The underestimated sensitivity
“The underestimated sensitivity” is a personal and collaborative project which explores how sensitivity can be seen in a different way to combat stereotypes around sensitivity and challenge norms of culture and gender which affects our behavior, as well as our personality and well-being.
In 1997 Doctor Elaine Aron released a book called “The highly sensitive person”, and she coined the term for this personality type. Many highly sensitive persons have grown up being told they are “too sensitive” and “need to toughen up”. The word sensitive has gotten a negative association, that you have almost believed that the sensitive side of yourself, should be hidden in the dark. But for what good?
As a way for me to connect more with the word sensitive, I wrote a letter. Through this format, I could talk to sensitivity with its needed respect, both for its more complex but also beautiful sides.
“It felt freeing to write that letter and it felt like an appreciation and acknowledgement for something that I always wanted to hide away. It was almost like a moment of self-forgiveness because I allowed myself to feel my sensitivity more.” – Collaborator
As I chose to work with the word sensitive in this project, I wanted to work with typography as a way of change. My starting point began looking at research for what is considered to be a “masculine” and “feminine” typeface, since I want to reach all audiences in the highly sensitive community, regardless of gender. Marion Bisserier created a font, Good Girl, in 2019 as a reaction to the underrepresentation of women in the typographic industry and was interested in how we as women could reappropriate ourselves some space. She further describes that she wanted to avoid the caricature of what a feminine typeface should look like.
For these reasons, I chose to work with the Good Girl font. I have thereafter given each letter a more messy look, as a way of communicating the complexity of sensitivity, that it sometimes can feel frustrating and tiring, but in the end is very worthy for all the beauty it gives. I decided to have it in capital letters, to take up more space, and in an arc shape, bringing the first i in the middle, as a way of saying that I am sensitive and I am proud of it. Where the other i, is placed as an exclamation mark, representing that sensitivity is important and that we all are sensitive in one way or another.
I know I wanted within this project something that you could wear, as a way of remembering by wearing. I therefore tested to screenprint sensitive and other chosen words on what sensitivity means for me on a T-shirt. I did feel some resistance wearing a T-shirt with sensitive on it. However, after talking to my collaborators and the thoughts I had, made me realize that it should be worn, since this can be a way to destigmatize the word itself, in order to create change. The importance of the T-shirt is to make it yourself, by using screen print as a way of making and reflecting on what relationship you have with sensitivity and what it means for you.
“It felt like a nourishing practice for acknowledging my sensitivity and printing these words on the shirt made a conscious ‘imprint’ of sensitivity in my mind”– Collaborator
The T-shirt is more of a statement, when wearing it in public, I wanted therefore to have something that is more intimate, just between you and your sensitivity. Which became a lightbox, because for me, something else happens when light is put together with another material, it comes to life. I want the lightbox to create a space somewhere in your home to have it, as a reminder that bad days come and go, but you, and the sensitivity, is of great importance.
“Thoughts do not become so threatening when they are allowed to come out and be aired in the light.” – Collaborator
Next to the lightbox, are two poems I wrote, as a way of expressing myself on what sensitivity means for me. The fear that can be, of the sensitive side of oneself. Can I dare to show all of myself? Without social norms commenting the way I am? But if I can allow myself, despite norms and the hard grip of capitalism, to be able to take in and listen to what is inside and be at peace with what one experiences, sees and feels. Because there are a lot of beautiful things in life sensitivity gives me, which I am truly grateful for to experience.
