Lea on Feminism

I have a serious problem with most feminist art. Someone one day needs to detail in a several page essay why the vagina is a symbol of feminine power as well as an outspoken demand for equality; then, maybe, I'll get it. But when I see a piece like Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, fully equipped with 39 plates topped with vagina shaped food, I honestly dont see the difference here if a man, trying to assert the power of his gender, decorated a table in penis shaped food.

And as we all know from one of the most common graffiti subjects across the nation, the penis does not make us feel a huge amount of respect for our fellow man. Okay okay okay okay- somethings coming to me. I can see how the vagina is a symbol of our gender- it is after all our most prominent physical difference from men. So i can understand perhaps how it demands a kind of recognition of our sex. But it ends there. To say that the vagina symbolizes our female power and equality seems to me to belittle our good qualities.

Quite the opposite of most feminists I find images of beauty empowering. Not placing demands on me about how I should look, just reminding the world and its viewers that women are beautiful. (and nearly 100% of the time more pleasant to look at than naked than men.) Heck i'm more proud of female beauty than my vagina any day!

(pictured here are two Turkish Bath scenes; the one on the bottom is a traditional image, the top a piece by a feminist artist picturing men.)

So, in my opinion, what would be a better way to fight for women's rights in artwork? Graphically speaking, how about simply picturing women as powerful figures? It worked for Stalin and Bonepart. Instead of "your gaze hits the side of my face", how about, " It was nothin'" as a caption for a poster with a gal in front of, say, a beautiful piece of artwork, a garden she cultivated, or children shes raised! Or, o, heres a good one: a big muscly arm with the saying "your power breeds violence" and then a beautiful reclining naked woman amogst the bazillions of art made of beautiful reclining women with the saying "our power breeds art"

.blah.