Feminist protest: Breast-beating

Feminist protest

Breast-beating

Young feminists are reviving an old struggle: rights for women’s bodies

May 25th 2013

 

MYTHS die hard. When a handful of feminists protested at the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, they burned no brassières. They did, however, dump a few (and make-up and high-heeled shoes) into a “freedom trash can”, while also crowning a sheep.

Now the bras are off in earnest. Members of Femen have staged around a hundred topless demonstrations since the group started in Ukraine in 2008, protesting against sex tourism. To add impact they dress as maids and nuns, or don facial hair. Other props include raw meat and fire extinguishers. On May 22nd a protester staged a mock suicide in Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, a day after a far-right historian shot himself there. Her topless torso bore the slogan: “Let fascism rest in hell.”

Last year Femen’s “sextremists” gatecrashed Milan’s fashion week to campaign against stick-thin models who—they say—tacitly promote anorexia. This month a Berlin-based activist brandished a burning cross with a crucified Barbie at the opening of a life-size replica of the doll’s house.

Such stunts mark a shift away from mainstream feminist causes of legal and economic emancipation: still far from full equality, but with a record of much progress in the past 40 years. Now the battleground is the body. Alice Schwarzer, the editor of EMMA, a German feminist magazine, is “thrilled” by Femen’s actions. They are fighting the same evils as traditional feminists, she says: pornography and prostitution. Female nudity is used to sell “everything from burgers to betting websites”, says Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project, an online forum.

The aim is to show that the naked female body is not a commodity for male consumption, but a political tool. Most legal avenues have already been exhausted, says Geneviève Fraisse, a French historian of feminism; so campaigners are using the public space instead. Joan Smith, a British feminist and author of a new book, “The Public Woman”, says that formal equality has not made women feel fully safe or free: “There’s a sense of being cheated.”

Femen has some lively allies. SlutWalks began in Canada in 2011, after a policeman in Toronto advised female students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to stay safe. Marches have since taken place in Australia, Brazil, Britain, India and Israel. Most women who march dress provocatively, claiming their right to be sexy. Others parade in conservative dress, holding banners reading: “This is what I wore when I was raped”. Armpits4August, a campaign, encourages women to grow underarm hair for a month to challenge norms of beauty. Members of La Barbe, a shock troop of French feminists set up in 2008, infiltrate male-dominated meetings wearing beards and derisively congratulate the men on their supremacy.

Many applaud Femen’s daring. But others spy an uncomfortable paradox. Their protest—a parody of male voyeurism—is a balancing act, says Ms Schwarzer: “It can also be consumed.” This month Zoo, a British “lads’ mag”, carried a lewdly captioned shot of a topless protester. Despite leers, taunts and threats, Femen counters that every insult helps highlight a patriarchy that denies women control over their own bodies. And oglers do not get away without seeing a message, boldly painted across the women’s breasts.

A bigger danger may be diminishing returns. Attention spans are short. Media outlets are already swamped with nudity. A Femen stunt against Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, at a trade fair in Hanover last month made few waves: most people “just shrugged their shoulders”, says Dieter Rucht, a German sociologist.

Hind Makki, a Muslim feminist blogger, condemns Femen’s exhibitionism. “It is regressive to make yourself look like a sex toy,” she says. She balked when it declared a “Topless Jihad Day” last month (pictured above, in Paris) to support Amina Tyler, a Tunisian threatened with stoning by a Salafi cleric for publishing her topless photos online. Femen’s concerns “are not ours”, said Ms Makki. On May 19th Tunisian police arrested Ms Tyler after she painted ‘Femen’ on a cemetery wall. Femen says this will sustain its campaign.

Criticisms do not deter Inna Shevchenko, the 22-year-old leader of Femen’s Paris branch and training centre (she gained asylum there after taking a chainsaw to a large wooden cross on a Kiev hill last year). She salutes feminist theorists—she calls them “the generals”—but says Femen’s soldiers “go into the street and fight”. The group will neither tone down its message nor cover up its topless trademark, she says: “We have one enemy as women all over the world—patriarchy.”

Such rhetoric may be strong meat for pragmatic modern feminists. But Femen’s spirit is infectious. Students at the University of Cambridge have this month forced Magdalene College to ban a “sexist and misogynistic” female jelly-wrestling competition, which involves bikini-clad girls and a paddling pool. No need for a topless protest there.

From the print edition: International