Freedom is often promised but rarely delivered, especially when it comes to the body. Through intimate storytelling and critical reflection, this event opens up a conversation about the contradictions between empowerment and shame, visibility and erasure, desire and discipline. Writers Marianna the Influenza and Cleo Bissong come together to challenge these tensions and invite us to consider difficult questions. Together they ask: What happens when empowerment and shame live side by side in how we show ourselves or hide away? What shape has desire when we stop shrinking ourselves to fit in? And what power does sharing our stories have in breaking the silence around bodies and identity? The talk features Marianna the Influenza, author of the autobiographical essay Nera con forme. Storia di un corpo grasso (Black curvy woman. Story of a fat body), a profound and witty account of living in a Black, fat body within a society shaped by racism and fatphobia. Layer by layer, she dismantles body stigmatization, colonial legacies, and toxic wellness narratives, proposing body consciousness as a radical alternative to conformity and invisibility. Joining her is Cleo Bissong, whose graphic memoir, Ma siamo ancora qui a parlarne (How is this still a thing?) explores the psychological and social conditioning that still traps women in cycles of shame and self-surveillance, despite decades of feminist progress and body positivity movements. With emotional candor and visual storytelling, she opens up questions around female desire, unattainable beauty ideals, and the deep need for honest connection.
Language: Italian