I smile, my right.
Even my responsibility.
Because no one else can feel for me.
No one else can know
about my feelings
without me talking about them,
and therefore cannot
respond to them.
And when I dare to be the bravest.
I dare to overcome
my innermost fears
and be honest with myself.
To ask with the gentle voice of love
from myself, from that inner
feeling child of mine.
How am I?
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
Am I scared?
Am I safe?
Do I do things that I love, work, hobbies?
Can I meet my friends?
Am I lonely?
When was the last time I laughed?
When did I cry?
What color is my world?
Does it feel like a good color?
What color was my world
when I was a child,
did it feel like a good color?
Do I feel like me and loved as me?
What is my biggest dream?
What do I want to leave
behind in this world?
To ask my inner feeling child
all the questions I want and to be silent.
To be completely quiet
and just listen.
Hear.
All of the wisdom.
All of the answers.
It's in me.
It's in you.
And in that wisdom
reside boundaries.
The boundary posts
that I have permission to raise.
Permission to hold on to.
For myself.
For you.
So that I can love myself as me.
Myself and you as you
through my own inner security.
I understood
only then will you see the joy
of a little child in my eyes.
And you ask, listening,
my love how are you.
I wrap my arms around your neck in response,
thank you for being you,
as then I get to be me.
Then I have permission to trust.
Minna Pietarinen
2023
The right to bodily self-determination and the right to set boundaries and trust that these boundaries will be respected are at the heart of human rights. Every person should have an unlimited right to decide about their own body, because decisions and human rights related to bodily self-determination are key to an individual's life, status and future. If women and girls cannot make decisions about who they want to share their lives with, with whom and when they want to have children - or whether they want to - or who they want to let near them, onto their skin, then other fundamental rights and freedoms are also threatened. Every person should have the unrestricted right to determine their own bodily boundaries and the right to experience and express love in their own natural way, with the person or people they want to give their love to.
For centuries, the world has been telling women and girls how they are never enough. How they are always too much or too little, too quiet or too loud, too big or too small. In the crossfire of contradictory, unrealistic and impossible demands and expectations, self-acceptance and self-love may be the most radical form of resistance for women and girls against patriarchal and capitalist structures and among their attitudes. In a world that throughout history has sought to rip advantage, profit and power specifically by exploiting the bodies of women and girls, setting one's own boundaries and sticking to them is also not always a matter that is only in the hands of the women themselves. How can we tell women and girls to love and respect themselves when the world doesn't always love and respect them back? When women's bodies are the battlefield of world wars, women's wombs are a bone of contention for power and politics?
But the women and girls of the world refuse to leave their bodies and their futures in the hands of others. Women and girls will not shrink themselves in order to fit into the molds that are pushed on them from the outside, and they do not agree to follow the paths that have already been trodden for them by the patriarchy. Around the world, every day, women and girls rise up to resist. Through science, art, dance, activism, politics, grassroots action, and rebellion, women and girls are asserting their right to take space in this world exactly where they want to be, exactly how they want to express themselves, without compromise, without apology. UN Women also relentlessly fights for the bodily self-determination and human dignity of women and girls around the world, so that no woman or girl has to step aside, diminish themselves or settle for anything less than the full realization of their human rights, at all levels of society.
UN Women is the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting the needs of women and girls worldwide. UN Women Finland is the Finnish National Committee of UN Women. The accompanying texts telling the stories of the women in the paintings and the rights that are depicted were written by Emma Winiecki, Head of Communications for UN Women Finland.