There are few things I would enjoy less than navigating my way through a 12-metre long screaming, er, vagina. However, apparently it’s art and I should therefore applaud it.

That’s right: last week, 30-year-old artist Reshma Chhiba unveiled – or should that be opened – a monstrosity at the former women’s prison that once held Winnie Mandela in South Africa.

The artist declared it a statement against the prison’s symbol of oppression: as you meander through her creation – complete with tongue-like foam walkways and acrylic wool imitation pubic hair – you’re bombarded with screams and shouts, lashing out against the deeply entrenched patriarchal systems that for so long held women captive – figuratively and literally. The artist describes her work as ‘revolting against this space... mocking this space, by laughing at it.’ Personally, I think she could have stopped at ‘revolting’.

I haven’t been able to ascertain whether you pay for this enlightening experience or not – I’m guessing and hoping not, since that says a whole different kind of statement about entry rights to a woman’s vagina.

Even the artist’s phrase, ‘walk-in vagina’, makes lady-parts seem merely like useful spaces – ‘come on’, it says, ‘rummage through my drawers, take what you need, then leave’.

But fear not: before entering its cavernous insides, visitors are required to remove their footwear, in what I can only presume is an attempt at respectful reverence. As though traipsing hundreds of visitors through a vagina is ever considered a respectful way to pass a Sunday. That said, I think I know what it’s trying to say. It’s attempting to declare that women who have been captive within patriarchal frameworks for so long are now free to discuss their place, their sexuality and even their private parts without fear. This is a good thing; no one is denying that here.

But sex sells. Call me cynical, but by depicting the vagina as an ‘open’ house for entry, discussion, and sporadic screams about the hatefulness of those dastardly men, what the artist is actually doing is using the good old-fashioned marketing trick of sex as a platform to sell her art. It’s guaranteed exposure (in every sense) and not very original thinking.

Besides all that… why does art always have to make an outlandish statement? Why can’t it just be good, without being groundbreaking or ugly?

Oh sod it, I’ll try my hand at this feminist art lark.

Join me next week to see what I make of a few yards of acrylic wool, some aging pink foam, and a hot glue gun.

I promise to display it outside Oxford’s Natural History Museum.

 

The Ugly Issue Of Beauty Pageants

 

France has somehow formed the idea that child beauty pageants promote the “hyper-sexualisation” of minors, and is therefore moving to ban them.
How ridiculous (I choke). The idea that semi-clad little girls, plastered with make-up, and fake tan (and sometimes fake boobs) is hyper-sexualising or in any way immoral, is surely absurd (I choke again). 
In Britain we must surely smirk at our neighbours with their silly ideas about eating what you like (in moderation) and staying slim, and the supposed immorality of parading young children like some cirque de soleil for the criminally insane.
This crazy notion was prompted by a row over a Vogue photo shoot that showed three young girls – and by young, I mean prepubescent – in tight dresses and heavy make-up. Vogue defended itself by describing the image as a simple fantasy harboured by all little girls to ‘dress up like mummy’.
As part of its ongoing investigation, the French Parliament heard a report entitled Against Hyper-Sexualisation: A New Fight For Equality, which called for the ban on beauty competitions for the under-16s.
“Let us not make our girls believe from a very young age that their worth is only judged by their appearance,”" said the author of the report, former sports minister Chantal Jouanno.
In June, our current Miss Oxfordshire, Lydia Williamson, said that beauty pageant queens require intelligence as well as looks, since they have to give their opinions on cultural debates. OK, this may be true in adult competitions (I truly doubt this, but for the sake of sisterly solidarity I’ll bear it). However, I don’t think that aged 10, many little girls care too much about world peace or political ideology.  It may be true that little girls just want to dress ‘like mummy’.  But I would also argue that dressing up like mummy is all well and good except in cases where mummy often leaves the house looking like a cut-price prostitute.
One larger issue is that these pageants teach young girls – our next generation of women – that the only way to get attention is via their looks, for good or bad.  And let’s face it – they look very, very bad.  They look like miniature Bet Lynch barmaids on an off day.  
For a good antidote to all this, I suggest watching the film Little Miss Sunshine, in which a young girl desperately wants to become a beauty queen only to realise upon what utter tosh the whole system turns. I only hope that if and when I have a daughter she’s got enough savvy to recognise the same: that the whole business of ‘beauty’ queens is downright ugly.