THE objectification of women’s bodies is an issue that has been drawing audiences to several shows during this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Brought to the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the São Paulo Showcase 2026, is a show based on Brazilian Letícia Rodrigues’s own struggle to slim.
Called 116 Grams: A Play To Lose Weight, it is about an overweight girl who dreams of being Britney Spears but can’t seem to be anything other than her weight. The only thing that seems to matter is the need to shrink, to kill, half of the body that occupies more space than it should - according to society, advertising and the world.
Rodrigues said bringing her show to Edinburgh has been a “transformative” experience.
“I’m a Latin American artist from Brazil and my greatest fear was that our references and research might be questioned because of their cultural and geographical context,” she said.
“What happened, in fact, was the complete opposite. Audiences have been incredibly receptive, embracing a play in Brazilian Portuguese with subtitles. That has been very special.
“Speaking about my own story and about the violent surveillance imposed on women’s bodies and on bodies that fall outside the norm, feels vital to me. It shapes so much of our lives, reducing our experiences to a pain that should never be ours alone.”
Puttana, from Italian theatre company TeatroE, is about a woman forced into sex work to pay her bills and features experimental sound technology.
Beatrice Elena Festi, who plays Laura, said: “When we started working on Puttana in 2022, we didn’t want to talk only about sex work and power but also about judgment, especially the judgment reserved for the female body, constantly under scrutiny and hypersexualised. On stage, I myself expose my body to the audience’s judgment, making myself vulnerable in order to provoke a reaction in the viewer. In one scene in particular, the repetition of certain advertising slogans in different registers shows us how far we still are from freeing ourselves from this gaze that commodifies the female body.
“I believe there’s still much work to be done, especially in a world marked by perpetual doomscrolling on social media. With Puttana, we try to question these mechanisms, of which we are all participants, often unwittingly.”
Selling out daily is Farah Ashraf’s Pink Rabbit about a young British Muslim who has an OnlyFans account her strict mother knows nothing about.
“Pink Rabbit explores a character who both enjoys sexualising and monetising herself but also is very human and has her moments of feeling uncomfortable and inexperienced,” said Ashraf.
“Sex work isn’t just about money for her as it’s about exploring herself in a way she has been told is wrong and how liberating that initially feels.”
“I’m interested in the contradiction between objectification and agency and how, as young South Asian women, we can reclaim ownership of being looked at whilst simultaneously not controlling what people project onto what they see,” said Ashraf.
