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Feminism is about the right to self-expression. There have been, of course, many disagreements among feminists about things like pornography, with some feminists citing its exploitation of women while others, like Annie Sprinkle, focusing on the sex-positive side of the issue. In this case, I think that Scout Willis is making a very interesting statement because she challenges our expectations of what a woman in public “should” look like. Personally, I prefer if men in public did not walk around bare chested, yet many men do, and many people (both men and women) don’t see a problem with that. If that is a “social norm,” however, then women should have the same right. Why does having breasts deny you the right to go topless? I mean, NYC is hot in the summer–and that is the excuse many men give when going topless.
Thanks for weighing in, Ula. I entirely agree that she should enjoy the same right as men to appear in public without a shirt. Yet, although she does, in some sense, challenge our expectations of what women should look like in public, I think that the kind of body she has—the kind, if I may venue, that most women want and most men want to look at unclothed—makes what otherwise could have been a more meaningful political statement into something that instead feels a lot more like a publicity stunt.
And so I’ve played right into her hands, I suppose, complicit in the ethical ambiguity of the act, by advertising it here. For it is with little surprise that I report the site to be enjoying noticeably more than the usual amount of traffic this morning.
My god, in the U.S., women can’t even breastfeed in public without a lot of tut-tutting and sometimes some police action. In Europe, it’s common, as are nude beaches and so on. Anything that pushes back against the expectation that women’s breasts are primarily for men’s enjoyment is a Good Thing, and this young lady seems to be pushing back. Good for her!
Miss Willis seems to be quite aware of the problem that PJ raises. It’s what Derrida analyzes as risk or the problem that arises with Butler’s notion of subversive performance: the risk is that the subversive act will be reappropriated by the very apparatuses of power that it means to subvert. Miss Willis seems to have anticipated all the ways in which she is being appropriated and seems to be very aware of the risk of feeding a culture of celebrity, as well as the male gaze. If this makes it easier for women to breastfeed in public, an aim Miss Willis specifically advances, fabulous! But it’s also an occasion to mediate on the problem of how to act without becoming complicit in what needs to be subverted.
Nicely put, Mary! It’s not often that I am able to wholeheartedly endorse an explicitly Derridian point. I’m more skeptical than Hilde about the extent to which Willis’s actions push back against the idea that women’s breasts exist for men’s enjoyment or make it any easier for women to breastfeed in public–which definitely does push back against such a norm!–but the comments here confirm that she has succeeded in at least providing a useful occasion on which to “mediate on the problem of how to act without becoming complicit in what needs to be subverted.”
I would be very curious to hear from anyone who’s spent more time in Europe whether or not nude beaches and the like in any way desexualize the female breast. This seems implausible to me, but I would love to be challenged on the point.
My initial reaction has been that this may make it easier for some very privileged women to go topless in public, but women who don’t look like her will still face harassment and pushback. A woman who is older, larger, less white, or less able will probably still be treated as “slutty” or told “cover it up, nobody wants to see that” . . . because the major problem remains that women in all categories of appearance are still seen as validated by in their existence by what men want to see. After reading the article, I find she acknowledged all these points but didn’t really address them except to say that baring her body makes it more possible for other women to do the same later by beginning to normalize it. Which I guess is true, as far as it goes . . .
I also find myself rather curious about whether this particular celebrity had anybody (i.e. security guards) standing by to protect her from assault or harassment as she went about her day. I feel like many women would feel uneasy about displaying their bodies in this way without protection . . . and maybe that’s where the value of this stunt lies, that a woman who can afford to protect herself safely is taking on the shock value of female breasts so that the shock wears off and other women will be able to do it safely.
I hope it works out. I just think that the problem to address is entitlement to police women’s bodies and decide what is/isn’t okay to show . . . and I think it’s important to recognize that what people will accept this woman showing, they’ll crack down hard on if other women do it.
See this: http://feministing.com/2014/06/11/photo-of-the-day-normalizebreastfeeding/, from the same excellent blog on which I found the original link, for what I regard as an action much more effective in advancing Willis’s agenda.