CLOUDY WEATHER

In China, I have heard many times from different elders say that it is not good for girls to smoke. Because women who smoke do not meet the standard of "good women" in the secular sense. Although smoking is obviously a behaviour that will harm everyone's health equally, it seems that smoking for women will have more negative effects. With contempt and disdain for prejudice, I found 5 Asian women who did not disclose their smoking habits to their families, and recorded their emotional clips when they smoked.

Cigarettes are an obvious element. Cigarettes may be the consumer product with the most cultural symbols. Objectively speaking, smoking is just an addictive behaviour, there is no necessity and it is not beneficial to human health. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, strange things happened. "Female smoking shaming" was unfolded around the world. Smoking is considered dirty, immoral and a dangerous sexual temptation. There was a ban on smoking for women trialed in New York, and police have even arrested women for smoking in public. The increase in female smoking comes just after the ban on female smoking. The more it is banned, the more people want to do it. Since breaking the taboo is cool, even a cigarette could be the spark that fuels the feminism movement. According to Bernays & Miller (2005), “Man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.” From this point of view, smoking is a compensation for suppressing a certain desire, and this desire varies from person to person.

Safe space is another element. Each set was shot in the models' own bedrooms, a safe space where they were most likely to get complete relaxation. Because being in this space doesn't make them resist showing nudity either. Female body shaming and female smoking shaming are co-existing problems in China, and the root cause is the oppression of women. Under the dual effects of patriarchal society and misogynistic culture, women, as subordinates under the male gaze, have lost their subjectivity. Society has created a series of "good women" standards to evaluate women, and men gain peer recognition in other patriarchal societies by shaming women and satisfy their male homosocial desire. (Sedgwick, 1992) Some women will also join Humiliating behaviour, because they identify with male social values, believe that males are a higher group, and hope to move closer to males and have male advantages (Konner, 2012)

In this project, the audience can feel the atmosphere of each woman's most self in the most private space. When people are mostly naked, they are most likely to show their defenceless side. The cigarette smoke when breathed out is like a fleeting barrier, which creates a momentary safe space for people's desires and emotions.

References:

Bernays, E.L. and Miller, M.C. (2005) Propaganda. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Ig Publishing.

Konner, M. (2012). Misogyny, Chauvinism,Sexism, or What? Psychology Today.

Sedgwick, E.K. (1992) Between men: English literature and male homosocial desire. New York: Columbia University Press.