are rather well-known and usually related with social contempt, other expressions like “sports addiction“ or a so-called “health diet” or “conscious eating” are more likely to earn respect.
The “body positivity” movement sometimes creates new norms. For example, the pressure to love your body and yourself at all times (otherwise it would mean that you didn’t work hard enough to free yourself from body normativity). For us it is important that to be part of this zine you don’t have to love your body or the way you look. It’s ok not to be ok with oneself.
And even though in activist circles most norms get questioned, body norms are rarely an issue that we talk about. For example “fatphobia“ as a term is not widespread yet, and as long as we don’t name it, we can not tackle it!
This zine project is not a platform to play down difficulties with eating habits.
The idea of this zine is to make visible different types of reactions/feelings/experiences concerning internalized body norms – in any way that the people (co-)affected choose. We welcome different forms of expressions, such as: collages, poetry, all sorts of text, drawings, pictures, …
We aim to collect different perspectives. This means that instead of reproducing socially accepted or clinical ways of speaking, you are invited to express yourself in any shape you like, whether it is angry, neutral, happy, sad, afraid, uncertain …
If you use terms for yourself like “diagnosis”, “(psychological/eating/…) disorder” or similar words, this is your choice. But we ask all contributors to not define other people. Please speak for yourself and make clear that you do so!
As long as we see them, we will not print any form of discrimination, which means for example: no racism, no transphobia, no ableism, no speciesism, no sexism …
This call adresses everyone whose aim is liberation of internalized norms as far as possible, or is at least open to reflect these as well as own behaviours.
You may choose your real name or a synonym or no name at all – but please tell us a way we can contact you, in case we would like to discuss your contribution. Also, we think it is important that you describe yourself. For example, the two people who started the project are both cis-girls, white and abled-bodied, French/German/English-speaking and socialised in Middle-Europe. You decide what you think is relevant to describe yourself, whether it is two sentences or a whole page. All the self-descriptions will be printed together at the end of the zine.
The idea is to print all contributions in their original language, so that the zine is multilingual.
This project will not end with the printing of a zine. It’s meant to be oil in the fire of burning down body norms, so ideally we want to push the issue! Further, we will be organising some events taking place around the publishing of the zine – if you would like to give a workshop, talk, performance or whatever, we would love to hear from you!
You can send your contributions to hangry@immerda.ch – our PGP-key is online on keys.immerda.ch –
or by snail mail:
hangry zine c/o Infoladen
Neubrückstr. 8
CH-3012 Bern
UNTIL ALL ARE FREE, NOONE IS FREE!