ELISHA COX ART
'HAPPY?',(2018)
Finding it difficult to adjust to the new cultural differences while on my exchange in Nicosia, Cyprus my practice seemed to take the toll. I was not eating well, nor socializing, and I found it hard to accept being away from everyone I loved. During this time, I found myself becoming dramatically unhappy, I put this down to being in a new environment, which I soon noticed was incorrect. As winter came, I began to feel more comfortable and noticed that feeling of comfort with my weight had been a concerning issue since the beginning. Surrounded by slimmer, tanned, more ‘beautiful’ women, in my opinion, I found my confidence dwell both internally and externally. I turned to write a diary because I realized, I needed a medium to which I could express my emotions and allow myself some form of freedom from my own mind. The following passage is from a Diary entry from the beginning of my time in Cyprus expresses how I felt,
“I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t feel like I am me. I can’t see anyone I love or care about and I’m stuck in a country that makes no sense to me. I can hardly leave the flat at the moment as I don’t know how people would react to me. Every time I leave, I feel eyes and hear Greek chitter-chatter, that most of the time is followed by laughing. I want to go home. I want to be around people who still care about me.”
(Diary entry, 16/10/18)
I no longer felt like me, I felt as if I had reduced myself to a mere outer shell. I felt as if Cyprus had taken the happy me and replaced it with self-pity. It took a huge toll on me being away from family and friends alone, but then along with my self-confidence and anxiety, it just made my life feel like hell.
In a social event that I attended I had an experience that sparked a new beginning for my practice. The passage below is a piece of reflective writing documenting this experience. I related to the balloons unconsciously at the event, as they reflected my feelings at the time. Caught within overwhelming emotions I was unable to understand the real reasoning as to why the balloons took my eye. Reflecting on my experience at the event I can now realize that the balloons became me. I felt stretched to my limits a lot like a balloon; the intense pressure from loved ones and myself that was put upon my shoulders to try fit in with my fellow Greek companions’ and make new friends was wearing me down. Time passed, the longer I sat there alone, trying my best to smile and look approachable for others. The longer I sat alone, worrying about myself; was it my face? Was it my body? How was I so intimidating that no one would attempt to speak to me? I sat there thinking alone until I blew up like a balloon, filling myself with my own self-hatred and worries. I believe I felt like the balloon was a way out for me. I could view the balloon swaying peacefully in the wind and relieve myself that everything will be okay if I only give myself and my situation time.
It was at this point in my practice where I began explore the use of balloons as a material to express my feelings towards the prejudice of larger individuals like myself. Using the yellow to represent happiness I decided to hang this smaller yellow balloon at eye height. This was to represent diet culture. Jane Ogden explains, “The success stories, the offers of future satisfaction and the constant pairing of thinness with happiness promote the idea that thinness is happiness and dieting is the way to this happiness” (1992, Pg. 48). As Ogden states, diet culture expresses the correlation between thinness and happiness to promote dieting and as a result damage the publics self-appreciation of their bodies. They promote that by losing weight everything will suddenly be fixed and that all your worries would vanish, however speaking from experience that fact is not true. I have found that from experience my weight does not define my happiness or my comfortability and that in fact when I was at my smallest in 2017 at a UK size 12 I was the most insecure and worried I have ever been in my life. I tied the yellow balloon onto a noose and covered it in yellow paint to express the pain I have felt in relation to dieting and my previous self.