Mums not the word
Mum’s Not the Word Podcast - An Arts Council project by photographer Denise Felkin.
In primordial times, women were sacred drummers. The female bleeds with the rhythm of the moon. If she does not discharge blood and other material from the lining of the uterus, as part of the menstrual cycle for ten cycles of the moon, her blood is transformed into a new being. *
The naked girl with red hair lies on her wrinkled black-and-white duvet. Alone, eyes closed, and choosing comfort in the foetal position, she wears a simple tattoo on her shoulder. The photographer has chosen to shoot from above. The viewer has been allowed to be distant yet intimate with her. Who is this angel who has fallen to earth?
Women who do not procreate are too often misrepresented by stereotypes: barren, spinster, half-woman, wicked stepmother or crazy cat lady. On many occasions, I have heard people say: “You wouldn’t understand unless you are a parent yourself,” asserting a premise that suggests that females who do not reproduce are selfish, do not like children, or are not ‘real’ women.
Mum’s Not the Word is inspired by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Frida Kahlo’s foetal image painted on her belly after a miscarriage, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed and the storytelling of Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Since 2013 I have collected hundreds of articles from the media on childlessness. The subjects range from climate change, overpopulation, lifestyle, women, technology, opinion, female power, world politics, finance, arts and culture, science, people, history, health, humanities and social science, entertainment and family. In historic times wealthier women would steer away from marriage because childbirth and birth control was fatal.
Well known childless roles models across history include Mary 1, Elizabeth 1, Rosa Parkes, Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Georgette Magritte,. Beatrix Potter, Dolly Parton, Margaret Bourke-White. Gloria Gaynor, Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux, Tracy Chapman, Zandra Rhodes, Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark.
I conceived Mum’s Not the Word because I do not have children: I label myself ‘childfree’ because I did not want to have them. I use photography to challenge negative attitudes about the stigma that those who don’t have kids bear.
Being infertile is not usually a choice, however, and can be a traumatic experience: possibly a grieving process, that, for some, may slowly slip into acceptance, or a cause of lifetime pain and anguish. And then there are those who are childless due to circumstance or disability.
Mum’s Not The Word is a collection of fifty photographic images, including myself, depicting women who do not have children and their reflections on what this means to them as individuals. Raising questions of identity, social constructs, the concept of what it is to be a woman and how stereotyped behaviour is influenced by various factors, both external and internal, such as the expectation around having children and the impact this has in an era of environmental crisis.
In the process of creation the divine mother is a powerful mythological symbol; she is an archetype of the eternal female. The Earth is The Great Mother of All That is, new life comes from women’s bodies, just as it does from the earth. *
* When the Drummers were Women - Layne Redmond
Mum’s Not the Word is a photobook and is available to buy from Earthworld publishing -
https:/mntw.earthworldpublishing.co.uk
The podcast has been funded by Arts Council National Lottery Grants
