my Women with Balls two year project.

This is fun. It is all based on one small painting, and some personal study of Anne Sexton's book of poems, The Awful Rowing Toward God. It includes text and numerous numerous photos of women doing totally normal things, like feeding kids, walking dogs, doing laundry, journaling, laughing with friends, etc -- with various types and numbers of physical balls in the picture. Obviously there is a play on words involved, but there is much more to it than that old thing.

My basic complaint from which I jumped on this wagon and launched this project, is that there is no good reason to measure a woman's courage, energy, strength, bravado, or whatever, via a direct comparison to men. In this case the gonads are the spot of value. But men and women alike have gonads. (truly, look it up in basic physiology.) So to tell a woman she's "got balls" is truly not a compliment. It's a fact. But the general assumption is that it is a compliment (or it could be a total put-down of how dare you speak like a man.....). It's absurd. Hence -- the absurdity of having balls in all these photos of normal women. That's the artistic piece.

Another point of hte project comes back to Virginia Woolf again -- A ROOM OF HER OWN. She does such a wonderful job supporting the basic genius of women who simply are true to themselves and do their thing. I have seen, and even own some, quality supportive to women books which focus on more EXTRA-ordinary types. The famous, the scientist who discovered something new, the women who flew across the ocean, etc. Noteworthy and compelling, they are encouraging to women and girls in their own way. Thanks you to all of those women and editors and publishers. But from the perspective of Virginia Woolf, this is a book of normal women -- doing normal things -- and being recognized because that IS their genius.

The book will include some fun facts and myths, as well. I plan to do an entire etiological section on terms such as, "tom-boy." I hope to show the absurdity of comparing men to women, or women to men.

We all have gonads. We all have our genius. So let's try to put a stop to those dumb little jokes like, "she's got balls." Getting rid of the terms would be better than trying to come up with equal ones. I can't imagine saying about Obama, for instance, "boy, he sure has gonads."

Please write and let me know your favorite euphamism or term of comparison --- tom-boy, tom-girl, cock-sure, ... things like that -- and tell us how it makes you FEEL.

I'll post more later about how to participate in the photo series.

ani rose