Do girls get a fight club of their own? One where they’re not antagonized, threatened, or denounced by men? One where their pain, discomforts, and anger can be unapologetically relieved without having to fit in the constructs of the male gaze, constantly under surveillance of ourselves to make every possible action an attractive one. Girls are sad? Girls are angry? Well can they be sad and angry but in a prettier way? Thats what we want on screen! Female rage but make it beautiful, make sure it stays beautiful, try to make it prettier or find a prettier woman to do it better. Thats Hollywood baby. But men…men get a fight club and cant see past the punches and blood. They cant see the underlying critique on the social constructs men have forced upon themselves and those around them, women and children included – unable to pursue what they define as meaningful to satiate social pressures. Men see films of war and violence and can only appreciate the power and destruction played out on screen, a very two dimensional analysis of the media they consume because the world does not ask them to look for more, within themselves or the constructs around them. They are simply applauded and patted on the back for their attendance.

In this performance piece, I have given myself a piece of fight club. An attempt to release 24 years of aggression that girls are meant to keep contained and pretty. Referencing the work of Castle’s that expresses violence committed against trans bodies through a performance, boxing against ‘green’ clay, as well as incorporating imagery from media made for a white male audience like Fight Club, Rocky, Raging Bull, etc. centered around violence, aggression, and power. The slab created for this performance is given more representational elements to further set the scene, alluding to the strung up carcasses of non-human animals that are so often used in media during montages of training and “personal growth” though that mostly translates to physical growth rather than character development.

I am the aggressor and the victim. I am beating a dead horse only to realize I am the very same dead horse. I protest the exploitation of women by society yet I am another member that has been so thoroughly socialized that it is difficult to see the violence inflicted upon yourself at the expense of satiating the standards of men and society.