Timeless, a pop-up shop in London’s Old Street Station, is offering women advice about freezing their fertility.
Photo by Twitter.com/Timeless
The shop may only be there this week, but the service on offer is timeless.
Timeless is a fictional beauty brand and public engagement project designed to inspire conversations about egg freezing for non-medical reasons, also known as social egg freezing.
There is nothing for sale at the pop-up shop. Instead there are displays about age and fertility, the process of egg freezing and ironic perfumes with names such as “Promotion or Procreation”, “Eau so Pressured” and “Man’s World”.
Twitter users visiting the pop-up shop posted the following on Twitter.
Fascinating #eggfreezing pop up shop by @_time_less at Old Street station. Very clever display. Food for thought! pic.twitter.com/d6zExYJAJy
— Victoria Dyson (@Dyson4Tea) March 3, 2016
We’re open until 8pm tonight, come and visit our #fertility #eggfreezing pop-up at #OldSt station pic.twitter.com/XissHKz6LO
— Timeless (@_time_less) March 1, 2016
The egg freezing debate
The campaign aims to provide accessible factual information about egg freezing, as the group stresses that today the procedure is either praised as revolutionary to women’s life choices (like The Pill) or considered a social expectation for women within patriarchal society.
Companies such as Apple and Facebook began offering egg freezing in women’s benefits packages in 2014. This intrigued the directors of The Liminal Space, Sarah Douglas and Amanda Gore, who went on to create Timeless.
Douglas and Gore are photographed here at the pop-up shop:
More on Timeless! An Egg Freezing ‘Pop-Up Store’ Appears in London https://t.co/t5COF1K66d #eggfreezing @HammKatie pic.twitter.com/vjcofBme4C
— Alana Cattapan (@arcattapan) March 3, 2016
The fictional beauty brand promises to “unlock the facts around egg freezing” by providing women with clear information about the procedure, the effectiveness, and the social stresses involved.
Timeless is hosting a series of intimate talks this week at Old Street Station about whether young women in London should freeze their eggs.
Freezing Time
This short video produced by Timeless outlines some of the issues surrounding social egg freezing and fertility.
Freezing Time from Timeless on Vimeo.
Sub-edited by Romana Bekkai