We all cry sometimes, whether it’s about relationships, jobs, family drama, we’ve all been there. These moments tend to be quite intimate, as we often see it as a sign of weakness and don’t want people seeing us at our most vulnerable.
But Paris-based artist and journalist Dora Moutot has created the Webcam Tears Project, in which girls submit videos of themselves crying in front of their computer screens, to challenge that notion.
It all may sound a bit weird, but that’s the main reason why Moutot started the project in the first place. She describes Webcam Tears as an ‘emotional porn channel’, and that ‘in a time where showing genitals on the internet isn’t shocking any more, tears are a new form of pornography’.
She also references dacryphilia – where people are aroused by the sight of tears – as some dacryphilia and BDSM blogs have started reblogging her webcam tears videos.
In an interview with Dazed, she went on to explain that in this day and age, emotions, especially tears, make people feel more uncomfortable than porn.
‘People don’t know how to react in front of deep emotions. Society teaches us that we should hide while crying, it shouldn’t be a public act’.
The aim of the project was to help ‘people who have easy tears to be less ashamed to be emotional in front of others’. And she disagrees with the age-old concept of tears being a sign of weakness.
‘I totally relate to the sad girl movement, I feel part of it. I actually think it’s empowering. A lot of girls are very emotional beings and we should be proud of it, and celebrate it,’ she said.
Webcam Tears was inspired by New-York based video artist and photographer Laurel Nakadate, who recorded her sadness for a year in her piece 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.