The sexualisation of women and what is art, really?

For thousands of years, we had worshipped women. Our ability to create and sustain life were something to be lauded. We were powerful and some religions held women in great regard. The lines of inheritance passed through women, because let’s face it, you can never doubt who mothered a child.

And then life changed. Other religions came into play, as powerful countries came into power and forced the pagans out. Women became chattels, owned possessions. No voice, no power. Our place in life changed and our belief in ourselves also.

In the early 1900’s the suffragette movement stole back our voice, but women had taken a back seat for so many hundreds of years that our power had been diluted. Our ability to give life became something slightly shameful, even if the end result was something we could be proud of.

Our bodies were no longer solely our own. Men held claim to it and we were objects to be owned. It feels that, as a culture, we have not gotten over this mentality yet, despite the feminist movement. Our bodies are still seen by some as shameful and no conversation is held with our daughters about the beauty of curves. Women have their genitalia cut off, the unclean parts removed, leaving behind a hole for a man’s use only. We rail against the unjustness of this and yet, plastic surgeons in our own countries practise removal of labia minora for cosmetic reasons. Does the addition of anaesthetic and a medical degree change what is being done?

Our power, that had once been held in such high regard was tattered and torn. Some we scraped back together, but most disappeared in the face of change. Accompanying that came the sexualisation of women. Breasts that were designed to nurture our babies became the symbols of lust and were flashed across billboards throughout the world. Yet women are still victimised for breastfeeding a baby in a public area. ‘I don’t want to see that’ is spat, in disgust, while a bikini clad model flashes across the screen above their heads.

The dirtiness associated with vaginas hasn’t faded. Tucked away under panties most of the time, when seen in media it is nothing more than a tiny pink slit, hairless like a child – the power of a woman airbrushed out of it.

And so I celebrate pieces of artwork that desexualise vulvas. Artwork that show beauty and individuality, even as others claim that vulvas are not meant to be seen or looked at.

I’ve spoken to people who left MONA a little shell shocked, certain that some works in there can’t possibly be considered art. The canvas depicting a man being fucked by a dog caused a bit of consternation, surely that wasn’t art? Yet, in the same gallery sits Leda and the Swan, a globally acclaimed bronze that depicts Leda being fucked by a swan. The conversation turned to the fact that women are the ones who are meant to be fucked, not men. That is the reason the canvas is considered distasteful, and the bronze is not.

By the nature of a womans vulva, intercourse became something that was done to us, not something we did. Men are the fuckers and women are the fuckees. In reality, it doesn’t always work like that and personal circumstances and sexuality will change with every relationship, but the cultural shift was there and unchangeable.

This of course proves my point about sexualisation.

Art doesn’t have to be beautiful. Art can be a statement about the world around us, or culture. It can be ugly. It can be a machine that turns food into fecal matter, a dig at the art world itself, a claim that all artwork, is, in the very end, crap.

Art is meant to make us think and in this day and age of overexposure to media and pornography, sometimes that art needs to be shocking to make its point. I don’t think this is a bad thing, merely the equivalent to shaking someone by the shoulders to get them to listen properly.

MONA doesn’t shrink away from the artwork that other galleries refuse to hang and in the end, if all it does is make us question our perception of our culture, then that can only be a good thing.

I for one, like questioning why we think the way we do and why we, the collective we, are so ready to accept some things as beautiful and declare others to be shameful.

Look at what vaginas can do afterall.