Boss Bitches of Athens

“you don’t have to like it”

“Over a Year Ago”

Kimberly Fiscus, 30, from Toccoa, Georgia, poses for a series of portraits at her home on the Hill, a historic neighborhood in Athens, Georgia. Kim is a stay-at-home mom and wife to photographer Jim Fiscus. She and I spent a beautiful spring afternoon walking along her family’s property talking about motherhood, modern feminism and the value of close-knit communities like that she has found in Athens.

What do you think are the big components of your identity as a woman?Right now, it’s all tied up in being a mom. I feel like I’ve always embraced the feminine role and my feminine nature and I think that it’s so powerful to be a woman because we can do anything in life, like in a tangible way, but also because we create life, and it’s so magical. Having gone through that and to watch what your body can do, and to feel so tied to all the generations before you, like to your mom and your grandmother and your great-grandmother. All of these women have done this for years, that’s how life goes on. 

It just feels so powerful to be a woman, because we can do anything.

It’s not really about beauty or anything like that, but it’s about [how] my body can not only create a human life, but sustain it for the first year of the baby’s life. Purely with my body, which is really amazing. And I’ve always felt good about myself and good about being a woman, but going through that makes me have such a greater respect for what we can do. I think women get such a bad rap, and I think women do it to ourselves a lot of times. We’re like, oh, we’re not given the same opportunities, but we’ve got it going on. We need to embrace what we can do that men can’t do, because it’s a lot, you know?

What women inspire you? Artistically, Rinne [Allen] and people who are doing what they want to do despite living here...because it can feel like a very small town. So I think those are the ones that inspire me the most. Like, who don’t let Athens sort of––not trap them in––but limit their capabilities and their mindset and their boundaries and their connections.

And then on the other side of that is there are a couple of moms who have become my good friends who just genuinely care about what they do. Who make very conscious decisions every day in raising kids, and they don’t just do it by default. They give so much of themselves all the time in all these different ways. And so they inspire me. 

These women continually inspire me for their vision, creative work and how they benefit Athens as a whole: Rinne Allen, Kristen Bach, Kat and Susan of Sweet Olive Farm, Mandy O’Shea, Jo Nicol, [and] Shae Sims. There are so many great women in this community.

It’s really great that women can do anything we want to do. There’s so much progress that’s been made in the women’s front. But right now all I want to do is stay at home and raise my kids and do other things that fulfill me. But I don’t want to go to work. So I think that’s the whole flip-side of the feminist movement is we can do everything, but there’s almost this pressure of, well, since we can do everything, we need to do everything or else we’re wasting it. 

It took me a while to feel comfortable with saying I stay at home with my kids because I always feel like I need to justify it.

I think that people are just learning that that isn’t enough, and that just because we can work 40 hours a week and provide for our family and raise kids and cook and clean, it’s okay. We don’t want to do all of that, you know? I don’t think the expectation should be there that we need to do all of that just because we can.

I want [my daughter] to know that it’s okay to stay at home with her kids or be a doctor or whatever, or be anything she wants to be and have someone else take care of her kids. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s just about doing what works for you, works for your family, makes you happy.

I’ve always felt pretty good about myself. I guess as a person and as a female. But I don’t feel like all women who become moms are like this. But for me, I feel like being a mom is my thing, and I hit my stride and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, and I’m so happy. I mean, I have bad days and it’s really hard sometimes, but overall it’s what I want to be doing. As a result of that, I just feel so much better about myself. I don’t care what people think anymore because I’m happy and I’m doing what I want to do. My husband loves me and the kids love me and it’s really all I care about at this point, you know? Not to say that of course you don’t wonder sometimes, what do they think of me? But overall, if I’m happy, it doesn’t matter anymore. 

"35 Days, Give or Take" 

Kodak disposable film and permanent marker, January 2016

Jen Holt, 25, of Columbus, Georgia, poses for a portrait outside her home in Athens, Georgia. Jen works at local doughnut haven Ike & Jane and creates art in the form of photograms, utilizing a photo enlarger in the bathroom of her apartment to create images of natural objects without a camera.

Jen and I sipped beers at Hi-Lo a few weekends ago to talk about her art, how she defines female beauty and her relationship with Athens.

What do you call your work? I call them photograms...it’s camera-less photography and I don’t use any camera but I use the traditional black and white developing process. I started it actually in 2009. I took a photography class my last semester at Columbus State, being present there, and our professor was awesome. The first day we were going through the syllabus and he was like, “I just want you to mark out the last paragraph for the final. Just mark all of it out. We’re gonna talk about it when we get closer to it.” Time came down and he taught us about photograms and he taught us about everything that has to do with developing black and white film. 

Once he taught us about photograms, I was just so fascinated with the fact that you could explore different mediums. We burned film, we scratched film, we did all sorts of things but I would take flower petals and I would put them in the enlarger and I could see all the veins. It was kind of like an x-ray for plants. So I started exploring that medium and when it came time for the final, he was like, “I just want you to take something you learned in this class and I want you to explore that.”

