Politics of the vagina: considering womanhood in visual and performing art

STREET SM(ART): Answering the unanswerable through the arts

If you participated in the Winter Break book club of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” then perhaps you were, as I was, moved by Coates’ uncanny articulation of “the Dream.” To portray the white, suburban, American Dream as the crème of the machine of systematic oppression, Coates invokes sensory descriptions: the Dream “is perfect houses with nice lawns,” he writes; it “smells like peppermint.” These abstractions imply the idea of the Dream rather than explain it. Despite its ambiguity, the bittersweetness is communicated. I found myself carrying the unanswerable question of the Dream with me all throughout break: how can I fix the flaws of a fraying system?
Like good questions, good art lingers in the mind for just as long as it needs to. This is a fact that arises out of studying the arts in any capacity. At Bowdoin, a promise of the liberal arts is the ability to “count... Art an intimate friend”. What exactly does this entail? William De Witt Hyde, a man who was just as philosophical as Coates, provides us with another example of indirect language in addressing the benefits of the liberal arts in his Offer of the College. Hyde and Coates perhaps resort to verbiage as a way of circumventing a difficult meaning.
Both writers grapple with complex questions. “Difficult” barely gropes at the throes of the broken society which the Dream articulates. “Between the World and Me” does not end on a note of hope or change. Coates offers empathy to the Dreamers, who will “have to learn to struggle themselves,” but he does not offer answers. He is not supposed to.
This does not mean that the answers are not desired. The young readers of Coates grew up in post-9/11 America, where polished political campaigns promised uplift from a despairing country. Our generation has come of age only to find in our hands a broken society and a dying earth, with ourselves, our humankind, as personally responsible. A ferocity for justice, beyond else, courses through classrooms, discussions, homes and specifically, college campuses like this one.
This generation’s inclination for change demands answers. I imagine shaking my copy of “Between the World and Me,” hoping for secret messages from Coates to fall out. Despite the yearnings, our leaders can only reflect the conclusions we ourselves reach. Coates relays, as did President Rose in his “Why do issues of race matter if I’m white?” symposium, as do other Orient columnists, as do the best writers and thinkers of this generation, that answers do not come quickly. We cannot simply trade the broken machine; we must fix its problematic parts. We can, however, lean on what still works.
Art, in any of its effervescent, ever-expanding forms, provides those viable, moving parts. This, I believe, is where we will find the answers. In this column, I will be exploring the interactions between art and society—how they affect and inform each other at Bowdoin and beyond. I believe that the arts are healing in the face of social discord; they help us provoke our histories, explore ourselves and search for the answers. The value of the arts is omnipresent; it is not limited to James Bowdoin III’s (recently catalogued) collection. It is not limited to museums, to 340 Miles North, to the Beam classroom. Spaces dedicated to art are necessary and important, but evoking the arts where they are not designated is perhaps where they are most impactful. That is the value of this type of education. Hyde thought it important that we all know that, and I agree.
Coates writes the point that “The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing.” Conversely, art antagonizes the Dream by challenging it, providing tools for its dismantling. Ideally, we will find the answers that will help us break the Dream and explain the liberal arts and make our weird warm world into a safer and cleaner place. For now, we choose the questions that will make the answers matter. The world is in our hands for a little while longer.

STREET SM(ART): On the connotations of clothing: implications of style in crafting identity

My first act of early-teenage rebellion was buying a sewing machine. I found it on Craigslist in early July, and so found myself, 14 years old, exchanging $35 for a stranger’s spring cleaning leftovers—a compact, simple-stitch, late 1960s Singer. I told my Chinese parents—who thought I was going through a phase—that it was on loan from a friend for the summer. The temperamental machine didn’t even last that long, perhaps because it was old, or perhaps because I stayed up until 2 a.m. every day that summer splitting threads and breaking needles.At first, it was fun to make colorful, textural things; then the things made me. I studied clothing the way a shy, book-savvy young girl does: through literature. I hoarded back-issues of Vogue to analyze fashion trends in America. While these were phases, sewing—building clothing for my individual, Asian-American, adolescent body—was not. When I wore what I made, I found that it lent me the most compelling case for uniqueness. The way I dressed validated my personality and my body concurrently. It asserted the reality of my existence.
To align the outer self with an expression of the inner self is a cultural/political act, especially for those who face discrimination and stereotyping. In my experience, being Asian in America has always come with a set of connotations from assumed identities. Making clothes let me in on a secret: I could slip into different perceptions based on the way I dressed. I was not another nameless Asian if I dressed like a Warhol Superstar or a Riot Grrrl. By rooting myself in American sartorial history, I could assert aspects of my identity that I wanted to emphasize, rather than those prescribed to me. This was a revelation: the power of playing dress up. The care I devoted to the way I dressed was an effort to affect the split-second assessment others made of me based on my ethnicity. Dressing with deliberacy and style awarded me just a second more of contemplation.
This valuable extra second has never been a case of life or death for me. Asians are stereotyped, above all, as being docile. For other people of color, stereotypes are different, dangerous. In 2012, a 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot in the gated community in which he lived while wearing a hoodie. Martin’s death sparked national protest, with the hoodie becoming a symbol against unjust racial profiling. In this case, the haunting image of the hoodie, which may or may not have affected how Martin’s shooter perceived him, is a garment weighted with cultural implication. In America, clothing is far more than just clothing. Perhaps if Martin had been afforded that extra second, he wouldn’t have been unjustly, lethally judged. Then again, perhaps not: a reality of America is that it is not fair.
These two very different situations emphasize the systematic implications of appearance. Style provides a flexibility in perception that is radical for people of color in America, who often control very little about how they are seen. Fashion is not just for the vacuous: clothing is a tool for validating the marginalized body, for asserting presence and existence and identity, and thus a tool of power and privilege. With this in mind, there is something inherently vicious in using this power to disrespect or reduce others. To perpetuate stereotype by mocking or appropriating is invalidating and thus, inhumane. It engages the same system that creates otherness, that argues that wearing a hoodie as a black American is a good enough reason for death.
“Style,” Maya Angelou wrote, “allows [a] person to appear neither inferior in one location nor superior in the other.” Style elasticizes boundaries as it moves beyond socio-economic classification and fleeting judgements. I learned this by the lamplight of my sewing machine. At Bowdoin, we learn this by way of engaging in our community, which includes many brave and articulate voices of color. In America, style can be a weapon for those who need it. However, it is not ultimately strong enough to save them from the line of gunfire. This is the work that must be done by American institutions. It is difficult to change a system to protect those it has historically excluded. All the same, it is far more difficult to exist in it. Since this is what Bowdoin demands of students of color, it is merited that students of color demand institutional change of Bowdoin. It is just about time for spring cleaning.

