I could be this little girl. I'm as happy for her as I am sad for the little ones losing their childhood  parading in infamous contests to satisfy their mother's egos. Or for the ones shot while going to school-by those men who hate women as a concept (but that's another story).

She seems happy and free. And that is always beautiful. 

I like to think I am the woman she has become.

In the late 70s-early 80s, I had the chance to grow up within a pop culture that produced this kind of imagery, and a family environment that favored cars and books as much as dolls. I never got, or wanted, a Barbie doll or a pink little cute iron, to tell me how to inhabit my body and my home. 


And yet, I got all nostalgic when I saw this image. Not so much for the long summer afternoons running wild and creative, that have remained somewhere in my memory,  but for the freedom to be oneself that this image conveys to girls, and about girls.


Even if representing  girls like this might be a marketing tool, the choice to do so is a deliberate one, and already means something important. Something that lacks now.


It reminds me of that time and place, when we could be girls and children and persons at the same time and it was OK, we didn't need to choose. When we could play with everything and we could wish to be whatever we wanted. I was extremely lucky to be a girl in that kind of environment, a short-lived.bubble, but nevertheless a great gift.


This image embodies the gender values cruelly lacking today in popular western culture regarding gender and its roles/cages. As much perverse (though less visible) towards boys than towards girls (and every category in between), most pop imagery today conveys  the pervasive gender oppression that lies in having to choose between Barbie toothpaste (pink) and Spiderman toothpaste (red and blue).


I wish very hard that this kind of image -and the values that make it possible- come soon from vintage, back into mainstream.

The expression of the various claims on the right of The Woman to own her freedom/body still implies the dissemination of the image of the body  (naked, female) in a kind of pseudo-revolutionary naivety.

On her body, this Femen Tunisian activist has written: " My body belongs to me, it is not anyone's honor'". 


(Heavily condemned by Islamist movements, it seems her facebook page has since been hacked by  an islamist hacker by the name Al Angour, and she is reported missing).

The Body as empty provocation, for destined to those who condemn it because it is a Body.

The Body as an offering, given as Object to the external gaze of those who already consider it as such.

Make-up and cigarettes, you’re not worth my gaze, but read (on)my body, be voyeur (build me with your gaze, give me a meaning) and be outraged. Fuck you.

Tired style devices for staging femininity. Is that it, really?

It is not so much this body that informs us about the state of womens’ rights, but rather the extent and nature of the reactions to this image and its distribution on social networks and media ...

Is the Offensive, Guilty Body, less so without nipples?

Pseudo-revolution of censored nipples and gazing away…

Will the photoshop-surviving nipples move the mountains  of structural violence against women?
                                     
                                                          ....................................................................

L'expression des revendications diverses sur le droit de La Femme a disposer de son corps passe encore par la diffusion du corps (toujours nu et feminin) dans une espece  de naivete pseudo-revolutionnaire. 


Sur son corps, cette activiste de Femen Tunisie ecrit: " Mon corps m'appartient, il n'est l'honneur de personne".


(Il semblerait que , condamnee par des mouvements islamistes, ayant recu de menaces de mort, sa page facebook a ete pirate par Al Angour, pirate islamiste declare, et la jeune femme n'est plus joignable.)

Le Corps comme provocation destinee a ceux qui le condamnent parce qu'il est Corps. Le Corps en offrende, donne -a voir-en tant qu'objet, a ceux qui le considerent deja comme tel.

Maquillage et cigarettes, je ne vous regarde pas, mais lisez (sur)mon corps, soyez voyeurs (votre regard me construit, me donne sens) et soyez scandalises.  Je vous emmerde.

Recours de style fatigues pour une mise en scene de la feminite reveindicative. Est-ce cela, vraiment?

C'est ne pas tellement ce corps qui nous informe sur l'etat de La Femme et de ses Droits, mais plutot l'ampleur des reactions a cette image et sa difusion sur les reseaux sociaux et medias...

Mais le Corps Offensif et Coupable, est-il moins corps sans tetons?

Pseudo-revolution de tetons censures et regard nie....

Bougeront les tetons rescapes du photoshop, les montagnes de la violence stucturelle envers les femmes?