Designer Michaela Stark will join performance artist and trans activist Lucia Blake, artist and model Jade O'Belle, as they sit down with Dazed Digital’s Fashion Features Editor Emma Davidson to discuss the importance of retaining body ownership in the age of social media.
While social media has been an instrumental tool in the body positivity movement, allowing us to take the narrative on beauty standards away from the old guard, it also holds potential for damage and harmful conditioning.
The emphasis on the body online, and social media’s ability to reduce a person to just this, continues to have detrimental effects on our mental wellbeing. And as social media’s presence in our lives only increases everyday, discussion around ownership of the body is becoming increasingly necessary.
London-based artist and couturier Michaela Stark’s practice is centred around custom-made lingerie pieces that are designed to sculpt the body and enhance their perceived ‘imperfections’, giving a new perspective on the female form. Stark’s work arose from her own desire to empower her body, and to work through feelings of body dysmorphia. As part of her intimate study of the body, she will often work on her own body, as well as the body of other models.