M Wollstonecraft: Statues of Women
 

Mary Wollstonecraft was an 18th century writer, usually credited as "the mother of feminism". This rather forgotten figure is in the news today because a monument to her has just been unveiled in a London park:-

https://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/p..._630/image.jpg

https://i0.wp.com/fr.ebeneinfo.com/w...24%2C576&ssl=1

It has sparked a controversy, mainly because of the figurine at the top: as one Brit newspaper describes it, " a naked silver Barbie doll", while another paper gets to the point by reporting, "Because nothing says "honouring the mother of feminism" like a naked sexy lady".

So this statue has opened up a debate about how (and how often) women are memorialised in public places. That's why I thought it might be worth a thread, and a poll. Any comments?

Full CNN story: https://edition.cnn.com/style/articl...cli/index.html

Take out the sarcasm and I totally agree. Only in this current climate of deep rooted idiocy would someone complain that a statue of a woman looks like a woman. I mean, holy ****, quit hiding your puritanical bull**** behind fake liberalism.

I'm with the Guardian on this one: would a man be 'honoured' with his schlong out?

As long as there is no disrespect I see no issue, and making someone look attractive is not necessarily disrespectful of course. I think having a problem with this statue is total exaggeration, although it seems to me like there is some double standard when it comes to nudity in art in modern times (I don't recall ever having seen a penis on a statue which was not from ancient Greece). But as far as I'm concerned that's merely annoying and it means we just need more statues of naked men

Edit: basically what that article above says, but without the rage

David of Michelangelo

Perhaps the most famous statue ever

Yes, actually. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

The body is shameful people need to **** off and quit pretending they’re not puritans.

To me it's very inappropriate:

i) given how modest 18th century women were about their bodies, Mary W would probably be mortified to have a naked Barbie doll stuck on a plinth that has her name on it. I checked up on the Lincoln Memorial statue that Mindlessness was sharing the other day, and yep, Lincoln was accorded the dignity of having his clothes on as he sat in that deep armchair of his.

ii) There's a whole feminist debate about representations of naked women, titilation and the treating of women as sex objects. Even actual Barbie dolls have been criticised for overly representing women as slender caucasians, thus setting up a cruel yardstick in the public imagination that the majority of women can't compete with. This statue is continuing the same un-woke narrative, quite possibly* disrespecting if not contradicting the ideas that Mary W was fighting for.

(* "quite possibly" because I have never read a word of Mary W in my life.)

Yes indeed. It’s shameful she had a body.

I mean seriously WTF? Take Lincoln’s dong out then. You think he didn’t have one?

All mammals are sex objects. That’s how and the only reason we exist, in fact. We’re literally objects that **** to make other objects.

Props to the publicity specialist for this statue/park/whatever.

@Lisna, you make a very good point about what Mary herself would have thought of it. If there is good reason to assume she wouldn't have liked it, it's stupid and disrespectful to make a memorial like this.
About the second point, I agree that barbie doll culture is harmful, but this statue doesn't feel barbie doll-ish to me, even though it is an idealised female body. I mean that it doesn't feel like a sex object, but maybe my judgement is off here. Related to what I said about respect, I agree with hawk that nudity as shame is a notion we need to get rid of, which is why I think it would be more useful to make nude male statues customary (and yes, while we're at it let's make those statues less ridiculously beauty standard conforming)

It's a mythical figure, not an actual historical person.

Why? She’s dead. She doesn’t know it exists.

It’s what we think of it.

Whatever Tipper Gore

I'm surprised you feel so strongly on the issue, OH.

Yes, at one level we're all sex objects, but, I suspect most people, most of the time, like to be thought of as being more than that. We put on clothes and go about our lives in the hopes that people aren't continually assessing us as sex objects. In various ways, women are particularly vulnerable to that myopic vision imo.

It's like making a statue of Coltrane playing the guitar. It's not relevant to the subject unless the artist has some other intention with it. And doubly similar in that it's likely an attempt to gain relevancy because nobody cares about statues that aren't being torn down.