STREET SM(ART)

Politics of the vagina: considering womanhood in visual and performing art

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

June Lei

Columnist

February 19, 2016

This Valentine’s Day weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in Eve Ensler’s canonically feminist and controversial show, “The Vagina Monologues.” Bowdoin’s annual performance of Ensler’s 1996 work seeks to provide a forum for conversation as well as a community to women on campus. Last week, Surya Milner highlighted several of the show’s concerns and criticisms in the Bowdoin Orient.

More often than not, American culture sees the word “feminist” followed by “controversial.” In the case of “The Vagina Monologues,” these concerns are merited; Ensler’s theater essentially defines the female by biological parts, inaccurately equating womanhood with ownership of a vagina. Although I was aware of this imprecision when I auditioned, I still struggled with it throughout the duration my participation. Womanhood, like feminism, is deeply complex and more than just parts. However, “The Vagina Monologues” open discourse regardless of their scope of representation, and have done so for the past decade. My participation allowed me to think extensively about my favorite part of feminism, which is that it offers the opportunity to reconsider and deconstruct.

If anything, Ensler’s focus upon the vagina can be seen as an homage to the vagina’s role in arts, both ideologically and visually. The vagina has historically been rallying point for women: thus, the goal of the monologues is to unite women under a common experience. As a visual symbol in art, the vagina has done similar and notable things for America feminism. In a lineage of feminist art, these rallying points have made woman artists quite successful.

However, one must still keep in mind the parameters against women for artistic success. Use of the vagina in art saw two of the 20th century’s most iconic artists find great achievement. In the mid to late 70’s, a woman and an artist named Judy Chicago created an installation piece that concurrently functioned as feminist encyclopedia. Currently at the Brooklyn Museum, “The Dinner Party” comprises of a large triangular table with the place settings of prominent women of Western history. Each setting is individually customized to represent its sitter, with each plate depicting the large, abstract vagina meant to represent commonality between women.

Another woman artist, Georgia O’Keefe, became known for creating dream-like abstractions of nature. Despite O’Keefe’s own reluctance to align with these interpretation, her paintings are now popularly seen as floral and feminist representations of vaginas. As exemplified by the success of these two artists, the symbolism of the vagina is an essential component of historical feminism in America. Through the tireless work of many woman and artists, the vagina has become a part of the art historical canon and a nexus for feminist art.

The vagina has also become an impetus for ideological debate for feminists, as contemporary feminism includes transgender and LGTBQA+ rights. As previously stated: womanhood does not equate to having or wanting to have a vagina. The feminist rally point is exclusionary, and works like Chicago’s and Ensler’s do not reflect this. Yet, this is not to say that these works have no place in today’s society: “The Dinner Party” stands monument to a time when feminists truly believed in the phrase, “divisions are diversions.” Diversity in feminism proves this quite the contrary: divisions are exactly what makes being a woman rich, complex and fascinating. Despite its pitfalls, Ensler’s play continues to find function in its controversy.

As a participant of “The Vagina Monologues,” the show’s reception was overwhelmingly positive. As a feminist, this was slightly disappointing. The presence of such a show on a college campus should provoke conversation about womanhood. If we do not talk about “The Vagina Monologues,” and why it is both feminist and controversial, then it loses its dynamism. A lack of conversation of the show’s shortcomings suggests that Ensler’s play might still have a function on our campus. Perhaps there is something to be said for keeping up with the times.

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