The Madwoman in the Kitchen

Today’s Adventure of the [High Heels] is coming a bit late but I have a good reason for this, I promise. I took a trip back to the 1950s for a photoshoot that combined the New Woman with liberation through art and a short story I love so much - The Yellow Wallpaper. The studio? The kitchen. The photographer? Jeanine, of course.

It was actually fun to play the role of the ‘narrator’ from the story. I gradually went mad as my makeup got smudged and Jeanine was putting colours on blank paper. I looked at flowers, I washed dishes, I cooked, I wrote, I swiped the ceiling, then I lost it completely and became the woman in the wallpaper. ‘Liberation through madness’ - as the 50s feminist critics would call it.

Now, when you ask yourself ‘what did feminists do?’, one of the simple answers is - ‘women don’t have to go mad in their kitchen/bedroom/attic; they have the right to go out and see a doctor without approval from men’.