I’ve always been interested in the Internet as a form of escapism.
Thanks to fibre optic cables and a universal feeling of loneliness and simultaneous self-importance, we are able to make—through social networking, blogging, posting, capturing, hashtagging—a world that is entirely of our own creation.
Never before have we been able to surround ourselves with all of our favourite things at once, and in such high definition. Memes, cat GIFs, perfectly Photoshopped selfies—the Internet allows us to create an aesthetic space that is tailor-made to our liking. A digital oasis lies in wait for us with every smartphone and laptop that our personalities caress.
Perhaps this is why every so often when something pops up that disagrees with this self-curated perfection, the Internet loses its shit.
This week it was an innocuous t-shirt, sold by American Apparel and designed by photographer Petra Collins and illustrator Alice Lancaster, that had many a dudebro (and even dudelady) averting their eyes.
The shirt, titled Period Power, depicts a woman masturbating whilst menstruating, facing us, the audience, pussy-first. The angle is unflattering, the pubic hair is voluminous, the blood is spilling, the fingers lingering. In both truth and simplicity, it is beautiful.
Some facts: there is nothing inherently wrong with women, menstruation, vaginas, pubic hair, masturbation, or blood. All of these are naturally occurring, and have been for centuries.
The woman next to you in line at the ATM is probably in possession of a glorious bush. Your female barista could be pleasantly and silently bleeding as she hands you your coffee.
Let me catch you with that cry of ‘disgusting’ still caught in your throat. It’s not. Neither is the Collins-designed shirt. Does it have the unfortunate aftertaste of a publicity stunt perpetrated by a company dying to be hip once more? Perhaps. Is it intrinsically revolting? No. Is it offensive? Apparently, but it shouldn’t be.
The version of female sexuality that is most widely advertised and accepted is one informed and invented by men. As seen through the gaze of males, sex as a woman includes on-command orgasms and hard, hairless cunts.
Masturbation is taboo, unless it’s performed for a man who is willing to finish the job himself. Period sex is deemed either repulsive or kinky. Pubic hair is considered dirty.
This is how Collins’ creation triumphs—by representing the realities of female sexuality, blood and all.
This reality is miles away from the plastic version that is force-fed to us on the daily. By including everything the patriarchy hates about vaginas—their hair, their blood, their ability to get themselves off penis-free—the shirt generates discussion through disgust and achieves success through subversiveness.
Through this representation we get to see ourselves, all of ourselves, even the nasty, dirty, downright biological bits of ourselves that are normally shrouded in shame and denial.
When we begin to see our real selves in the mass media, it will be increasingly difficult for injustices to be performed against us. By forcing the male gaze to stare at inconvenient womanly haunts, we normalize the parts of ourselves that are typically hidden.
Through the normalization of femininity, equality seems that much closer.
