Gathering

Entertainment or gatherings that gears itself towards persons who identify as female are often looked down upon for being silly, stupid, frivolous etc. etc. Books, movies, music: if the target audience is female it’s almost guaranteed to be made fun of or not taken seriously by society as a whole at some point in its popularity. But a new art project and devised performance is giving the female gathering its due with the creation of The Sleepover.

The Sleepover is a Baltimore based community art project created by Ann Turiano in celebration of female gathering traditions. Think girls trips, ladies nights, girl scouts, and of course sleepovers just to name a few. Inspired by the way she saw the women in her life coming together during the pandemic, Turiano has asked for submissions documenting the unique experience of female gatherings across generations and cultures. These submissions could range from essays to photos to artwork and beyond which will then be curated into a digital gallery art exhibit and later help to serve as inspiration for a new online performance.

Though the deadline for submissions has passed (I got mine in with a whole 30 minutes left on the clock, thank you very much) you can still support The Sleepover by following them on Instagram and Facebook or joining their email list to keep up to date on the project!

Jonathan worked with Turiano years ago and is actually the one who brought The Sleepover to my attention and I’m so glad he did. I can’t help but be drawn to projects like this that focus on female activities/traditions that so often go overlooked by mainstream media because they don’t find them worthy of our attention. But female focused entertainment is one of the things that has brought me some of my best bonding and most cherished memories with my girl friends. I only shared one story with The Sleepover ( focused heavily on the Twilight obsession my friends and I suffered in 2008,) but while trying to choose which gathering to share, I was reminded of so many other moments of bonding I’ve had with my female friends over the years.

It was with three or four other girls that I tried smoking pot for the first time on the balcony of a beach house we had rented. It was too damn windy and I couldn’t figure out how to use the bowl so one of my friends had to cover the hole while I tried to light it, the whole time the others coaching me through inhaling. It was a hilarious disaster.

It was in girl scouts where I met my two oldest friends when we were only in kindergarten. The pictures of us dressed up in bathing suits and hula skirts for a Mother’s Day pageant still make us laugh.

It was at a 4th grade birthday sleepover for a classmate that I played light as a feather stiff as a board for the first time and discovered the fun of doing witchy shit with a group of girls. We danced around to Shania Twain’s Come On Over album on repeat that night and to this day any song from that album immediately takes me back to that living room.

We’ve bonded over periods, tattoos, and, impromptu road trips. Over fictional characters, boy bands, crafts, and bachelorette outings. Each female focused gathering has left a mark on me in ways I never thought much about until The Sleepover gave me a reason to look back on all those moments and appreciate the memories they’ve left behind.

So even though submissions might be closed on The Sleepover, I still encourage you to dig through your old photos, school notes, and memory banks. Call up your friends, sisters, mothers, and aunts to laugh, to cry, to bond over the way we’ve all experienced these events even if they don’t look the same.

Tell me the ways you remember bonding with the women and girls in your life growing up. Were there weekly sleepovers? Pranks? Was your gathering something secret or off the beaten path? Let me know in the comments below! And be sure to follow The Sleepover to keep up with the project!