“Simone de Beauvoir”, pencil and watercolour on paper

When I was 5 our Grandma Pat took me to the playground in Swiss Cottage opposite her flat. (Pat was the best, always with a kit kat for us after school and lots of trips to the playground in the community centre where she helped out.) All the kids were getting their faces painted, I asked for Spiderman. I felt awesome. A group of boys came over and pushed a boy towards me who also had his face painted as Spiderman, they said ‘he’s been looking for you, you’re Spiderman’s wife’. I wanted to disappear. Simone de Beauvoir wrote about how the process of imposing gender norms begins at infancy; I wanted to reclaim my Spiderman from that day by putting it on a drawing of de Beauvoir when she was around the same age.