I conducted more research on relevant campaign and artists, trying to find out how they started the campaign/created the artworks.
1.The #freethenipple campaign
Founded by artist and activist Lina Esco in 2013, the Free The Nipple campaign addresses the sexualisation and censorship of women’s breasts. The campaign aims to achieve the right for women to bare their chests in Western nations where going topless is largely discouraged and criminalised, unless in a “sexual environment” such as a strip club. Thus, the campaign seeks to interrupt patriarchal framings of the breast as inherently sexual and the associated practices of concealment and censorship. The organisers describe the movement as “a mission to empower women across the world” (Free the Nipple 2016).
However, the movement’s potency was seen to be subsumed by a culture of objectification and sexualisation, and the imagery and mechanisms of the movement were argued to in fact fuel objectification and male gaze rather than subvert it. The concern in this line of thought was not necessarily that the desexualisation of women’s breasts is impossible, but that it is not possible in the society at this time or in this way. This was particularly evident in one comment from a user in a thread about Free The Nipple in a feminist discussion group;
I support the movement in principle, but the fine line it treads between liberation and titillation makes me really uncomfortable … I can’t help but feel like the disrespectful objectification of women’s bodies is part of a much grander system of oppression towards women and if we want to genuinely #freethenipple, first we have to #freethewoman
It became clear that a lot of the people in the group shared this belief and regrettable concern that the movement is premature in a society in which women’s bodies are so heavily objectified. Whilst it was agreed that objectification is a great concern for feminists, the Free The Nipple movement was not seen as effective in tackling this issue.
This image symbolises concerns held by a range of users over the possibility that the Free The Nipple movement may reinforce the male gaze rather than subvert or disrupt it. Another user nuances the debate by introducing the concept of “male entitlement”:
There are many reasons why women as of now, don’t wish to free our nipples, probably [because] you haven’t even gotten to the core problem which is that men feel entitled to and find women’s bodies inherently sexual, why would you tell women to free their nipples when you know most men aren’t even close to being at the level of respect and progress in which the average women can ‘free her nipple’ without some type of harassment or unwanted attention from annoying men … women’s nipples are consistently still going to be in a sexualised format due to porn and adverts
2. Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas is a visual artist born in England in 1962 and a member of YBAS. Her work combines eroticism and humour, using photographs, collages and ready-made installations to express bodies and organs in a frank and crude way, deliberately challenging existing sexual and gender stereotypes. Lucas often uses critical humour in her work to question conventions and highlight the absurdity of everyday life. Her famous series of self-portraits explores androgynous temperaments, yet her work is never autobiographical, but presents a perspective influenced by post-Freudian social theory and feminism.
“Inspired by feminist Andrea Dworkin and books on pornography and sexuality, Lucas tackles the objectification of the female body by men and how women’s ‘sexual liberation’ encourages their unintentional submissiveness. By appropriating masculine metaphors and gender constructs, she confronts and dissects them. sculptures do not portray women as beautiful, as Cindy Sherman did before her. portrays women as beautiful, but rather uses the casual misogyny of everyday life as fuel to construct visual puns to counter stereotypes of women”Reflection
3. Conclusion
I think I need to be very aware of the ‘boundaries’ in the next interventions that I am planning. Sarah’s work has inspired me to perhaps focus less on the body and more on the female ideology.Although as women we have the same body parts, each woman has her own different individuality, talents and abilities. As mentioned earlier, more important than the freedom of the female body is the freedom of the female mind.
Reference：
1. #freethenipple – digital activism and embodiment in the contemporary feminist movement