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Feminist Vandalism?

Cara

In Berlin, a subway poster featuring Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Christina Aguilera was rather creatively defaced — with large stickers that make the poster look as though it’s currently being edited inside a Photoshop application:

You can view a full series of photos at Gizmodo.

I couldn’t help but think that these were a) really creative, b) incredibly cool and c) quite arguably, not knowing the defacer’s intentions, a strong feminist statement about airbrushing and impossible patriarchal beauty standards.

Upon further reflection, I saw that they could be just general ad busting attempts with no feminist intentions whatsoever, and also potentially even making fun of women for attempting to live up to beauty standards thrust upon us.  At Gizmodo, commenters additionally question how effective the tactic is when not everyone knows what Photoshop looks like.  (I think most people familiar with computers would figure out the general idea, while those unfamiliar with computers would likely be lost.)  I’d also probably prefer if it had been done on one of the many common “idealized” full body shots we see of women in advertising all the time, rather than just faces.

Still, I keep coming back to my original interpretation and thoroughly enjoying it.  I think that’s also something quite lovely about this kind of “vandalism,” which when done well can be a form of art — it’s open to interpretation.

So, what’s yours?

h/t Sociological Images

19 thoughts on Feminist Vandalism?

  1. I also thought they might just be saying that women can only look beautiful after all that airbrushing, but I’m also feeling particularly pessimistic today.

    If it is a feminist statement, it pretty much rocks my socks. Sure, there will be people who don’t understand it, but isn’t that the case with a lot of things? At the very least, it has people acknowledging that these are highly-retouched photos. It’s getting the conversation going…

  2. it might also be a metaphore for how many men view women and how they treat women and what they want from women. ever had that talk with a guy, about what he wants from you and the relationship? it often feels, to me, as if guys are trying to remake use, a little of this woman, that woman’s lips, this woman’s attitudes on children, that woman’s slinky walk, this woman’s accent…

    now, i know that this goes both ways – many women also try to “change” the guy they are with, so i’m not saying that ONLY guys are guilty of this. but it feels like this: women take a guy they view as a “fixer-upper”, the base is the guy and they want to add to him. but it feels like men really do try to combine different women, take base qualities and attributes and photoshop them together, “Weird Science” style.

    if ANY of that makes sense.

    so i think this graffetti is a reflection of that pressure.

  3. Upon further reflection, I saw that they could be just general ad busting attempts with no feminist intentions whatsoever, and also potentially even making fun of women for attempting to live up to beauty standards thrust upon us.

    The first part I understand (though I personally think that even if the vandal’s intent was just to protest an ad, in protesting an ad with such strong connections to an overall system of sexism that feeds so much advertising “general ad busting attempts with no feminist intentions whatsoever” are sort of de facto feminist statements, regardless, again, of the protester’s intent, if that makes sense), but I’m afraid I don’t really see the second; would you mind explaining it further? the way I read it, it is an attempt to make explicit that beauty norms seen in advertising have travelled all the way beyond “not realistic” into full-out “not real” and should be taken as such, and ergo are not something to attempt to live up to, but by calling attention to the issue it’s implicitly acknowledging that not everyone is aware of it (which to me means, it wouldn’t be making fun of people who weren’t, but maybe i’m projecting the way I would intend that). (I guess I sort of also assume the sort of people who are into politically-minded advertisement wouldn’t be doing so to mock women. maybe i’m too generous)

  4. but I’m afraid I don’t really see the second; would you mind explaining it further?

    Again, though it’s wasn’t my initial reading, or one that I perceive as being particularly accurate now, I think it could be read as “ha, look at the silly women with their vanity, they won’t even be seen in public without having someone airbrush them first.” And honestly, I sometimes do read something as feminist, even though it’s not intended that way, because it’s a lens that I personally use to look at the world. I was just trying to acknowledge that with a semi-ambiguous image, that’s at least possible.

