After the furore of Protein World’s skull-dragging ‘Are You Beach Body Ready?’ adverts, let us take you to another beach. The beach where women, as part of a performance art project, will run into the waves and show the North Sea their vagina, in an act known as ‘Raising the Skirt’.
Let us explain. Raising the Skirt is an ancient, worldwide tradition, known from Catalonia to Ancient Greece to India. The idea is that if you show yourself to the something natural and hugely powerful, it will calm. In Catalan and Ancient Greece, it’s the sea.
And, explains Raising the Skirt’s call for participants (yes, you can join them!): ‘A flash of the cunt has been known to calm other forces of nature too, in Madras (India) women were known to subdue storms by exposing themselves.’
It adds: ‘In other folklore Women could drive away the devils, evil spirits and warriors. By forming community and embracing the power in their bodies, we aim to follow in the footsteps of our sisters by using a deep placed femininity and somatic drive to reclaim the cunt as a powerful tool in assertion.’
In non-art speak, showing your vagina to something forceful and natural, even if it carries on raining/waving/thundering/whatever, will make you feel more powerful, simply because you’re using your vagina to do something instead of letting it be all passive and done to.
If you’re into that as a concept, it costs £135 for three days, or £75 if you’re on a low income. And it’s also based on a beach in South Tyneside, which, we admit, might be really freezing cold, even when the workshop takes place in mid-summer.
If, instead, you’re wondering who's organising for loads of women to talk about their vaginas and then run naked into the sea, that’ll be Nicola Canavan. She’s a performance artist who ‘installs layers of symbol through the modification and manipulation of the flesh, and pursues rituals that transcend the body.’
We admit that skinny dipping shouldn’t cost a thing, but that is a very interesting way of phrasing ‘getting your fanny out at the beach’ isn’t it?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.