The short film Shine describes itself on its website:
“10 young women were inhibited to come together, shed their layers and return to nature. By removing comparisons, competition and conditioning they were given a space to look inward.”
The short has been created by The Goddess Project, which aims to be a feature-length documentary about everyday women who realize their potential in order to change the world.
In Shine, 10 strangers are brought together. They take off their clothes to have their bodies painted and have pieces of nature glued to them so they effectively become living art.
There were parts of the short that I really loved. The variety of women–not just in terms of body type but also ethnicity–was wonderful to see captured on film. The scenes where the women were just hanging out being themselves were beautiful and really conveyed a sense of easy feminine bonding that is something unusual in a world where women are almost always conveyed as competing with each other.
The camaraderie in the short and the purpose of it–the stripping of outer clothes in order to turn inwards and find the qualities that make us as women feel beautiful and claim inspiration–was quite beautiful to watch.
However, while the cast was diverse and interesting, the vague neo-tribal atmosphere of the short made me feel a little squicky. The whole thing feels slightly orientalist and appropriative. The short does not reference a specific culture, but it has that sort of “back to nature” feel that is generally connected to the appropriation of native or indigenous cultures the world over. I am very wary of empowerment being discovered through appropriation and personally I think the short would have been much more powerful if it had delved more into the individual women’s experience of being naked with a bunch of other women they didn’t know.
The stills from the short of such a wide range of women are quite stunning so I do applaud the film makers for what they have undertaken, but it is important for empowerment not to come at the cost of further marginalizing certain groups of people.
Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.