    (I guess I sort of also assume the sort of people who are into politically-minded advertisement wouldn’t be doing so to mock women. maybe i’m too generous)

    See, I think that might be the problem and why I started actively looking for potentially sexist readings to begin with before I posted. Sadly, I don’t have that faith. :/

  5. There are a lot of photoshop-referencing jokes out there. While it might lose some of its effectiveness because it speaks mostly to those familiar with photoshop. I think we can pretty safely bet that this is a feminist statement and not an adbust or photoshop statement. It’s not spectacularly good photoshopping but about the industry average, so it seems like there’s not too much outside of a feminist statement that would cause someone to target this particular ad.

    About a month and a half after taking my first class where I used photoshop, my roommate and I found an ad in Maxim (don’t know why it was on hand) where the model was photoshopped but her reflection on the hood of the car was not. Needless to say it stayed on the refrigerator for a long time.

  6. Cara: heh, fair enough. I have in the past been not-inaccurately accused of being a little naive.

    Your last sentence in the post, incidentally, reminded me of something I meant to mention before – the professor of a class I took on protest literature argues that one of the things that often (not always) makes protest literature (including visual things) more effective is what he (borrowing I think from another scholar) calls “symbolic action,” meaning a sort of rich ambiguity – the argument being basically that when something has some shades of ambiguity it draws you in and forces you to mentally engage it by questioning the appropriate interpretation. It’s an argument I think I agree with, especially in a case like this. Whatever the intent, hopefully these will get people thinking about the issue at hand, perhaps in more fruitful way than if the vandal/protester had been more direct.

    (which is basically what you said, but I get weirdly excited when two people I think are cool say similar things in totally different contexts, so i felt the need to share 🙂 )

  7. (which is basically what you said, but I get weirdly excited when two people I think are cool say similar things in totally different contexts, so i felt the need to share 🙂 )

    Wait, someone thinks I’m cool? I have to rush and tell my husband; he’ll never believe it 🙂

  8. This is the best feminist vandalism I’ve seen since someone spray-painted “This is a crime against women!” on a billboard that portrayed a bruised, beaten woman suspended by her wrists from chains, with the caption, “I’m Black and Blue from the Rolling Stones…and I like it!”

    What struck me was that, even though the spray-painted letters were large enough to be seen from the freeway, the lettering retained a distinctly feminine touch.

  9. I think what matters is not what the vandal’s intent was, but what message viewers get from it — a sexist adbuster could accidentally make a feminist statement if his vandalism is “mistakenly” read in a feminist way. It would be interesting to talk to some passerby who haven’t been steeped in explicit feminist theory to see what they make of it. (I jumped immediately to the feminist interpetation and thought “that’s awesome,” but I’m not Hans U-Bahn Rider.)

  10. Well, I live in Berlin and there’s actually one of those posters (in it’s not-yet-vandalized form) at “our” U-Bahn station, too. The Berlin street-art scene generally seems to be pretty progressive/leftwing/libertarian/whatever and so forth so I think it’s meant to be criticizing beauty standards and therefore feminist.
    It reminds me of that art project I saw in the U-Bahn a couple of weeks ago that worked along the same lines, advertising lobotomy for example. It worked espeacially well when halb the posters at the station were real advertisements and half of them those fake ones.

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  15. I love this, no matter if it’s a feminist statement or just general adbusting.

    Either way, I think it’s just endlessly more creative and thought-inspiring.

    There used to be those little pink stickers around here (Germany, that is) that had a double axe on them and simply said “misogynist”. I way prefer something a) made to fit the individual ad and b) just more subtle, with more than just one premade statement screaming at you.

    Win.

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  19. While we’re at it, why don’t we wake up and realize that these “patriarchal beauty standards” also apply to how women DRESS (or rather their lack thereof…)
    I sometimes wonder if sometime in the last 50 years a bunch of men got together and said – how can we get women to walk around in as little clothing as possible, so that we don’t have to respect them as real people and can just treat them as sex objects? And then one guy said – “OH, I know, we’ll just make it really fashionable to wear skimpy clothing, we’ll throw women’s self-esteem down the drain through impossible media standards, and we’ll call women ‘prudes’ if they refuse to show off their bodies or have sex before they’re ready.”
    Sounds crazy huh? But if it wasn’t the men’s idea….we have to wonder why women (even “feminist” women) will willingly turn themselves into sex objects and call it “liberation”.

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