Dr Victoria Bateman is a Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge, England, and author of the new book Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty. You can see more at www.NakedFeminism.com.
What determines a woman’s worth? Is it her conscientiousness, her open-mindedness, how kind and generous she is to others? Or is it what she shows, or doesn’t show, of her body that somehow determines whether a woman is valued and respected by society? I pose this question not only as a woman but as someone who has, among other things, delivered public lectures, attended a Royal Economic Society gala, and appeared on national television, all while wearing no more than shoes and a smile (albeit accompanied by my trusty handbag). While you might imagine that women today would be free to do what they want with their own body, the reality, as I have seen for myself, is otherwise. Women who refuse to “cover up”, and who embrace sexiness, femininity and beauty, are seen as the maidens of patriarchy, and certainly not as “real” feminists. Since using my naked body in art and protest, I have been called a “whore”, “common”, “trashy” and “stupid”, and have been cast out by many of my fellow feminists, some of whom like to hold me personally responsible for womankind being treated like “sex objects”. It seems that immodest women are not only expected to face the forces of patriarchy, we are also expected to face the judgement of the sisterhood.
I am just one in a long line of “naked feminists” who have had to stand up to those who (in the name of feminism) would prefer to censor our bodies rather than address the way they – and the rest of society – choose to judge women. In 1975, the artist Hannah Wilke was invited to submit a piece of work for the “What is Feminist Art?” exhibition. Her submission, subtitled “Beware of Fascist Feminism“, contained at its centre the artist posing provocatively, her shirt wide open to her low-cut jeans, with a tie hanging between her breasts, and her largely topless torso covered in miniature vulva formed from chewing gum. It was a direct response to the “chorus of critical voices” she faced in relation to her previous sexually suggestive performances. As Jeanette Kohl noted, “ideological feminism did not approve of the double game of a self-aware Venus who was both a Muse and an artist, a beauty and a feminist, subject and manipulator of (male) desire”. Wilke was accused of objectifying herself and of reinforcing, rather than subverting, traditional depictions of women. Her artistic submission, part of a wider series, highlights the way in which “women who are beautiful, witty, and successful are usually accused of conspiring with men against other women” and “that a feminism that prescribes how a woman should look or behave is as harmful as the objectifying values that feminism seeks to redress“. She “warned of the dangers of feminist puritanism that militated against women themselves, their sensuality and the pleasure of their own bodies“. More recently, in 2011, during the Arab Spring, Aliaa Elmahdy, an Egyptian art student, “launched her nude body into the blogosphere”, bringing “sex to Tahir Square“, by uploading a nude photo of herself to her blog, A Rebel’s Diary. It was an act that challenged the “dualisms of secular and religious, erotic and sacred, real and virtual“. And, since her full frontal nude was accompanied by stockings, red shoes and a flower in her hair, it was sexually charged. Within the first week, her blog had received 1.5 million hits, and “incited discourse and rage”. Many feminists jumped to criticise Elmahdy for claiming that her nudity was liberation. She was, instead, told that she was playing to the ideal of women as ornamental and sexual creatures, reinforcing the “pernicious toxic Western aesthetic codes of man as surveyor/subject and woman as surveyed/object of the gaze“.
Nakedness is, however, certainly not a Western invention. In 1929, thousands of Igbo Nigerian women used their bodies in a show of resistance to colonial authority, in what became known as “the Women’s War“. Alongside attacking symbols of colonization, such as cutting telegraph wires and attacking post offices, they used “lewd gestures”, and they danced and they sang. On numerous other occasions, African women have used naked protest to fight violence, corruption and multinational oil companies, facing criticism well before any modern-day naked protesters. As Tricia Twasiima writes:
Nudity as a form of protest upsets the very ideas of what respectable womyn should be…The belief that womyn’s bodies must be clothed, until decided otherwise, is why womyn’s nudity as a form of resistance is exceptionally remarkable. The reclaiming of our bodies, and the self-determination of what they will be used for, undermines the patriarchal narrative which makes it even more powerful…By freeing ourselves from the limits of what is acceptable, we give room to new ways of resisting and ultimately new ways of liberation…This of course is difficult considering the consequences dealt to those who reject the set standards, but perhaps we can begin by unlearning our own biases and internalisations about our bodies. Questioning ourselves, and pushing back against the narratives that take self-determination away from us is a good place to start.
Nevertheless, Gabby Aossey argues that while “women who wear hijab have freed themselves from a man’s and a society’s judgemental gaze; the Free the Nipplers have not…they have fallen deep into the man’s world”. Following a series of my own naked protests, a member of a Radical Feminist group tweeted: “Does it not even make you pause for thought when you realise that men overwhelmingly support your feminism”. Many women offer a comment along these same lines: aren’t you just giving men precisely what they want? But to resist naked protesting so as to avoid the male gaze is, to my mind, allowing the male gaze to dictate what I do or do not do with my own body. I am perfectly capable of respecting myself and confident enough to pursue my goals, irrespective of what men might think or feel. For women to live their lives in a way that is limited by the male gaze as a means of escaping the male gaze is a pyrrhic victory. As I argue in my new book, Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty, a puritanical strain of thought runs deep within feminism. This feminist puritanism is not only bodyphobic, whorephobic and femmephobic, it is intellectually elitist, hypocritical and unfair. Implicit is a view that while it is perfectly acceptable, even to be encouraged, for a woman to “show off” and monetise her brain, it is not acceptable for her to do the same with her body. And by holding immodest women responsible for womankind being treated like sex objects, women themselves are expected to shoulder the sins of men. Our bodies become “the problem”, rather than what goes on in other people’s heads – how they choose to judge (and thereby treat) their fellow human beings.
Explicitly or implicitly, and inside as well as outside feminism, a woman’s worth and respect still hangs on her bodily modesty – on the degree to which her body is “unseen” and “untouched”. As a result, crimes and inappropriate behaviour committed against what society judges to be “immodest” women are trivialised, with women who “show off” their bodies, along with those who are deemed “promiscuous”, being seen as “fair game”, and deserving of punishment. The consequences affect all women; from virginity testing and honour killings to revenge porn and female genital cutting. No woman is left unscathed – from sex workers and strippers to schoolgirls. Feminists need to stop problematising what they see as immodest women and instead switch their focus to challenging, rather than reinforcing, the belief that a woman’s worth and respect hangs on her bodily modesty. Challenge that belief and you challenge the whole set of policies and practices that constrain women’s lives across the globe.
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