Dress Me Sexy

I am interested in community and engagement. I feel a need in our culture to find ways of connecting with and participating in community. We are no longer limited to communities based on geographic location. Through the internet and the ease of global communication and travel, we can engage in communities of mutual interests that cross the boundaries of language and location.

Conversation creates community. In the blogosphere, you find emerging communities based on sharing ideas. The bloger sets the tone by laying out their beliefs. Then a community forms through participation in the dialog.

One way to create this engagement is to give away a part of myself: my thoughts, beliefs, abilities, even my body. For example, in this project “Dress Me Sexy,” I asked people to dress me in outfits that they considered sexy and then interviewed people of the opposite sex asking, “What is or is not sexy about this outfit?” I gave the participants authorship over my public identity. This trust created a strong, personal connection.

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