ILLUSTRATED
TWERK GLOSSARY

In the world of twerking, styling your body and your appearance, stripping off in public, asserting your coquetry and seduction are not synonymous with submission to a patriarchal gaze. On the contrary, these actions symbolize power and control over women’s bodies and the desire that they provoke. Twerking can therefore be celebrated as a way of reappropriating our bodies and our sensuality, offering women (and black women in particular) a space to assert themselves in resistance to the Western standards of beauty that have historically devalued and stigmatized them. 

From another point of view, the rise of BBL (a form of cosmetic surgery designed to increase curves) can be seen as a way of accepting these very same standards, meaning that empowerment is achieved by conforming to the rigid norms of mainstream media and culture. We also know that Vixens (professional twerkers and music video performers) are subjected to the pressure of an industry which valorizes their bodies while keeping most of them in precarious conditions. Mostly coming from marginalized communities, they are underpaid, deprived of contractual stability and exposed to violence and exploitation.

Although highly contrasting, these perspectives coexist and overlap, revealing the paradoxes that surround the practice of twerking: both a pure product of the entertainment industry that exploits women’s bodies, and an act of resistance and empowerment. Rather than resolving the contradiction, Twerk Nation project and its “Illustrated Glossary” offer a reflection on the ambivalence and complexity of our struggles, whether obvious or subtle.

The 5 text-image compositions gathered on this web page use words and objects from popular culture (Fanny’s buttocks – a feminine character whose ass you have to kiss when you lose a game of pétanque without scoring a single point, Bum Bum Cream) to question our ways of looking at things, and the sexist, racist or exoticizing biases that condition our relationships to bodies and sexualities. They attempt to shed light on the complexity of our experiences, accepting that twerking can be both seen as a source of oppression and liberation. This is also precisely one of the aims of the Twerk Nation project: questioning power structures, challenging dominant narratives and exploring forms of resistance that escape pre-established paradigms.