Bitches In Heat: Lydia Pettit & Olivia Sterling

‘The desire for fat people is a strange one for the public to grapple with; it's not depicted in much media unless you count PornHub or a punchline to a shit joke made by an edgy bore. The desires of fat people are depicted even less so. I think it confuses people almost as much as the act of murder itself.’ 

• Alison Spittle

Mouths froth and hands grab in Lydia Pettit and Olivia Sterling’s ‘Bitches in Heat’, a raucous, untamed exploration of desire on the margins. Pettit, inspired by Paula Rego’s iconic dog women, crawls across the floor in one sweeping canvas, with sharp, talon-like nails and bared teeth. Sterling depicts a pair of legs playfully dangling through the ceiling above directions for the ladies’ room, as a hand passes a retro cocktail from the corner of the canvas. Their appetites, symbolised through Sterling’s use of food and Pettit’s feral self-portraits, are at times unapologetically animalistic, challenging the limited contemporary cliches of who is desired – and how. Inspirations verge from the ominous shadows of ‘The Evil Dead’ to the bawdy humour of Beryl Cook and Otto Dix’s muscular, feline reclining woman. 

Together, the works portray the nature of libido as it exists within and for the self. It is a pure expression of individual wants and appetites, free from the projected desire of others or the pressure to live into them. These works vividly convey the id, the unconscious part of the mind described by Freud as “chaos, a cauldron full of somatic influences”. Within this, unbridled drives run rampant, untampered by the moral judgements and shame of the ego and surrounding world. This sits in stark contrast with the female experience, which is severely judged and shamed by external voices, and violently guilted out of natural desires.

Pettit and Sterling depict drives as variously impish, menacing, and carnal. As red eyes glisten through the shadows and hands reach mischievously into boxes of chocolates, both artists share the parts of ourselves that become locked away, as they claw to find a way out. These are the drives that become othered and rejected, pushed down in response to trauma or stigmas in the external world which make even our own desires feel wrong or misplaced. For ‘Bitches in Heat’, both artists invite their ids out to play. In the words of Paula Rego, “to be a dog woman is not necessarily to be downtrodden; that has very little to do with it. In these pictures every woman’s a dog woman, not downtrodden but powerful.”

Words by Emily Steer

Bitches In Heat by Alison Spittle

I once saw a woman with my body type on the news, I was shocked because she had a head. I'm used to seeing fat bodies used in news reports, filmed from the neck down, just unsuspecting members of the public trundling down the high street whilst journalists speak about a proposed sugar tax whilst statistics of the obesity epidemic flash across their anonymous torsos. 

This lady wasn’t anonymous, far from it, she was murdered. Once murdered a person turns into a celebrity, a character in a parable. Through no effort of my own, I found out far too much about her. I knew her desires, the websites she visited and her mental health history. 

Through no effort of my own,  I found out what people thought of her, “Have you seen his wife? She’s thin! How could he stray? He must have been into some sick stuff” My mind would flick back to the picture of the woman on the news who looked a bit like me. It’s the type of picture families choose for their murdered loved ones, a formal occasion, probably their last big memory together, they’re in their best clothes, it’s the only time when the family remembers to document every one. Looking at the picture I feel I can see myself in her.  I can see a resigned smile, pushing full cheeks into small eyes. The tense upper arms are tastefully covered in charmeuse, the architecture of a plus size formal dress, the ruching. A pose that says “Quick take the picture” as if being perceived is like holding her hand over a lit stove. 

Over kitchen tables and on buses I’d overhear concerned conversations. The victim didn’t seem to have agency, instead she had “self-esteem issues that were exploited by the murderer”.  Whether the murderer desired his fat victim is neither here nor there, he saw her as someone who should be thankful for his attention and most of all he saw her as disposable. 

The desire for fat people is a strange one for the public to grapple with; it's not depicted in much media unless you count PornHub or a punchline to a shit joke made by an edgy bore. The desires of fat people are depicted even less so. I think it confuses people almost as much as the act of murder itself.