On the Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing

Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing 
Oil on canvas (2012) 
Leena McCall

I.

There is something of a tradition within the world of fine art for portraits of women standing.

Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, for example, completed his contribution to this genre sometime around 1610. Indeed, such a lover was he of upright women that he produced another portrait of a woman standing just a few years later (c.1618-20).   

Neither of these unidentified women, however, arouses my interest as much as the fabulous Ms Ruby May, pictured above, standing, hand-on-hip and pipe in mouth, by UK based visual artist Leena McCall.

The painting is obviously intended to be sexually provocative. There's that defiant look in the eye of the subject, returning and challenging the male gaze, for a start; clearly this is a woman who knows how to construct and express a playfully ambiguous model of sexual identity on her own terms.

And then there's the fact that her breeches are unbuttoned, exposing her lower body or loins such that her pubic hair is clearly visible ...


II.

I recently published a post reflecting on the issue of female pubic hair, referring to its representation within the world of art.* A woman kindly wrote to me afterwards to say that whilst she enjoyed the piece, she couldn't help thinking it was essentially a non-concern within what she insisted was a sexually liberated  - or, at any rate, sexually indifferent - age:

"Some women wax, some women shave and shape their bushes, and some just leave things to grow naturally; the point is no one really cares and it's not a big issue, even if it remains subject to changing fashion. Thankfully, the days when people freaked out at the sight of a pubic hair have long gone."

I wonder, then, how she explains the fact that McCall's painting was swiftly removed by the Mall Galleries from the Society of Women Artists' 153rd annual exhibition in 2014, following a number of complaints and the concern that perhaps children or vulnerable adults might view it ...?

According to McCall, the picture was branded as pornographic and disgusting precisely because it showed Ms May as an amorous subject proudly displaying her pubic hair as a sign of mature womanhood. Afforded the opportunity to provide a replacement work, McCall admirably refused on the grounds that to do so would be to concede there was something inherently offensive or obscene about the portrait (and/or the body) of her friend Ruby May.  

So, to my correspondent I say thank you very much for writing, but I beg to differ with your analysis of the times in which we live.

For if there's been a pornification of culture on the one hand, so too is this the age of safe spaces, trigger warnings, political correctness, censorship, and the new puritanism in which the greatest crime is to cause offence (either wilfully or inadvertently) to the easily offended, be they snowflake liberals, religious maniacs, or - apparently - London gallery owners worried about their trustees and sponsors, etc. ...


* See: Where the Turtle Doves Sing ... the post mentioned above that reflects on pubic hair.

Bootylicious

Oh my gosh! Look at her butt!

Nicki Minaj sleeve photo for her smash hit single 'Anaconda' 

taken from the album The Pinkprint (2014)  

Curb Your Enthusiasm has taught me that for a man to comment on a woman's ass is always to invite trouble and misunderstanding. For as Cheryl points out to Larry, a woman's ass is very personal and it's simply inappropriate to make even a lighthearted reference to it. This is perhaps particularly the case when the ass in question belongs to a woman of colour.

However, at the risk of being mistaken not only for an ass man - and I'm not an ass man - but also for a middle-aged white man with a fetish for young black girls, I would like to defend and celebrate the bootyliciousness of women such as Beyoncé Knowles and Nicki Minaj, particularly in the faces of those who denigrate and seek to body shame such women in a manner that often betrays underlying misogyny and racism. 

For example, I read a piece recently by a (white male) music critic in which he laments the passing of truly gifted black female singers including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Gloria Gaynor, Gladys Knight, Diana Ross, Nina Simone, and Dinah Washington. Which is fine, if a somewhat predictable and uncontroversial list of names that no one with ears is going to seriously dispute or raise objection to. 

Unfortunately, however, he can't resist taking a dig at today's performers, including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj, whom, he says, have helped pornify popular culture and become famous "not for their soulful voices or beautiful faces, but for endlessly twerking and firing lasers from their grotesquely over-inflated behinds". These women, he says, "have none of the talent, none of the charm, and none of the sophisticated intelligence" of their predecessors.            

