'I want to be Weird'
Raising my body image and self-expression to new heights.
Resurrecting the friendship between Britain and Iceland.
Through women, spandex, music and art.

I am leaving London in October, for Iceland, an unstable volcanic lunar landscape of a country at the top of the world. In this arctic land of only three hundred thousand people, I finally have the opportunity to become a Weird Girl after putting my name on a waiting list in 2008 and I can’t wait.

The Weird Girls  - “an extraordinary art event for ordinary girls” - is a one day event. I will be told to turn up to a mystery location, given a costume and directed in a choreographed and filmed performance piece. The performance is the art and the piece recorded, sometimes for posterity only, sometimes for a music video for a band or DJ’s. It has been described as everything from pop art to female activism. 

The Weird Girls are part body image therapy, part art, part public performance, part fashion show, part video installation and totally unique. We will see why this new and particular style of female public participation art has taken Iceland by storm.  
  All around the world women are confined by pressures of body image, constantly being seduced by the media into a glamorous world of beauty and perfection.  The distinction between the public performer, paid model/actress and the rest of us, the private ordinary women is quite the divide. 

This film seeks to address these issues of body image and performance from these two opposing perspectives.

I will conduct interviews with experts in the field of female body image and psychology, as well as talk to well-known models and actresses who will discuss their feelings about body image, weight and the relationship this has to their performances.

As much as I am fascinated by the idea, I confess to having some nerves about exposing all my bits to the unforgiving spandex, [lycra] which is always part of the Weird Girls costumes. It seems to be the perfect antidote to my female self-consciousness. My mother was a professional model in her time, and after my brief foray as a child model, I became a gawky, self-conscious and spotty teenager, ever aware of my imperfections.

Kitty Von Sometime created the Weird Girl Project three years ago. She started the events to alleviate Saturday night boredom for her and her friends, and thus provided a vehicle for women to express themselves free of bodily anxieties. Since then The Weird Girls Project has quickly became a national phenomenon in Iceland, every episode is covered by the national TV and print media, and is gaining popularity in the rest of the world, particularly Britain, with full page spreads in Shots as well as Dazed and Confused magazines in 2009.

Amongst the financial ruins that recently beset Iceland, British expatriate Kitty’s’ cultural, artistic, musical, choreographed spandexed big day out, - The Weird Girls - lives on. The film will also reveal in part, previous episodes of this women only extravaganza, from the original episode in 2006 to the present day, that has so far included spandex clad sword fighting bunnies, luscious mermaids and one-eyed gorgons.
Episode 12 will see me, hopefully devoid of inhibitions, frolicking about in a costume designed to accentuate everything I usually try to hide. This will be my first opportunity to participate in such spectacular performance art and I intend to make the most of my quest.

Some of the women from previous episodes will be in Episode 12 and will join me. Lilja Helgadottir is a recovered anorexic, psychology student and eating disorders counsellor to name one. I will also meet some ‘virgin’ Weird Girls like myself who have never been Weird Girls before. We will journey together during the build up to and recording of Episode 12. I will explore with them how being a Weird Girl has contributed and will contribute to their artistic and psychological well being and discover how my immersion as a Weird Girl changes me. Kitty will give her insights into how this collective has grown and how she feels it has changed her and other peoples lives.

This film will follow a traditional format of television journalist in formal first person mode in which my reflexivity and narrative personae are communicative strategies intended to deliver us to another object of intention. There will be narration. The wider issues of body image and performance art will be revealed through the interviews and my exploration and emotional experience of being a Weird Girl.

It will also be a visually compelling piece, at times highly atmospheric as the Weird Girls interact with the stunning Icelandic environment. Music from the previous episodes will be included which will add to the feeling and mood. The film will be cinematically beautiful creating a magic realism, which will further capture the imagination of the viewer.

My quest will start in London, recalling my discovery and subsequent request to become a Weird Girl. Then follows the dramatic arc of my arrival in Iceland, to meeting my fellow weird compatriots and our anticipation, preparation and participation as Weird Girls.  Followed by my return back in the UK, wearing my extraordinarily fabulous loud and shiny spandex outfit through Heathrow airport as I come home, back to London, to my ordinary life. All this will be interspersed with the contributions from our professional interviewees.
Women everywhere will respond positively to the films narrative, gaining comfort that they too could be a Weird Girl, a performer, a self expressive spandex queen, regardless of height, weight, age or acting ability. Caring not a whit for stereotypical body images this film will inspire women to unleash the performer and liberate the Weird Girl in us all.

“There is a wonderful characteristic in the Icelandic mentality - fearlessness, with an addiction to risk-taking to the point of being foolhardy. I’m not sure the stock market is the right place for these characteristics. In music making, storytelling and creative thought, this risk-taking is a great thing.” Björk