Last Thursday, conservative street artist Sabo plastered parts of Los Angeles with posters he had designed – life-size images of a nearly naked Barbie Doll complete with a plastic foetus inside her abdomen.
The Guerrilla Girls, an all-female anonymous feminist artist collective, were invited to form part of an exhibition at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris called G I R L S, curated by pop singer Pharrell himself which opened on Tuesday. The show claims to “celebrate women who are above all free, liberated by artists and their boundless, unfettered imagination”.
I have spent the last few days shedding tears and ringing my hands over the Isla Vista Campus Killings. I am horrified and angry, but I am not surprised by it. One of my earliest memories is of a man touching me without my permission because he thought he had ownership over my body; he thought I owed him something. I was only 3.
Making females responsible for the naughty or impure thoughts of others feeds into a culture that polices women’s behaviours. It shames them when they fail to act or dress in a way that adheres to entrenched expectations of how a women should behave.
I am not saying white people should not make work about other cultures that happen to be brown, what I am saying is there needs to be some moral accountability if you do.
The New Zealand Herald recently posted the opinion piece, ‘Poor’ should stop playing the blame game by Eva Bradley a highly successful young business woman. In her article she offers a diatribe in relation to poor people blaming the government for, well, their poverty.
The mainstream media got quite excited a couple of weeks ago when a number of Pasifika church leaders were photographed at the Manurewa markets wearing blue, Key-people t-shirts.
We need less men declaring their allegiance to feminism and more men unpacking patriarchy and challenging toxic modes of masculinity.
The last few months have been particularly bad for the shaming and policing of women’s bodies in the media, both in New Zealand and globally.
This treatment of us was appallingly disgraceful and we have lodged a formal complaint with the Police.