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You are my Joan of Arc

This is a collage essay, written with.



Never has one outfit been designed to send so many messages
Earrings to empower women
Bag that helps charity jeans made in Wales
Cruelty-free coat

(Dry Cleaning, Magic of Meaghan, 2019)



Hair


Headlines read: bobbed hair leads to suit for divorce. Shocked husband shoots himself when wife bobs hair. Will men die out as bob spreads across Atlantic? Why French women want to look like men. Are women with bobbed hair infertile? and other questions you asked, we answered.

Women’s magazines said: why bobbed hair will make you look immediately younger. Five bobs for a razor sharp jawline. Swords, sequins and chainmail: meet the new power women. Coco Chanel of Paris shows the boys what boyish means. Why this bobbed blonde is even more dangerous. Wealthy men, watch out!

Antoine of Paris cuts this magic hair. Dangerous hair. Hair for work women. Hair for getting stuff done.

Watch out Lady Godiva, here’s how the new woman styles her hair for riding au cheval. Move over Beyoncé on your silver horse. She had a vision that you didn’t see. In complete glory she reveal'd herself, with those clear rays which she infused on me, that beauty am I bless'd with which you see.

Joanni blows a kiss to God
And she never wears a ring on her finger.


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Heart


Joan of Arc had a heart and she gave it as a gift.
Lesson one: Spot an abuse of power! Romantic love has normalised the dismembering of women’s bodies. Romantic love says: he will capture your heart, you will give him your hand, he will take your breath away. Say no!

Lesson two: Take back the power. Put barbed wire around your heart. A gift, but a bad gift. Like the sacred heart with thorns and flames. A very shit gift.

Lesson three: Girls have to grow up too fast. Playing dress up in sequins and plastic armour, breast plates when you’re seven. Joan was thirteen when she was spoken to by God. Another gift, another very bad gift.

Lesson four: Learn to be kids again. Steal things. Do things wrong. Use paper rather than paint, scissors rather than brushes. Collect. Make things your own. Impermanence of form is change of function. The poem will resemble you.

Lesson five: Get ready for the blood. There is no such thing as an immaculate heart. There is no such thing as virgin love. Everything is messy and everything is complicated.

Lesson six: Everything is also something else. There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. The Arcade Fire says: They’re the ones that spit on you because they’ve got no heart. I’m the one that will follow you, You are my Joan of Arc.


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Sword 


God treats Joan like a girl, which she either doesn’t realise or is temporarily satisfied with. Joan treats God like a Man, which He likes and has spent millennia to maintain. Men with swords treat themselves like God, which He also likes because they make Him look cool.


Joan says: Do you recognise me? I know you by heart.

God says: It is you I cannot sacrifice. I burn for you.

Joan says: I realise that I love you but I still have left a shred of self-respect in spite of it.

God says: King Arthur was born to fit a role. Jesus was born to fit a role. Joan of Arc will become a saint. Your divine heart overflows with love for humanity.

Joan says: My divine heart overflows with love for you.

God says: Joan, you are only thirteen. I am 1431 AD.

Joan says: That didn’t seem to be a problem before.

A glowing sword descends from heaven, the clouds close.

God says: You will be my main punk influence.

Joan says: I want to be a boy.


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Written with


Acker, Kathy. “Against Ordinary Language. The Language of the Body.” In The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies, edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993.

Arcade Fire. Joan of Arc. 2013.

Bergman, Ingmar. Winter Light. 1963.

Bush, Kate. Joanni. 2005.

Jolly, Penny Howell. “Hair: Untangling a Social History.” Art History Faculty Scholarship 8 (2004).

Quinn, Julia. The Duke and Daphne. Bridgerton, Season 1 Episode 15. Netflix, 2020.

Shakespeare, William. History of Henry VI, Part I. London: Penguin Classics, 2015.

Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda. Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018.

Truffaut, Francois. Antoine et Colette. 1962.

Varda, Agnes. La Pointe Courte. 1956.




This text was published by 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow, in ‘Rapture, Rupture: Womxn in Collage’, 2023.