Safe and Sexy

A photo essay on the choices women make about what they wear

by Sarah Hughes

Claire Lamarre, 55
Quebec City

I started to appreciate my femininity when I was thirteen, when a man first whistled at me. But my parents were very strict. I was not allowed to wear makeup, and my father cut my hair like a boy’s. You must understand the context: I lived in a small town where religious people were very powerful. My mother was frighteningly beautiful, but she wore lovely hats, not plunging necklines. When I was older and returned to Bas-du-Fleuve for the weekends, it was as if I was no longer from there. People looked at me strangely because I dressed like a girl from Quebec City. That’s when I realized that clothes are like skin; you become a stranger when you are not dressed like others. I find that now, maybe because of the Internet or television, we do not have the sense of being different. Everyone dresses the same.

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Comments (2 comments)

Shannon: Hello,
I'm not sure where or who gets this note, but if
possible, would you tell Griselda that I also love the way she dresses and the scent of Patchouli oil on her neck. Thanks, macyaka@auracom.com May 20, 2008 20:45 EST

Charles Tysoe: How very trendy. Just what we need from Canada's newest, best and most progressive mag for all of who "get it". Artistic license and all, but why don't you grow up, please. Exploiting a 13 year old girl (does this girl have a mom and dad? Or a guardian with some sort of a brain?) to talk about her sexual anxieties in a location any Haligonian will recognize — OK maybe the two or three who can read, and who might chance upon the magazine. In an age of hellishly clever sexual predators (some of them probably classmates or social acquaintances of poor Amelia), what can you be thinking of? Other than "I am ARTIST. Affirm me!"

It's just art, right? No sexual predator would dare take seriously these plaintive musings. I'm sure if that was the case, Mr. Alexander and all the bright lights around him would have thought of it.

A young girl needs adult role models, security and affirmation in a healthy environment, where she can have her femininity nourished and protected.

You have just made her into human graffiti ; I suppose because there just aren't enough women and girls around willing to display themselves in any degrading fashion for a little fame or lots of money and we can never get enough of it.

Or perhaps you think this is real innovation?

What a disgrace to humanity you are for conceiving and carrying out, using your positions of inflence and power as "reputable journalists", this literary and visual grope of a young woman.

- A subscriber - August 06, 2008 11:41 EST

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