Parvati, artwork by Tina Scott Lassiter
Having a voluptuous behind became fashionable many, many years after I was an adolescent whose derriere was natural, not bought. Back then, the phrase “body shaming” was not even part of our lexicon. Though I was never mercilessly teased about my protruding backside and curvaceous shape, comments here and there from family, friends, and an occasional passer-by, made me self-conscious about the weight on my body. Feelings of insecurity seriously altered the way I lived, or was not living, life. Thinking back, a term used in my TV & film classes while at Howard is fitting to describe what I was doing — “fading-to-black.” I was opting to stay in the background way more often than I care to admit.
Later in life, I began using hand-cut, pieced-paper to create a series of collage goddesses. Without me knowing, the first 12 started a healing journey that brought me body-to-body with my own body issues. The unconscious conscious that had been taking notes about this body transferred its observations and emotions into an art form that, as each goddess developed, told me a story about me, helped me to begin celebrating my figure.
“parvati” is #17 in the series. At the time she arrived, she was the biggest in height with the most number of cut pieces that I had produced. It took me more than one sitting at the table for her to fully unveil her lusciousness and tell me that she was about my big bodacious self stepping forward in all my glory, earrings swinging as my signature. Big boobs with nipples facing south, booty poppin’ to the side, an imagined hand on hip, she was full of confidence and swag, ready to make a bold statement for life.
I love the curves and sensuality of the Hindu goddess Parvati with her hip jutting out to the side in some sculptures. Her representation of fertility, love, devotion, as well as divine strength and power is was what I was feeling when this image was conceived, hence the name.