* Of late I have been wallowing in a pile of (virtual) devalued USD. Ebay has me firmly in its claws. To date, I have purchased Fairies & Elves by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, an owl patterned dress, a vintage shirt with a picture taken from a 1920s Vogue cover depicting a woman riding a white peacock, a horrendous 70s hippie wall hanging in lurid colours that has a group of Dwarves capturing a Unicorn (
!!
!! Trash perfection! John Waters would love me for it!), a vegetarian cookbook and a shrunken head (made of plastique).
If you like your patterns bright and happy, search on "Orion" and/or "Dari Meya" under fashion and prepare to Sell your Soul to Satan for Psychedelia. And you will sell...it's all from Top Shop so it's pounds and not *sob* devalued USD.
This is Ida Rentoul Outhwaites stuff:
* If I could, I would like to have all of my fingernails removed...it would be a very subtle modification. My fingers would look like tentacles. Or baby mice.
I am sorry. I can't let go of this topic just yet. So if you don't want to read, don't click on the spoiler.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)No fucking smugness permitted. If you don't agree, don't take a self-righeous attitude. It's massively fat-headed to position yourself as some kind of "teacher" imparting wisdom to the culturally bereft such as myself. I like to listen to your opinion. Not be "brought around".
You are not right.
No one is right.
*John Marsden:
In 1997 (or thereabouts) John Marsden wrote a great book for teenagers called 'Dear Miffy". It was brilliant. I loved it when I first read it in about 2006. At the time of publication it was hugely controversial because of the violence it contained, but more so for its very graphic descriptions of teenage sex & teenage horniness.
Why doesn't it bother me when John Marsden writes his graphic teen sex scenes?
Because these scenes are based on his memories. They are HIS memories, they are fictional characters. The only "mine" of inspiration he exploits is his own. He describes what I consider to be appropriate, healthy scenarios (and I swing those two words; "appropriate" and "healthy" like a claw hammer in the hand of an enraged 50s housewife...if that's how you'd like to picture me). Teenagers experimenting with other teenagers on a level playing field. Underline the last three words.
Because for me the primary issue is control. Power. Appropriateness. It doesn't hinge on consent. There is so much more to this issue than just consent.
That's what's annoying me about this case. Comparisons which are apples to oranges. A former model of Henson's who decided beforehand with her mother (she was in her early teens at the time) not to pose nude. Totally different kettle of fish.
Or the woman who posed nude for Henson...WOMAN. She was 24. No fucking comparison.
Age does matter. An adult is legally, financially, mentally, physically advantaged over a child. Throw one into the mix and you suddenly don't have a level playing field.
(My thoughts are not entirely sorted yet. I just have to get it out in part at least or I won't sleep for trying to decide what I need to do for myself to rest easy about this topic).
Henson?
The loss of control (for the child) is incremental and apprent at every stage (to me). Consent is obtained...from two children (apparently a girl and a boy of 12/13 appear in some of works in question) who are not even of legal working age, so how much power does their consent really have?
What happens after the pictures are taken?
Do they have any further control over who views those images?
How those images are altered?
Who buys those images?
In what context they are displayed?
How those images are used?
Such as...the nude image of the young girl being used on the invitation to the opening of the exhibition (in my line I get to read alot of newspapers). Titillating much? Provocative?
Blatant commercial use of an image of a naked child to get people in to your exhibition? (Nothing screams "dying career!!!" louder than having to use confrontational imagery to pull a crowd).
Where does the control really lie?
I wrote this in someones' journal, but I need to include it here:
"I think those kids are too young to consent to posing nude in such a public context, and therein lies the exploitation (it's not necessarily a sexual one, hmm still thinking here). Henson has been careless of that immaturity/vulnerability and selfish not to acknowledge it. He could just as easily have used some fragile looking 18 yr olds to achieve the same effect and avoided alot of trouble in doing so...for himself and the others involved."
Consent does not make everything alright..not when that consent has no "power" or the person giving it has limited capacity to do so, to realise fully what they are consenting to.
The image is not distasteful because it shows a childs sexuality (there is nothing new and/or amazing there), it is distasteful because it is an inappropriate way of confronting the topic of childrens sexuality, the transitions between childhood and adulthood.
Art is not solely the end product (duh), it is also the processes involved and the motivations behind creating that end work...and it is within these processes that the potential for harm can also lie. For me that's the difference between a Henson nude and Miffy.
Slapping the "art" word on something does not make everything alright. Screaming "Philistine!" and "Christian Fundamentalist!" at everyone who doesn't swallow that line doesn't make you open-minded. It just makes you unquestioning. That kind of shit is coming from both "sides" of the debate, I think anyways.
Uhhnnnn, I need to fucking die
