Peppa, who works part-time as a model, wanted to have her portrait taken by Voltairine de Cleyre.
"Voltairine is the right choice for me because she distanced herself from political groups. As an individualist, she placed the individual and his or her own determination above sacrifice for the group—in contrast to people who identify with communism, for example.
Furthermore, I can identify with feminist ways of thinking and feeling. I am the daughter of an anarchist and am therefore socially critical.
My father rejects all forms of politics. He spent his childhood in the East, fled at the age of 16—his best friend didn't make it through the shooting ranges—and then woke up in capitalism. He realized that everything is just a puppet show from above and that there is no freedom to be found on this side either. He came to the conclusion that the state—whichever one it may be—certainly does not act for the good of the people. Democracy does not really exist. So I myself became a critic of the system and can therefore relate to this project quite well."
Voltairine de Cleyre was particularly committed to women's equality—not as a "secondary contradiction," but as the litmus test of any idea of freedom. For her, politics began where it becomes most intimate: in the body, in the household, in the language of morality, in the silent contracts that are passed off as "nature."
Marriage: a contract that legitimizes access.
De Cleyre did not distrust the bond between two people, but rather the legal framework that turns that bond into a disposition. She saw legal marriage as a system that organizes female dependence: economically through a lack of alternatives, socially through shame, exclusion, and "reputation," and physically through expectations that are treated as obligations. Where love should be free, a claim arises; where closeness should be voluntary, it becomes the norm. Thus, marriage becomes not a safe space, but an institution that stabilizes access and silence—especially when poverty, children, and social double standards block the way out.
For de Cleyre, religion is the school of obedience.
For de Cleyre, religion is less a private piety than a cultural technique of subordination. The "idea of God"—understood as the highest authority—trains the reflex that there is an authority above the individual that one must obey, even against one's own experience. In this way, lack of freedom is secured not only by external force, but also by internal habits: feelings of guilt, fantasies of purity, and fear of deviation. Religion provides the metaphysics that legitimizes the social apparatus: "This is right," "This is how it should be," "This is what the order demands."
For them, the state is organized coercion with a moral veneer.
She sees the condensed form of this logic of authority in the state: rules that do not need to be convincing because they can be enforced. The state is not just an administration, but a system that produces obedience—through punishment, through property regulations, through the control of "decency" and "obscenity," through the police on the outside and shame on the inside. And no matter what flag it flies, it remains a mechanism that sustains itself. Freedom is promised, but only within the limits of what does not threaten the order. Where the state rules, the question of justice quickly becomes a question of jurisdiction.
Morality is not a list of prohibitions, but self-control.
Her morality is not a list of prohibitions, but rather an ethic of self-determination: anything that is not done voluntarily is not good—even if it is legally or socially acceptable. She makes a strict distinction between "morality" as social discipline (prudery, double standards, public outrage) and morality as inner integrity: truthfulness, responsibility for one's own actions, and respect for the freedom of others. In this sense, morality for her is not a stick, but a compass: less judgment, less desire for punishment, more clarity about when we begin to control others.
And perhaps that is precisely where Peppa and Voltairine meet in the portrait. Not as icons and models, but as two perspectives on the same statement: that freedom begins where no one claims the right to control your body, your thoughts, and your life.
When the camera clicks, it captures not only a face, but a moment in which authority briefly disappears from the picture—and the light finally belongs to the person.
