Venice
I’m going to lie down on Sun & Sea: Marina beach, and of course I didn’t want to at first, I thought it would be enough to just watch, but I was persuaded. Among other volunteers, I meet an American and her kids who talks about how her kindergarten age children have been waiting for half a year to participate in this performance and how they (children) are interested and concerned about climate change (this part is not about my topic, just the context). It turns out that my swimsuit is the wrong color and I will have to put on one of those provided at the spot. Neverminded that I had verified with the organizers ahead of time that my swimsuit was acceptable! Wearing a swimsuit that is not mine seems like a nightmare to me. I choose a swimsuit that, in my painter’s eyes, is similar to my original bluish one that was rejected. However, I manage to avoid the deadly shame and fit into the aforementioned swimsuit. On the beach, I read the only book I picked up that I decided I should read because maybe something would be useful for my master’s and that I didn’t start reading until I came to the beach. The decisive criterion for choosing a book for a trip to Venice was its soft cover and how light it was. So, with somewhat mesmerizing, repetitive music in the background, I read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and try to keep parts of my body from falling out of the swimsuit. I am pretty sure that the music of this opera in my head will always be associated with the book I read and the unfortunate swimsuit. The book says that unattainable beauty standards are used against women, and I am currently struggling with the unfortunate swimsuit. In the meantime, another volunteer from Italy (whose suit color didn’t meet the requirements, but she probably didn’t think it was a big tragedy, maybe?) invites me to play badminton, or rather to go and hit a shuttlecock because most likely neither one of us knows the rules of badminton. Although there is no wind, I am not doing very well, maybe because I am fighting against the ill-fitted swimsuit, my body, or maybe because I have not held a racket for a long time. Thus, this is a story that involves the body and feminist literature, and it is taking place against an artistic background.
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