THE WEIRD GIRL’S PROJECT’S EMBRACE

THE WEIRD GIRL’S PROJECT’S EMBRACE

The Weird Girls Project is an ongoing art film series created to empower women. With a dedicated following the conceptual films are fearlessly forward thinking and fronted by commander-in-chief British-born artist and DJ, Kitty Von-Sometime. Today marks the release of The Weird Girls Project latest episode, #EmbraceYourself.

Fed up of how the media portray woman’s bodies and dictate how they should look in order to be beautiful, and the devastating effect it has on women and their body image, Kitty started making these video pieces. She uses a ‘music video’ format to celebrate the variety of shapes and sizes that define the women we are. The women who take part are all volunteers and Von-Sometime always sticks to her strict rule of not telling her women the date, concept, location and costumes before the day they will be arriving on set. This allows each film to be totally authentic and of the moment, the sudden fears of for example being naked in #embraceyourself are shown in a raw and truthful way.

The 25 episode strong music video series travels internationally from its origin’s wintry vistas, to poolside’s in Puerto Vallarta, China’s Great Wall, several European cities, and downtown Reykjavik for the UN’s International Women’s Day. While the synchronized costuming and choreography of each episode is always unique, Von-Sometime’s objective remains the same, to empower both the women involved and the women watching through a visual honoring of female diversity.

“We put the women in a mirrored set so that they were seeing what they look like,” says Von-Sometime’s. “The gold very much glamorizes the entire experience but it does not hide anything, whatever shape you are. If anything, it bounces the light off you, so that it’s similar to spandex in that way, in that even if it is covering up the skin, it doesn’t really hide stuff. Any shape that you are is shown. I wanted the women to just feel as fabulous as they could, whilst being naked and facing themselves in the mirror.”

Von-Sometime’s made the decision to put herself in the same head space as her actresses putting past emotional and physical boundaries aside for this episode was very important. She does this for every film by dressing up – or in this case down. The idea to shoot her women naked for #EmbraceYourself was something she wanted to do for a while because of its relevance within the media. “I wanted to bring the body image concept in because there has been such a shift now in the media about talking about female body shapes and welcoming and all this stuff. But what I thought is lacking is showing everybody. Because there’s been a lot of like pro-plus size and then like, ‘should we say, plus size?’ and all of these are very relevant things to talk about, like, we are not all the fucking same! That was the thing that was missing still.”

With her newest superb spectacle already flying around the internet and a documentary highlighting The Weird Girls Project’s work, titled I Want to be Weird scheduled for release this fall, Von-Sometime emphasizes her aspirations for a wider recognition of her courageous collaborators and their honest performances. “I just am very proud of all the women who took a part in this.” she concludes.

You can learn more at the Weird Girls Projects on their website here.