This may, perhaps, have some element of truth in it. But, it seems also to display a puritanical fear of the flesh; particularly female flesh and particularly the black female bottom. One wonders if the writer is simply scared he'll not be able to handle all that jelly or what we might term corporeal excess - the too-muchness of nature, that Camille Paglia writes of in relation to the Venus of Willendorf.   

In a sense, then, the critic is right - the performers of today are earthy in every sense of the word and they drag us down and drag us back with their crude, uninhibited, anally-fixated sexuality. Whereas the great artists mentioned earlier elevate the human spirit with their soulful voices and beautiful faces and represent "the triumph of Apollonian image over the humpiness and horror of mother earth".

In the end, you pays your money and you takes your choice ...


Notes

To watch the scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm (S2/E2) in which Cheryl confronts Larry about his ass fetish, click here. 

To listen to the track 'Bootytlicious', by Destiny's Child, taken from the album Survivor (2001), click here. 

This song popularised the term bootylicious as an approving neologism and it has now entered mainstream English, as has a greater appreciation for women with larger hips, thighs and buttocks (i.e., a body type culturally associated with black and Latina women, though there are plenty of European women who also pride themselves on a fuller, more Rubenesque figure). 

See: Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, (Yale University Press, 1990), Ch. 2, 'The Birth of the Western Eye'.

Pussy (A Post for International Women's Day)

The term pussy has several meanings and can be used in a variety of ways; some innocent, some insulting, some vulgar. But what most interests is why this word should have become such a popular euphemism for female genitalia, thereby establishing an erotico-symbolic relationship between cats and cunts; small, soft, furry, carnivorous creatures on the one hand – and domestic pets that like to be stroked on the other.

The etymological origin of the word is uncertain; it may simply have derived from a sound used to attract a cat: Here puss, puss, puss! But, by the 17th century, pussy was commonly being used to refer to young women as well as moggies and by the following century it specifically directed us towards their sex organs.

Unsurprisingly, many women now regard pussy as derogatory, demeaning and dehumanising, rather than an affectionate term of endearment. But there are other women who use it quite happily and in preference to any of the other slang terms for vagina. Indeed, some even wear knickers with kittens printed on.

Personally, it’s not a word I’m entirely comfortable with. Not only is it a little too coy for my tastes, but it also lends itself too readily to double entendre and I don’t much like sexual innuendo (whilst conceding that it's long been a crucial component of bawdy humour, from the Barrison Sisters to Mrs. Slocombe). Nor do I see any need to disguise or apologise for biology; there’s nothing shameful about female bodies and the word cunt seems to me much more honest.

Having said that, feminist punk collective Pussy Riot have managed to cleverly invest the word with a new dynamism and militancy, rightly realising that this provocative combination of terms creates a powerful ambiguity and tension. Iggy Azalea’s inspired rap anthem, Pussy, has also helped to revalue the term.

Ultimately, however it’s referred to, we should all learn to love the vagina, celebrate labia pride, and support vulva activism. For where would we be - male or female - without that which Courbet rightly recognised as the Origin of the World ...?

Thanks to Kiranjit Kaur for supplying the image for this post and for her insight on the topic. 

Epilation

The policing and removal of female body hair is practised in every phallocratic society for a number of reasons - from religious phobia to cultural fashion - using a wide variety of methods. 

In the Western world, women have been obliged to shave legs and underarms for over a century. But it is only recently that they have also been expected as a matter of porno-social convention to remove hair from the pubic region like an Arab woman; not as an act of Fitrah, or in the name of hygiene, but due to changing ideas of what constitutes desirability.

I have to confess, I remain a little troubled by this trend. 

For whilst I understand the appeal of the hairless pussy on grounds that range from the aesthetic to the practical and perverse, still I can't help regretting the universal Brazilianization of women as I recall the words of Henry Miller: 'It doesn't look like a cunt anymore; it's like a dead clam or something. It's the hair that makes it mysterious.'