Statue to honour Wollstonecraft

[MedusasBadHairDay]

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/10/mary-wollstonecraft-finally-honoured-with-statue-after-200-years

It's a naked woman..

Currently reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman for an OU course, and - unless the tone changes dramatically in the second half of it - I'm not seeing how an idealised nude is the right statue to convey anything about her?

I don't think the crowdfunder will make it's target.

This statue will be a joke. It's going to be permanently dressed up. I don't think the garment or the motives for dressing her matter. It's awful as it is and becomes a joke when it's dressed.

Was just reading article in the observer with Hambling's reaction to the criticism.
They mentioned that Object had put a t-shirt on her ... I was pleased to see the message on the T-shirt, but am wondering if the photo caption writer, and journalist, deliberately missed the point being made...
Screenshot attached

I think they did! Good t-shirt.

@DidoLamenting

I don't think the crowdfunder will make it's target.

This statue will be a joke. It's going to be permanently dressed up. I don't think the garment or the motives for dressing her matter. It's awful as it is and becomes a joke when it's dressed.

I don't think it becomes a joke by being dressed, if the dressing carries a message - the AFH shirt, a suffragette poncho or whatever women come up with.

Re the t shirt and Observer caption, that seemed spot on for this context - clothing a nude female. Ending the objectification, but with clothing that did not limit, or define her as anything but precisely as a woman.

Maggi Hambling could put her ego to one side and welcome the additions to the statue as being part of its purpose, the artistic intent interacting with the audience.

Not what was intended but it would be a route to a compromise.

I don't think it becomes a joke by being dressed, if the dressing carries a message - the AFH shirt, a suffragette poncho or whatever women come up with

Well we will have to disagree there. How many people are even going to notice the significance of either of these items? They are still turning the statue into a dressing up doll. For what it's worth even knowing what the t- shirt is supposed to mean I thought the statue looked even sillier covered up than naked.

Well I was calming down but have just come across this tweet from Bee Rowlatt, yesterday 14th Nov.

Bee Rowlatt
@BeeRowlatt
"Fury over a new memorial suggests we want feminists firmly costumed in the past or infantilised and unthreatening"
@FinancialTimes

@maryonthegreen

twitter.com/BeeRowlatt/status/1327526914223902725?s=20

I think the 'barbie' looks, if not 'infantilised' then very young and unthreatening. The static, pose with its little arms just hanging there.

Again compare and contrast the Hodgkin! Hanbling could and should have some better.

... 'done so much better'

Imnobody4
Well, I'm just baffled by that tweet.
Why do I need to feel "threatened" by a feminist?
Or challenged.
As a woman.
Surely it's men who should feel threatened or challenged, if anyone, and since when did men feel "threatened" by the opportunity to view a perfect female body in the buff?
I don't think anyone feels threatened or challenged by it, just disappointed.

It’s the least threatening image possible. What’s threatening about Barbie? She’s a woman put firmly in her place.

Both sides seem to assume that this is supposed to be a statue OF Wollstonecraft. It's a tiny, generic woman with a carelessly made face, standing on a giant pile of something nasty

From that twitter feed. Very true.

Bee Rowlatt's tweet doesn't make sense. What's infantilising about wearing clothes?

Bee Rowlatt's tweet doesn't make sense. What's infantilising about wearing clothes?

Indeed - infants are the one demographic in which nakedness is unremarkable.

I had a dream about taking a sledgehammer to the statue last night. Knocking Barbie doll clean off her perch. I wish that dream could come true.

There is no way I want my daughters seeing this. The message does seem to be if, as a woman, you do something completely remarkable with your mind in your life, you'll still be reduced to a naked body sooner or later.

They say they've got people talking but an awful lot of them are not talking about Wollstonecraft or her work. Just the naked body.

"Bee Rowlatt's tweet doesn't make sense. What's infantilising about wearing clothes?"
twitter.com/BeeRowlatt/status/1327526914223902725?s=20

She's quoting from the FT article written by Helen Barrett which mentions two recent statues, the one of "suffragist Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square stands plaintively in long skirts" ("firmly costumed in the past") and "Fearless Girl, a 2017 piece of corporate art" ("infantilised").

So the 'infantilised' is about a completely different statue, and not Bee Rowlatt's own words.

So all the male statues in London are infantilised by their clothing?

Nice try but no banana. I see we've moved from artistic wankery babble to the social justice activist approach of 'well interesting and forward thinking and naice people would see past reality and perceive instead this wanky bullshit I claim to do'.

No, that Empress is just plain starkers. Actually I'm getting increasingly angry on Mary Wollstonecraft's behalf. As Pam Ayres says, the poor woman would likely have preferred to have just been forgotten than exposed in this awful way.

@MichelleofzeResistance, the 'infantilised' comment is not about the 'for' Wollstonecraft statue, but refers to 'Fearless Girl', the four-foot high girl who is supposedly about female empowerment. Who does look about seven.

Isn't the point of that statue that she is supposed to look about 7- or certainly a child rather than a grown-up?.

Thanks Where that makes more sense.... yes, a nice statue of Matilda, but not sure she'd be less infantilised if she was presented naked. How does the clothes being infantilising part fit together?

Well, quite. Arms akimbo, dress and footwear of the type she can do anything in ... she looks like a girl who won't be told 'girls should' or 'girls can't'.

The FT piece talks about it being 'superficially' assertive (having had a child very much like that at times, I see absolutely nothing superficial about it!) but that they can't imagine anything less 'threatening to the passing male giants of capitalism'.
WTF does the writer think it ought to be 'threatening'? Feminism surely isn't about replicating the tired male themes of aggression and dominance. Being fearless doesn't require creating fear in others.