Affirmation

I have often told my kids that it’s not what we say but how we say it that matters. In every instance, I have been referring to how we speak to others. I realized recently, however, that the same guidance also applies to how we speak to ourselves. Imagine some critical remark we say to ourselves being said to someone we love. I would never want to hurt someone I love by speaking unkindly. I love myself, too, so monitoring how we speak to ourselves is equally important.

Hannah Wilke was part of the first generation of feminist artists. While she created a diverse body of work, her primary subject was herself. She used her own beauty as a source of power, and her early works featured her gorgeous face and naked body. Wilke continued to turn the camera on herself as she fought cancer, including her Madonna-esque self-portrait post-mastectomy, titled Intra-Venus (1994). She knew she was more than just her beauty, yet simultaneously used the effects her beauty had on others to drive difficult, important conversations.

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