Being a daughter, being a mother, becoming a woman.

When I was eleven years old, on the day my parents separated, my mother gave me a dog, which I kept with me until her death a few years ago. My mother probably told herself that having a pet would help me cope with the family separation.

At the same time, my body started to change. I 'developed'. My first lovers, my first nights out, my first erotic emotions. Followed by the fear, the harassment, the guilt.

Despite a seemingly uncomplicated relationship with her own sexuality, my mother seemed to view my transformation into a teenager with concern. Soon I sensed in her eyes a condemnation of my budding desire as something reprehensible, of my body as monstrous. Most of my friends experienced the same thing. What we all felt, really, was a deep guilt about being women: the guilt that condemns us to be cute little girls, then devoted mothers, or, failing that, to be seen as bitches. It was this sense of guilt, more than anything, that I wanted to explore in LA PERRA.