Thursday, February 21, 2008

Parisians are awesome

"Our intention is to disturb the visitor," Ms. Lagrave notes in an exhibition pamphlet. "While people might expect to find images of physical contact and beauty, we show how difficult it is to love today."

Ms. Farge suggests a reason: "In the 18th century, a man and woman lived together for a maximum of three or four years because of wars, epidemics, death during childbirth and so on. Life was a succession of funerals and remarriages. In fact, until today, couples have never had to live together for a long time."


The Changing Story, the Unquiet Glory of Love


The exhibit in northeast Paris attempts to respond playfully to the serious questions tweenagers ask about sexuality and romantic feeling. Inspired by a guide to sex by the popular cartoonist Zep and writer Helene Bruller, the exhibit also encourages children and their parents or teachers to shed all modesty and embarrassment about touchy topics and start talking.

"The kids were talking about this stuff at school and Clemence didn't understand," said her mother, Danielle Dubreuil, who prefers bringing her curious daughter to the exhibit rather than discussing such topics with her alone.

"We talk about some things," the 42-year-old mother said, hesitantly, "but penetration -- that I had trouble with."


Paris exhibit a children's guide to sex

1 comment:

  1. Gorgeous. I'm going to follow that link right now and come back to read more of you for sure.

    When I write that readers will not like me, I mean to make space for them to not have to like everything I write about for them to keep on reading me.

    As a blogger who is located in a lot of different ways, I've found that it is difficult to keep steady readers because people usually want to vibe with one part of who I am but not necessarily with others.

    When they do encounter bits of me they hadn't counted on, they react by pulling away, getting rid of my link, not reading me anymore and other things that are really about denial and not wanting to just sit alongside the fact that I am a messy, whole, complicated human being.

    So, I realized that instead of trying to mold myself in certain ways, I would simply invite people to read past and/or through any upset they might experience when they come visit my blog and see bits of me they hadn't counted on.

    Thanks so much for coming by. I really like this link.

    ReplyDelete

whatsername reserves the right to delete your comment if you choose to act like an asshole, so please engage respectfully