What do you like and dislike about being a woman?  I really like feeling beautiful because feminine beauty [or] femininity has always been a very beautiful thing to me. I think embracing that beauty has been hard. It’s not necessarily that I’ve always been like, “Oh I’m beautiful so I feel great about it.” There is so much about me that is so unique and special because I am a woman. I experience things differently. I think about things differently. I see things differently. My perspective is totally different. But the wonderful part about that is realizing that everyone has that. It’s a solidarity more so than an isolation situation. 

It’s being able to define what beauty means to me rather than what’s projected onto me. Of course everyone struggles with self-esteem and what they see as beautiful or what so-and-so thinks is beautiful is not necessarily what so-and-so thinks is beautiful. But being able to define for myself what I find beautiful.

Fundamentally, I don’t like having a period. It’s not fun. It messes with me hormonally in all the ways. Obviously I think that’s a very universal woman complaint. I’m grateful for that because that’s part of what sets us apart, but also the sacrifice that our body makes every single month or every nine months, hypothetically...I don’t think men could handle it. I’m kinda grateful that we’re the ones who deal with it. We’re the ones that get to handle all the pain because we actually have the capacity for it. That’s also what I find so beautiful. The part that I don’t love is also part of what I love about it. I love that we were given, from some weird sense of nature deciding things, that we were strong enough to carry the burden of this every month until our bodies are done. It’s continuously destroying itself to rebuild itself. I love that. Every month you get room to grow (or a womb to grow).

What brought you to Athens? I came to Athens initially to help my brother pay rent but to get into UGA. I transferred from Columbus State University with a general arts degree and then when I came here I was like, “I’m gonna teach students. I’m gonna teach anything,” and then I started out as an education major and was like, no, I don’t want to do this. Even being in Aderhold [Hall] made me uncomfortable. My mom is a teacher and I knew the bureaucracy of teaching was not something that I fit into just because I’m so much like my mom. But I definitely moved here to go to school and I got an art history degree and I love it. I’m so stoked on my degree. I had some reservations about getting an art history degree because it is one of those degrees where you have to keep going with it to get any kind of career in it, essentially, or you could just carve your own path, which I was really into. That’s kind of how I was raised. My dad definitely guided me in a lot of really great ways but he was also very encouraging of me questioning everything and like making my own path and deciding things for myself, which has been a struggle but it’s really rewarding to be like, “I made this decision. I’m in this place because I made this decision and I’m really grateful for it.” I’ve just learned to be grateful for the things that I get presented with. 

What made you stay in Athens? I stayed in Athens because initially, when I graduated, I was like, this pond is too small. I’m a big fish. I gotta get out and make my splashes somewhere else. I realized that actually the struggle that I had was not with this town. It was with myself. I had a lot of hangups of “the opportunities just aren’t here. I feel like I’m not gonna get fed the way I need to be fed and I just need to grow.” I realized that a lot of my struggle wasn’t gonna change if I went to a different city. It wasn’t gonna change if I went anywhere else. I had to work on me first so I stuck around to feel the comfort of this place. It is really comforting to walk into a bar by myself and know that I’m gonna run into five of my friends. 

After I got past the wanting to leave part and I decided to stay, I started meeting people who were also wanting to stay and were very encouraging. They have opportunities that they can reach out to me and they know the talents that I hold and are like, “you would be useful in this situation.” I pretty much just started loving this town for what it was rather than what I wanted it to be. It worked out great because I’m really happy with the situation that I’m in. I have so many friends that are encouraging and really positive women that I surround myself with. I don’t think that I would’ve been able to find that. The older that you get, the harder that it is to find friends because people are in their cliques and they don’t really want to let you in because you could be intimidating or something could be a little bit off about you that they’re not cool with or you could just be a little too goofy and not take yourself seriously enough. 

It’s the beauty of choosing to accept yourself as the way that you are, as well as other people around you in the town that you’re in and being present in this place, [that] opens up so many opportunities.

Maybe I don’t got it next week, but I got it right now and it’s one day at a time.

This week I got to listen to my friend Jianna play music as Penny Lame at a packed-yet-intimate house show and at the famous 40 Watt Club. Both instances were equally magical. Click the link and give this girl a thumbs up! 

She’s young, talented and her music is honest. It makes me think, makes me mad at boys and basically gives me all the feels. I can’t wait to watch this girl go.

(polaroid by me)

Colette Arrand, a PhD student in creative writing from Dearborn, Michigan, poses for a series of portraits at the University of Georgia’s main library on Sunday, November 8, 2015. Colette and I first met at The Klatch, a monthly meeting for feminists and folks who identify outside the gender binary. 

We made photos on a rainy Sunday afternoon at one of Colette’s favorite spaces on campus, the Mad Men-esque third floor reading room, and chatted about pro wrestling, why Caitlyn Jenner can’t be our trans savior and Athens as a trans-inclusive community. 

When did you move to Athens? I've been living in Georgia for two and a half years. I came down for the degree. I had never been here before, but it was one of those things...I've always been really into music so I always had an impression of Athens.

What do you primarily focus on in your work? Right now I’m working on a couple of different essay projects...I’m writing a series of essays for all 151 of the original Pokemon. They’re all very short, very brief. I have about 30 so far, which is a lot. I’m writing a pretty regular series of essays about music videos on the Internet and also I tend to write pretty frequently about pro wrestling because that was what I was pretty into as a child and what I’m still into.

