In my study, I focused on this “mediation” that takes place between blind women and visual images, and on processes that deconstruct images of gender and femininity into voice, sound, touch, and feelings related to components such as light, shade, compression, texture, and look, all taken into consideration within gender performance. 

In this study, I asked, how does the gaze function when sight does not serve as the dominant mode of perception? What is the relation between visuality and women’s agency? And how do sensory apparatuses other than sight affect social relations and interactions? These questions do not focus on whether blind women understand what beauty and femininity are, which of course they do, but on the “how” and “why” questions, exploring the creative and conscious choices they make when responding to visual norms, offering an ethnographic analysis of the ways blind women interpret, respond to, and sometimes resist, normative images of gender, blindness, and disability.

In order to answer these questions, I conducted a multi-sited ethnography of blind people in Israel, including in-depth interviews with forty women. These women were blind from birth or a young age and from varied backgrounds. Three years of ethnographic observations in spaces inhabited by blind people or where blindness is presented to the sighted public include a “beauty care” class for blind girls, a “life-skills” rehabilitation class for blind adults, a tandem-cycling group pairing sighted and blind cyclists, and a dark museum exhibit in which sighted visitors are led by blind guides.