I don’t feel like what I have is enough to post on social media yet but I feel like my interactions with friends surrounding the project mirrored the response I may receive on social media. I approached one friend asking him to be the “Voice of the Patriarchy”. By that, I meant read excerpts from a 19th century sex-ed book. He appreciated the concept and understood the criticism I was making but had further questions – what other texts was I considering? What did I want to get out of my criticism? This opened up a discussion about our experiences reading the text. We share a lot of the same political beliefs but could imagine a world where someone could read the text without seeing what we thought was glaringly wrong with it. As a result, I decided I wanted his delivery to be as patronizing and condescending as possible.
I received very positive feedback as I was asking friends for their perspectives on beauty. Some said they were looking forward to seeing the final piece. It sparked an interesting conversation among a few friends and myself about our understanding of beauty. My understanding of the project evolved as I talked about it with friends. It also opened up a discussion about whether I should include male friends.
In terms of authorship, I found that sharing the work with friends influenced the direction I was going to take the work. The public experience of sharing was integral to workshopping and building upon my ideas. For example, I initially planned on interspersing the sex-ed excerpts with recordings of a few friends reading poetry. The conversation that stemmed from recording poetry is what pushed me towards asking friends about their perceptions of beauty.