'Ferine' — A Photo Project on PCOS and Internalized Fatphobia

Online Exclusives - Issue No. 8: THE FUTURE IS FAT

Photography and Words by Kate Glass

Sixteen-year-old girls shouldn’t have to worry about growing a beard, but I did. I silently suffered through my polycystic ovary syndrome symptoms for six years before finally being diagnosed at nearly age twenty-two. One of my main symptoms was menstruating biannually, so after I began menstruating normally in 2023, I routinely harvested my blood with tampons and cups which I then drained and froze in jars. As I processed my newfound interest in reproductive and endocrine health, I used the nineteenth-century gum bichromate print process to create a formula to photographically hand-print with my blood as pigment.

This is the foundation of my ongoing body of photographic work titled “I Was Here – The Bearded Woman,” which is the metaphorical interpretation of my PCOS and lipedema experience. I photographed my “socially unacceptable” body in the nude and glued my male pattern PCOS facial hair to my blood prints, which was my rebellious catharsis as I processed the gender dysphoria, confusion, grief, self-blame, and isolation that come with these conditions. My goal with this work is to not only challenge my own internalized fatphobia and self-doubt, but to also show others that you do not have to be afraid of your own body, blood, or “abnormalities”.