2021

A boy’s world

comic

What does it mean to grow up as a girl in a society that is marked by patriarchy?

To show the everyday struggle for teenage girls, Lea Al Chaa, Amena Eldefrawy, Corinne Wiss, Julia Fässler and myself collected stories of our teenage years. But we switched the roles. We let a boy experience this world. A world where you are told to not be sensitive and shy, a world where you are supposed to be smiling and happy. Through exchanging roles we encourage boys to think further, to question their behavior towards girls, to step out of their experience.

To be respectful to our different cultural surroundings, we wanted to share a story from each one of us. A story from Egypt, Germany, Lebanon, Morocco and Switzerland. Sharing our experiences with each other we realized, all of us can relate to all of these stories. We are aware that this project reemphasizes the binary structure of sexes. We strongly encourage changing attitudes and social structures to recognize sex and gender as a spectrum.

screenshot of instagram page of 'a boy's world'
comic strip named 'don't be sensitive' showing a boy having his period and his sister annoying him
First comic strip of the 'don't be hairy' series showing a boy that's made fun of by the girls in his school because of his armpit hair, then the boy getting frustrated at his father because he's told that it's normal, that he can't get rid of it yet
second comic strip of the series 'don't be hairy' in which the boy grows even more hair on his body and the girls make fun of him even though they're just as hairy. His father finally let him get rid of the hair because the boy was crying in his room
first comic strip of the series 'don't be shy' in which a boy is getting harrassed in the bus by two women
second comic strip of the series 'don't be shy'. the boy gets out of the bus and one of the women follows him and slaps his ass making the boy feels powerless and helpless.
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