Who’s your favorite pro wrestler? Of all time? Probably Macho Man Randy Savage. Currently? I don’t know. Probably Sasha Banks...She’s pretty amazing. She’s got this great sense of style and is a pretty amazingly put-together character, which is really, really rare on mainstream television.

When it comes to women characters, at least for a long time, it was always the bubbly girl next door or the centerfold model. Those were the two characters–– or like the nice girl and the bitch. That was it. But Sasha Banks is completely different and other characters who are also in the same realm as her are totally different too. It’s changing. It’s a slow maturation process that should’ve happened 20 years ago but, you know, better late than never. 

You only recently came out as trans, is that correct? About six months ago.

Is there anything you're willing to share with folks who would read the blog about that experience? The coming out process was surprisingly good. When you start doing this, I think the assumption and the general perspective that people have of it is "This is going to be a disaster. My friends aren't gonna get it, my family is gonna disown me. I'll be starting all over again." But at the same time, the alternative is to just be kind of miserable...I was having a lot of trouble sleeping at night. It was terrible. Psychologically, it was just miserable pre-coming out. Everyone that I told up until I started telling my family were really accepting. The second or third person I told was a professor here and she was totally cool with it. She invited me over to dinner––it was nice. That's generally been how that aspect of it has been. At this point, whenever there's somebody who doesn't know or didn't see when I came out, they're always like, "I mean, why didn't you tell me?" Well, it gets kind of tiresome. You know 400 people or whatever. Can you imagine telling 400 people the same thing over and over again? No, that's a terrible experience.

Here it's been great for the most part. My family, I think, kind of gets it or is trying to get it. It's an adjustment because they knew me as one thing every day for 27 years and all of a sudden I'm telling them, "Hey, everything you knew about that is different in this one way." But perception of gender in society is such that even something that to me is as small as, "Hey, I've experienced all of this as a woman and I want people to know that," taken the other way and kind of looked at from my mom's point of view or my sister's point of view or anyone in my family or even long-time friends, that's like, "My entire experience of this person has changed in some fundamental way."

Do you think Athens has been an inclusive community or have you had negative experiences? I think it's been inclusive for the most part. I haven't had that many negative experiences outside of a couple of times when I've gone out in public and strangers have been weird. But that's part of the narrative. It sucks, but how do you get used to that? The same way that people get immune to poison, I guess. Just experience it over and over again until it's just another thing. For a long time it was one of those things where every time I would go out in a dress or anything, it was a long production that went into it. I had to get ready for it and then experience the day and then spend the rest of the day decompressing. Even if I was just at a friends house because you never know––you never know what's going to happen. There's a big, vast space between safe space and safe space but, you know, the community is good. It's weird, I always have this perception of the queer community in Athens is one that's kind of big but also kind of underground. It's there but it's invisible.

What do you think of trans folks who are popular in media right now? I think it's really great. I also think that the importance of some of them is somewhat overstated. A question that I'm frequently asked kind of along the lines of that is, "Does Caitlyn Jenner make it easier?" Well, no. Caitlyn Jenner doesn't make it easier. To some extent, women like Janet Mock don't make it easier. They do in the sense that Janet Mock is an absolutely brilliant woman who's out there educating people publicly and certainly lives up to a cis-normative beauty standard and at the same time speaks out against it. That's incredibly valuable.

But as important as representation is, there's also the other reality, which is that trans women have never been more visible but we've also never been more aware of how much violence is committed against trans women.

So it's scary that people can mark you like that and respond like that. I have undeniable privilege as a white trans woman where I am much less likely to run into that and as far as that goes, that's great...for me. That's great for me. But I still have to be aware of that and aware of regardless of shows like “Transparent” or “Sense8” or “Orange is the New Black” or anything like that, that representation is a symptom of change, not the end result. So how do we move forward from being happy that there's four transgender actors and actresses out there? That's kind of the next thing.

What makes you feel like an independent woman or like a boss bitch? I was actually talking to my next-door neighbor yesterday and she said this in a really nice way...because I've heard it in less positive ways too, but she said, "You know the thing that you're giving up is male privilege," which is true in a sense. I certainly am. 

And I think that's, if not a radical act, then [it’s] a way that I at least feel in a sense that I am fitting into my idea of womanhood as this thing that I've experienced for most of my life...I've been pretty turned on in terms of feminism my whole life so I've been aware of that privilege and hated that privilege and have done my best to work against it. I think that completely shirking it in some sense is how I would probably call myself a boss bitch right now. It's a pretty radical thing to actually do that, especially thinking about the narrative of transitioning that's out in public, like in the public eye right now. Somebody announces that they're trans and then they disappear for a little while and return as this absolutely beautiful bombshell, 1950s femme woman, which is amazing. I think that transformation is absolutely nuts but that was never the type of girl that I saw myself being growing up. So really just kind of realizing and accepting that the body and the way it's perceived is always going to be in this state of chaos and change and harnessing that––that's what it is to me, I think.