On 8th March, International Women’s Day, a group of women at my Facultat, led I believe by Prof. Teresa Camps, decided to decorate a very visible wall in one of the main corridors with four photos (about 50 x 50 cms) of the same series. The black and white photos show a young white woman, blond, stylish short hair, naked from the waist up… carrying on her shoulders one of those orange gas bottles used for domestic consumption.
The ‘butanera’ (yes, the gas-bottle delivery woman according to WordReference) has breasts you cannot miss: perky, prominent nipples, champagne-glass sized flesh as the French like… much on show –in short. I found myself staring at the photos in the company of three male students who were a) puzzled that a group of feminists had considered that the photos represent the Facultat’s working women, b) puzzled that these images were not considered sexist, c) not puzzled at all about the sexual attractive of those magnificent boobs. Soon I found myself again staring at the photos in the company of another female degree Coordinator like myself, wondering again why the walls had been decorated with the said tits and not with, my suggestion, a selection of photos of prominent female Coordinators (fully dressed).
I emailed the Dean, another woman, to complain about the images on the grounds that, um, the series of portraits does not represent anyone female remotely connected with the Facultat’s women, whether teachers or students, and, well, men were, surely, having a good laugh at our expense. The Dean soon replied telling me that she would not judge the quality of the photos as she trusted they were the right choice, and was I aware that this was the idea of a feminist colleague of high reputation in the world of art? (Yes, I was) Well, excuse me, Madame Dean: since when are women’s feminist ideas free from criticism by other feminists?
Every day I pass the darn photos I tell myself I have to do something about them… Not a vandalic act, for God’s sake, but something more constructive. What I really would like to do is to hang below a similar series depicting a) four shots of a beautiful male’s buttocks, with the model also holding a gas bottle (just to compensate for the visual pleasure that male heterosexuals and lesbians are deriving from the ‘butanera’), b) four shots of the real individuals who deliver the gas bottles and who happen to be, mostly NON-WHITE MEN from Pakistan (see how an feminist art project can manage to be subtly androphobic and racist). I don’t have the resources to do this, nor would I like to answer questions about where I got the beautiful male, so my second option is producing a poster explaining why the photos are wrong and planting it below the photos. I could even pretend this is part of the series (would this be regarded as vandalism??).
In the meantime, I put up with the fabulous tits of the ‘butanera’ every day, hoping one day they’ll come down (he, he…). To the Dean I can only say this: when I asked a male colleague ‘so, what do you think about the ‘butanera’?’ he replied with a smile, ‘what? Is she carrying a gas bottle?’ So much for the obvious feminist message…
PS: Yes, I’m royally ignoring the umpteenth students’ strike and the intolerant barricades that have prevented me from reaching my classroom today. Why waste words again?
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