Pantyhose stretches over wooden bars and creates surfaces that hold ink washes like wounds, stains that can’t be undone, and histories that cannot be erased.
Pantyhose, delicate and sheer, are bound to traditional femininity—expectations of beauty, obedience, and containment. Yet, pushed to their limit, they transform: distorted, deformed, and disfigured. However, they do not buckle from the pressure exerted upon them. Black, wet, milky ink seeps through the nylon—unpredictable and untamed. It pools, bleeds, and vanishes at its own discretion.
Growing up in the South, politeness and restraint were a simple necessity, but I cannot suppress the darker, more visceral realities of womanhood any longer. There is a heavy confrontation between two versions of myself—the soft and the sweet, the harsh and the unyielding. Beneath the softness, there is rage. Beneath the sweetness, there is brutal anger. These forces do not cancel each other out, nor do they define one another. Just as ink needs a surface to exist, and pantyhose need tension to hold form, they must embrace each other to survive.
This duality feels especially urgent now, in a time when political decisions are stripping women of autonomy over their own bodies. The push to control, suppress, and silence is not new, but there is a new visibility to it—the marks, the scars, and the pain are all incredibly palpable. I rip, I stain, and I pull at the fraying edges.
I recently removed my own pantyhose to climb into a chair at the gynecologist’s office. Vulnerable, legs raised, undressed from the waist down, my doctor’s sharp metal calipers dug into the inside of my body. As I screamed in pain, she screamed back, urging stillness—or else my cervix would tear within her piercing mechanical grip.
Minutes later, I was dressed and carrying my purse, walking out of the office as a polite, composed young woman. No one on the street knew the pain I’d just endured. The profanities I had screamed within the white walls. No one knew that my doctor had tried to comfort me by calling this IUD insertion “Protection Against Trump.” Like the pantyhose, my body was torn, ripped, stained, and bleeding. I walked out poised, but bitter, full of a raw, animalistic rage.
The strange part? I also felt glorious. I felt proud, strong, and incredibly feminine. The fury toward our ignorant and foolish law-makers, who have no idea what being a woman feels like, granted me a spectacular high.
I have come to realize that the majority cannot grasp the duality of beauty and darkness. It is uncomfortable, so they ignore it, opting for the sanitized version. We want art we can “live with,” because we cannot live with the truth of ourselves. If only we could embrace the darkness, the rage, the fear—then we would unlock something quite magnificent. This sticky, sultry, sublime beauty is inherent, and it’s enraging that we are expected to suppress it.
I would rather stare at my hideous reflection than wear a sickly-sweet smelling veil over my face.