A Take on Ericka Hart’s Self-Portrait

A Take on Ericka Hart’s Self-Portrait

 

Who is Ericka Hart? Erika is a Black queer non-binary femme “experience.”1 Hart’s Instagram biography is a direct and intentional representation of who she is as it states that she is a sex educator, racial/social/gender justice disruptor, writer, breast cancer survivor, model, founder of the podcast Hoodrat to Headwrap, a dog parent, and prefers the pronouns she/they. In 2014, at the age of twenty-eight Hart was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. She was advised that her best chance of survival was to undergo chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, and she did just that. Two years later, Hart posted a topless photo portraying her double mastectomy scars to end the lack of queer Black representation and visibility in breast cancer awareness. Hart posts through social media outlets such as Twitter, Instagram, and her website. Hart has a public account, meaning that anyone privileged with a computer, laptop, or phone with a web browser can access Hart’s work. can access her content. With four hundred fifty-three thousand followers on Instagram and twenty-seven thousand followers on Twitter, her work has a broad reach. 

Hart’s self-portraiture engages with disability art as it focuses on a self-representation that explicitly rejects and complicates traditional representations of breast cancer survivors and people with impairments/disabilities. Hart identifies as a part of the intersection of the Black, queer, non-binary, and disabled communities. As a breast cancer survivor who identifies with multiple historically marginalized groups, Hart noticed the utter lack of visibility, both literally and figuratively, and representation of people who look like her and who have had similar lived experiences as her. When Hart noticed this, she felt that if “no one else is going to stand up and say something, then I am it.”2 Since then, she has branded herself in “topless activism,” working primarily in photographic self-portraiture3

In the self-portrait of Ericka Hart on which I’ve chosen to focus, Hart is sitting on a stool in a well-lit room in her home. She is unclothed and showing her double mastectomy scars. Her left hand covers her genitals, and her right hand covers the top of her short head of hair. To the left and right of her are several plants, a few of which are in a light wooden crate with the word “NEGRO” on it in green lettering. Underneath the crate, there are albums, one of which has a Black man with his face in the profile. Behind Hart is a poster of Sphinx by Kara Walker, a Black contemporary artist. Hart is staring directly into the camera with a slight smile on her face.

Hart was intentional in showing inaction in her self-portrait. She could have chosen to portray herself watering her plants behind her or feeding her dog, which are activities she enjoys and shares on her social media platforms. Instead, here, she opted to illustrate herself as a sort of still life. For Hart to do so challenges the racist notion that Black femmes are required to be in a state of constant production. American culture over-emphasizes production, and during slavery Black people had no other option but to produce as much as possible to survive. Subconsciously, Black people have carried that mindset to the present as they live in a capitalist society where those at the top benefit when those at the bottom “over-produce as much as possible for as little as possible in exchange.”4 In Hart’s decision to depict herself in a state of inaction, she is challenging the capitalistic society that prioritizes production over the well-being of those at the bottom. She is showing her audience that as a whole person, she deserves the beauty of stillness. To quote the artist herself, she is not “your negro or your mule.”5

Hart decided to exhibit herself nude. She preferred to be without clothes to portray herself as she sees herself. Hart’s self-portrait is a characteristic representation of her art and lifestyle, as her Instagram encompasses many photos and videos of Hart topless and caring for her plants at her home. Given Hart’s political activism and the fact that her body is proportionately sized, I ignorantly assumed that she had not had reconstructive surgery. In a breast cancer Q&A segment she featured on her Instagram, she states that she was not pressured by any of her doctors to undergo reconstructive surgery post-mastectomy. 6 She did so to exercise her bodily autonomy in choosing to have silicone implants to emulate the same-sized breasts that she had before her double mastectomy. 

Hart’s social media posts consist of her doing everyday tasks. Most of these tasks include her being at home; watering and caring for her plants; eating mangos; being in nature; spending time with her significant other, Ebony; reading and sharing her favorite books; organizing her home; posting questions and statements about the ongoing racial, social, and gender justice effort; addressing the current political climate, and so much more. She is not always topless, but she does make it a point to post photos and videos of being topless while completing everyday tasks. Hart’s Instagram is filled with posts that challenge what “impose[s] a requirement on an existence” as she challenges the racist, fatphobic, transphobic, ableist, and queerphobic ideologies rampant in western society.7 

As her audience is privy to her daily doings m, her self-portrait only enhances the emotional connection her audience already had with her. With the immediate environment of the self-portrait being a room in her home, Hart is inviting her social media audience to observe her in her most intimate form, without clothes, in her most intimate place—her home. With such an intimate portrayal of Hart, her audience likely feels a deeper emotional connection to her than they did before seeing the photograph. Hart’s self-portrait is quite similar to her other works on social media, as her self-portrait encompasses her double mastectomy scars, plants, and home. In response to the lack of representation of Black breast cancer survivors, Hart is announcing “I’m not hiding now” when she shares topless photos with her double mastectomy scars on social media.8 

Hart’s work simultaneously addresses the connection between slavery and capitalism and its effect on modern American society. Slavery is the “foundational institution of American capitalism” and the country’s subsequent history and current events are an “extension of this… dynamic.”9 In modern examinations of the history of slavery, the economic and moral distinction between slavery and capitalism, and between the South and the North, show them to have been all part of a single system—white supremacy.10 Across Hart’s Instagram, Hart identifies white supremacy as the root cause of homophobia, racism, xenophobia, fatphobia, ableism, and every other system of oppression. White supremacy is the root cause of all systems of oppression and can be overt (police brutality) or covert (gentrification, tokenism, profiling, Eurocentric curricula). Hart’s work challenges the ideologies that stem from white supremacy in society and within herself. 

Hart’s Instagram is subject to the heavy censorship of nudity and nipples on femme-presenting persons. Censorship is more prevalent towards Black plus-sized content creators than fashion companies. In sharing topless photos, Hart pushes back in an act of uncensored as she is stating that she does not have what Instagram wants to hide. In doing so, she makes herself hypervisible. Hart, through taking pictures, deepens and heals her relationship with her body as she can not hide what is there in front of a camera—she just has to “own it.” In expressing such vulnerability, Hart strengthens the community she fostered on her Instagram.

  1. “Warp Tour,” Steven Universe, aired January 8, 2015, on Cartoon Network.
  2. Cathy Cassata, “Breast Cancer Survivor Ericka Hart Bares Her Double Mastectomy Scars to Challenge Perceptions and Empower Others,” Healthline, April 18, 2019.
  3. Cassata, “Breast Cancer Survivor Ericka Hart Bares Her Double Mastectomy Scars.”
  4. Kaylee Friedman (@kayleerosetherapy), Instagram story.
  5. Ericka Hart (@ihartericka), Instagram post, 2021.
  6. Erika Hart, About,” I Hart Ericka, 2019.”
  7. David Serlin and Rachel Adams, Keywords for Disability Studies, (NYU Press, August 2015).
  8. “The Chosen,” The Hundred, aired May 17, 2017, on The CW.
  9. Nicholas Lemann, “Is Capitalism Racist?The New Yorker, May 18, 2020.
  10. Lemann, “Is Capitalism Racist?
 
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