Skip to content
Home » Martha Mosse: The Slut, the Spinster and the Perfect Woman at TEDxCoventGardenWomen (Transcript)

Martha Mosse: The Slut, the Spinster and the Perfect Woman at TEDxCoventGardenWomen (Transcript)

Martha Mosse at TEDxCoventGardenWomen

Full transcript of award-winning performance and visual artist Martha Mosse’s TEDx Talk: The Slut, the Spinster and the Perfect Woman at TEDxCoventGardenWomen conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: The slut, the spinster and the perfect woman by Martha Mosse at TEDxCoventGardenWomen

TRANSCRIPT: 

Good morning. My name is Martha Mosse. I’m a feminist performance artist. My work is about control and oppression, but also about breaking the boundaries of our prisons. In particular, the indefensible prisons of our bodies.

Looking back, I realize I’ve always been a feminist. I just hadn’t labeled it yet. My first realization of gender inequality was when I was 18. And I was travelling through the desert in Dubai with my parents and brother. We were going to a literary festival. I fell into a conversation with a highly-respected female war correspondent, who started telling me a story about several years earlier when visiting a traditional household in Afghanistan.

Upon arrival, she was told to go into the kitchen and help the women cook dinner, while her two male junior film crew members were invited to relax with the men in the main room. After hours of cooking, preparing a huge feast, the women pushed the platters beneath the beaded curtain that separated the kitchen from the living room, the women from the men.

After the men had finished eating, they pushed the trays back beneath the curtain, and it was only then that the women were allowed to eat what remained.

I cried when I heard that story. I cried, because I realized suddenly how pointlessly unfair and limiting the world can be. I also cried because I was acutely aware that this was now it: that once you have recognized gender inequality and the need for feminism, you can’t unsee it.

I began identifying myself as a feminist in my second year at university when writing my dissertation.