Tuesday 21 January 2014

Warning: This image will offend all those opposed to oppression

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Having come across this on facebook, posted by a 'facebook friend', a guy I met while working with an anti-sweatshop organisation in London a few years ago. Being a liberal black male activist, his facebook posts are always critical of political and social issues, namely political hypocrisy and the subordination of minority's in society to name but a few. 
Looking at this picture of a leather-clad black mannequin supporting its 'owner' - a white Russian socialite, only highlights the relevance of intersectionality to not only feminism but to anyone who oppose the oppression of any social group. 

This picture struck me first, having recently done a project on Lily Allen's 'Hard Out Here' video which has been hugely criticised for using the bodies of black women to convey Allen's point of female objectification in modern popular culture. 
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Furthermore, the original mannequin furniture by Allen Jones (1969) which is what inspired the piece of furniture in question makes clear that this objectification also touches on society's disregard for sex workers as crude objects as well as a wider subordination and objectification of women. 

Unfortunately, this is not the first time women have been so explicitly objectified either in the media or otherwise (Robyn Thicke's Blurred Lines in particular, comes to mind), but this is something that has got to be addressed before gender and racial equality (or the intersection of both) can ever be fully achieved. 


1 comment:

  1. If you read Meredith Levande's piece on women in music videos - she talks about the queens of the nineties - Britney, Christina, etc, and reading it is so depressing as you can see that little has changed with the music videos of the noughties.

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