Outed a blog collaboration with Northern Creative

This is a blog collaboration between Northern Creative and Photography by Lubo where Joanne Hartley writes in response to one of my images.

Outed 

 

 

Outed from the playground by the boys from year twelve. The boys aren’t even using the swing! They’re just trying to bunny hop over the seesaw on their BMXs and scratching up the side of the slide on their skate boards.

Even though two girls try to emulate them by wearing the same clothes and trainers; they hate boys.

That ‘tom boy’ phase; uneasy about the complexities of the femininity that will follow, enjoying the freedom of their last remaining weeks and months of childhood before they begin to fret at the fringes of adolescence, these carefree days behind them.

Putting off the responsibilities that come with the gender they’ve been blessed with by denying it, a phase tolerated with amusement by the parents who allow their offspring the freedom to choose and to make decisions regarding their appearance, rather than imposing their own, to breed independence as suggested by the Guardian on Sunday magazine.

The parents worry only fleetingly about their daughters’ gender defiance, they’ve a vague recollection of an article once read somewhere that deemed this normal and seem to recall a phase of something similar themselves.

They needn’t worry at all.

These two young things will bloom and blossom into paragons of womanliness and retaining their friendship bond they will go out together to another kind of playground. This one will be made up of bars and nightclubs and flirtation and glints in their eyes. Thankful for their curves and they will enjoy the power that they now hold over the boys, perhaps the same boys who were once from year twelve.

 

I am always amazed and pleased at what Joanne sees in my pictures and has the extraordinary ability to put into beautiful prose.