Your body, my choice stems from both personal and collected stories of women’s experiences within the healthcare system. As someone who lives with a chronic condition, I understand the cycle of shame and self-doubt associated with it. 

When seeking support from medical professionals, women’s concerns have been routinely dismissed by phrases such as “it’s all in your head”, leaving patients feeling unheard. This same rhetoric was engrained into the catch-all victorian diagnosis of female hysteria, given to ‘difficult’ women who did not conform to societal expectations. This project addresses the legacy of medical gaslighting and misogyny that forms the framework of our modern healthcare system, one built on androcentric values that considers the white, male body the default.

The choice to represent these stories through objects and rather than people draws from the objectfying use of photography as a medical tool in the 19th century. Upon its conception, photography was regarded as an undeniably true representation of its subject. It was used to categorize, stereotype and sexualise the female body, isolating the sitter in an un-returnable gaze. Now, photography's legitimacy is marked by the existence of new technologies, presenting further ways to frame women in the same age-old misogyny and misinformation.  

This project is an accumulation of a number of different visual strategies: The everyday, medical illustrations and gynaecology and obstetric instruments.

Your Body, My Choice

Spectare (medical tools)