The point of memorialising is to honour someone for their achievement, and I think speculating about the dead person's opinion is valid. The naked figurine seems like a slap in the face to MW's feminism.

It’s like making a statue of Coltrane nude. He didn’t play guitar. Wollstonecraft had a body.

And even if they did show him playing guitar, whatever. What’s wrong with playing the guitar?

That's not what either of them are known for.

Irrelevant. **** off.

Was it wrong of her to have a vagina?

Ask the imaginary person in your brain who's making that point.

Anyways, media wasn't prominent enough in Wollenstonecraft's time for exclusively sexualized representation in media to be on her mind imo. That said, she did view being defined by beauty as inherently restrictive, but I'm not sure if that was the intent here. The artist did it to represent femininity, they did so in a way that's far from the unrealistic standards of barbie dolls (unless they're much more toned down over in the UK), and it could've been done better but to me this just reeks of manufactroversy.

I'd never heard of her until I saw this thread.

:shycouch:

But I've certainly heard of her husband William Godwin, her second daughter Mary Shelley, and Mary's husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.

It must have been hard to have a baby without a vagina.

Thanks for colouring in a bit of historical background, Psy-Fi.

The more I think about this statue, the more it bugs me. Not relinquishing the criticisms I've already made, I also take issue with the abstract, Quatermass blob that Barbie is rising out of.

A memorial will frequently evoke the time that the hero(ine) lived in, although most artists today would probably steer clear of an exact historical recreation. But Barbie-on-a-Blob just has no connection to MW, her times or even the aesthetics of her time. At every level it seems to disregard rather than honour or evoke MW.

In short, to quote Neil Young, it's a piece of crap. The artist might as well have put up a statue of two dogs fu cking in a spaceship for all the relevence it has to MW.

The "blob" looks like a mass of people struggling to escape from a membrane with the woman (a barbie, apparently) finally being able to escape at the top, which is a good representation of Wollenstonecraft's legacy of helping women escape oppression and achieve equal rights imo. Could've been done better but I think that the artist's intentions were sound.

Imagine someone made a statue of you after you died, sculpting you draped in an American flag with a bald Eagle on your shoulder, kissing the feet of Donald Trump

Totally. I don't take strong offence but I definitely think it's just ugly and the design is pointless

I'd just like to point out that part of your argument defending a feminist's modesty is essentially just stereotyping women as being monolithically modest.

Well ok but it’s gonna take a lot of granite to do my ding dong.

it would also depict you as having a tiny penis of course

ftfy

Perhaps I got a little swept away by my own argument and preferred to ignore this inconvenient but valid point. Can't you put your interpretation into a spoiler or something? ;)

I'm not sure about that Batlord, any more than any opinion that includes the word "men" or "women" is stereotyping them monolithically. People make generalisations all the time, usually with the tacit understanding that there will always be exceptions.
( Although not all people, of course; I wouldn't like to stereotype the human race as being monolithically generalisers.)

lol @ people claiming to be pro-woman but objecting to pussy

Are there any people like that in this thread?
My position, for instance, is that the statue isn't an appropriate memorial for MW

Because it’s a nude representation.

Court is adjourned

I think what you fail to take into account is the millennia of objectification of women that lead to this. There's no problem with nudity per se, the problem is that for a very long time, women were (and continue to be) judged primarily based on their looks, and treated essentially as sexual objects for the gratification of men. It wasn't until feminism emerged that this started to change. Celebrating a feminist by again putting the emphasis on the female form seems diametrically opposite of what feminism would like to achieve. :/

Do you really think there’s any possible way I haven’t heard that **** a million ****ing times?

Pussy is good. I don’t give a **** if it’s you or billy graham. **** that puritanical the body is evil lust is evil sex is bad bull****.

Not ****ing hearing it or your generic gender studies justification for it.

Don't waste your time tbh. He's too obsessed with women fulfilling his desires to be able to have a conversation involving them doing literally anything but ****ing him. The "antipuritanical" nonsense is just a way to divert the conversation away from his patriarchal hangups.

Leave it in suburbia

Is that where you picked up branding your puritanical demands for female subservience as feminism to avoid criticism?