This is old news, but still worth a mention: you may have noticed that that Bettie Page mural on the side of a house facing I-5 just across from Wallingford was smeared with gray paint back in June. The vandals tagged it with the statement “Stop exploiting women’s bodies. – some feminists.”
Jessica Baxter (pictured), who lives there with her partner (and one of the artists behind the mural) Chris Brugos, replaced their words with the statement “Autonomous sexuality is empowerment. Telling a woman to cover up is oppression.”
According to the Seattle Times’ article, Baxter and Brugos “saw Page as in charge of her own image, and as Baxter put it, a pioneer “well ahead of her time,'” and plan to restore the mural over the next year.
“I feel like the feminists who were slut-shaming Bettie were perpetuating the rape culture,” Baxter said. “[I’d tell them] to do their homework. I don’t understand how they can feel having a woman express her sexuality isn’t feminism. Especially with today’s rape culture.”
The story has added relevance today, as France wrestles with local laws forbidding women from wearing “burkinis” (full-body covering wetsuits that adhere to the Muslim tradition of modest dress.) While some French leaders have tried to paint the burkini as akin to slavery (and thus, they are the liberators), many have noted that it is the French police that are forcing a clothing style on women against their will.
Here, a few people with a bucket of paint are deciding what art the rest of us should enjoy. I look forward to seeing it restored.
(Photo by Ken Lambert for the Seattle Times.)
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A woman making her own choices about how she presents herself in public is empowering.
A man painting a larger-than-life mural of a scantily clad woman in view of the public has nothing to do with womens’ sexual autonomy. Your last sentence says it all – it is all about the male gaze and “enjoying” the female body as an art object.
If the man wants to make a statement about sexual autonomy, he should paint a mural of himself expressing his own autonomy.
What’s your opinion of every female nude painted by every male artist since time began? The same? What if a woman painted the nude, instead? Just asking…
do i think those works of art were created to empower womens’ sexual autonomy? obviously not. they were created to appreciate the female form as an object of art. there’s nothing particularly radical about that idea.
if these centuries of female nudes were intended to empower women, don’t you think we’d be a bit more empowered by now? like, free to breastfeed in public or post a nipple on social media without censorship and backlash? Or to wear a burkini without laws being passed against it?
i’m sure there are exceptions – there always are. like, artwork portraying Kali-ma, the Hindu Goddess of creation and destruction, seem pretty empowering to me. The Rape of Europa? not so much.
It’s their house and their business. Most people don’t even notice the house. It’s too bad these self righteous, thin skinned fragile little snowflakes weren’t caught in the act. I wonder how they’d feel if someone vandalized their house?
Don’t escalate this conflict! You could be taunting some offended, right-or-wrong but self-righteous vandal to make a stronger statement than just gray paint. I’ve seen this level of conflict before. You could get your house burned down. Just paint it over as you would with any graffiti.
I think her name is Betty Boop!
I personally try to be a good neighbor to my neighbors within reason. If I had some art work in my yard that really offended my neighbors, I would take it down. Why cause conflict over something so small as home decoration? At the risk of sounding old (and I’m not a senior citizen), it seems like more people just don’t care about community anymore.
There are a couple very different types of criticism here, both in a way political. The article is about criticism of female sexual display, and here’s criticism that’s about neighborhood esthetic standards that could apply to any cartoon painted on the side of a house. I think the second is rather fair and would effectively resolve the first, too – guessing that Betty Page graphics on display in art galleries, coffee shops etc would not attract vandals and would serve the purpose of the artists equally well. If you like Betty Page, fine, but what if your neighbors want to paint Arnold Schwartzenegger and Hello Kitty on the sides of their house? Let’s draw the line at peculiar house paint colors.
I’m confused. It’s their house. What is your right to have any input at all into the art on their house, even if it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hello Kitty? Marking someone’s house with graffiti, even as a political expression, is trespassing and vandalism.
Are you suggesting that I marked that house with graffiti?
This is what happens when two compatible ideologies are rendered incompatible by differing methodology.
I’m stumped – is it clear where the methodology is distinct from the ideology? I’d say it’s what happens when ideological factions encourage divisive tendencies: the bitterest enemies are within the faction. E.g. feminism, and the article mentions Islam tangentially for another sad example.
I doubt that a neighbor did this. From what I hear, most people around her love this artwork. Plus, she’s on the end of the block with nothing but the freeway across from her so it’s not like anyone has to see her out their front door. She’s a cultural landmark of Seattle. People do disagree about the nature of Bettie Page herself–was she empowered, was she a victim, was she both–the conversation itself is part of the reason Bettie is on that house, I suspect.
As a professional photographer and veteran of the ‘cheesecake’ era, I remember how nervous my first ‘pin-up’ shooting session was. Thirty minutes in the tree branch near her window passed like hours. It really is an art!!