The first time I crossed the portal marked for women and entered the women\u2019s bathroom was at night, at a party. Unlike the row of urinals in the men\u2019s bathroom, where one\u2019s gaze is always constrained, directed at a blind spot between tiles (and never at another man), the scene in the women\u2019s bathroom appeared to me multiple, elliptical, and dynamic\u2014like a tornado. I realized that women weren\u2019t afraid to speak or look at each other. They were open to touch, to conversation, to assisting one another. They entered in pairs, separated, regrouped, and in front of the mirror, they fixed their hair, shared makeup, and called each other by name.<\/p>\r\n
The bathroom is where cleansing happens, but also where nothing happens, except looking at oneself. Where one \u201cstudies one\u2019s own face,\u201d says Pham, (Pham, 2019). Where it\u2019s possible to recognize oneself in another and another and another. Because in bathrooms and changing rooms, there\u2019s always something that multiplies and something that\u2019s discovered. There\u2019s always something hidden, something kept, and in contrast, something unveiled and shown. I think of the line marked by the Venus\u2019s toga. I think, simply, of the act of undressing before others.<\/p>\r\n
I remember the first time I changed in the women\u2019s changing room after beginning my transition. It was a morning, after a yoga practice. Naturally, I was scared. Naturally, I didn\u2019t want to make anyone uncomfortable. But there was no doubt: I no longer belonged in the men\u2019s changing room. Once I crossed the door to the other bathroom, I quickly disappeared into the choreography of women\u2019s bodies dressing, undressing, raising arms, bending down, showering, and drying their hair. I was curious, and unlike in the men\u2019s bathroom, I didn\u2019t feel the prohibition against holding a gaze or keeping close to those strangers.<\/p>\r\n
The yoga practice had made us all sweat, so many of us were flushed and perspiring. A woman a bit younger and wider than I was, already topless, was trying to remove her shirt, but her soaked skin prevented the synthetic fabric from moving. She was left, arms up and crossed, entirely trapped and blinded by her own clothing. Like a Venus de Milo, but inverted, in that it was the upper part of her body that was wrapped. I watched her turn and turn again, unable to escape her own trap of sweat.<\/p>\r\n
Until an older woman, much thinner, with wrinkled skin and white hair, turned to her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, she stopped her and then, with both hands, helped her undress. When the young woman was finally free of her clothes, she stood nude, facing the older one. She turned, looked her in the eyes, and thanked her. Those two women didn\u2019t know each other, yet one had voluntarily helped the other. Something like that would never have happened in a men\u2019s changing room.<\/p>\r\n
Something like that I had never witnessed before. That blind whirl turned into revelation and relief was a sign\u2014of what happened within the women\u2019s changing room and of my place there. When I averted my gaze, I found myself reflected in the mirror: sweaty and expressionless. The Roman poet Ovid recounted in his Metamorphoses<\/em> the story of Actaeon and Artemis: Actaeon was a hunter in the woods stalking prey when he stumbled upon the goddess Artemis bathing at the water\u2019s edge. Artemis, accompanied by her nymphs and dismayed by the hunter\u2019s gaze, turned him into a stag. Stripped of his voice, Actaeon couldn\u2019t prevent his bloodthirsty hounds from tearing his body to pieces.<\/p>\r\n That is, in a few words, also the story of desire and of the gaze. After that first time, the women\u2019s bathroom became, for me, a space where the desiring male gaze seldom reaches and, therefore, cannot exert power over the bodies. A kind of intimate refuge where we, as women, can be sweaty, naked, even uncomfortable. We can ask if we\u2019re okay. Cry, put on makeup, fight, undress.<\/p>\r\n It was also where my thinking began to crack. Because Actaeon\u2014or the masculine\u2014is not merely a transgression of the gaze but also thought itself, the very thing that, articulated in words, allows us to express and name ourselves.<\/p>\r\n I read that the Venus de Milo was made in several blocks of marble, but the joints are so perfect that, as a whole, they erase their marks: the joins between them are not visible. That\u2019s why, I think, the cuts on her arms are so noticeable. Her assembly does not admit fractures. And so, when Lorenza embodies that iconic image, she destroys it without touching it. Seeing her for the first time, I felt something breaking\u2014not immediately, but at a distance. A slow twist that, with its strength, set the direction for my transition.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n Fig. 1. Ariel Florencia Richards, Venus invertida <\/em>(“Inverted Venus”), intervention on the wall of the exhibition \u201cMy clothes, others’ clothes, many people’s clothes,\u201d presented at Il Posto between March and June 2023.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n <\/p>\r\n References<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n Pham, Larissa (March, 28th<\/sup> 2019). \u201cA Bathroom of One\u2019s Own\u201d. The Paris Review. https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/28\/a-bathroom-of-ones-own\/<\/a><\/p>\r\n Stahlberg, Michael (1991). Lorenza. Portrait of an Artist<\/em>. Docu Short. Hochschule f\u00fcr Fernsehen und Film in Zusammenarbeit mit Seed Pictures, 1991. https:\/\/ vimeo.com\/29793957. Consulted on January 22 2018.<\/p>\r\n Lemebel, Pedro (1996). \u201cLorenza, las alas de la manca\u201d. Loco af\u00e1n. Cr\u00f3nicas de sidario<\/em>. Santiago de Chile, LOM, 1996, pp. 151-154.<\/p>\r\n Mateo del Pino, \u00c1ngeles. \u201cSubjetividad transtullida. El cuerpo\/corpus de Lorenza B\u00f6ttner\u201d. Anclajes<\/em>, vol. XXIII, n.\u00b0 3, septiembre-diciembre 2019, pp. 37-57. DOI: 10.19137\/anclajes-2019-2334<\/p>\r\n Preciado, Paul (2017). Lorenza B\u00f6ttner (1959-1994)<\/em>. Documenta 14. Kassel, Private collection Neue Galerie.. Online edition. http:\/\/www.documenta14.de\/en\/artists\/21958\/lorenza-bottner<\/a>\u00a0 Consulted on January 22 2018.<\/p>\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/DSC0886-683x1024.jpg\")