NADINE BOUGHTON

The Modess Women

Women draped in haute couture and posed in aristocratic settings were the face of a wildly successful ad campaign that peaked in 1950's magazines. The product was Modess sanitary napkins, with the popular by-line, "Modess…because." These images of women were as far away from the body and bleeding as possible, in a word, "sanitized."

This collage series is meant to reclaim women's bodies, especially in these politically charged times when women's rights are challenged and ownership of one's body is up for "grabs."

My first impulse with the Modess women was to take them to the woods. I placed them on the earth and in caves, incorporated symbols long associated with the feminine - the egg, moon, shell. The art-making was a ritual to release shame in the body and bow to the power of the female body as transformer.

My studies with indigenous, earth-based cultures, and my long-time research on the iconography of the feminine, informs much of my work. I watch the new marketing of feminine products and portrayal of women in advertising with interest. Now, millennials employ the archetype of the female warrior, calling upon strength, fight, blood. The pendulum swings.