Disembodied women for your listening pleasure
Via svgreen on the Community blog.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Disembodied women for your listening pleasure.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/11629
That has to be one of the most distressing images Ive seen in a while.
Wow, must be because music sounds WAY better coming out of breasts!
ew...I think I'm going to gag.
The speaker boobs are one thing, but the crotch as outlet is what gets me the most.
Yeah. That part is disgusting.
I'm a guy, and I'll be the first to admit that I am not perfect when it comes to objectification, but I fail to find how anyone could find anything remotely arousing about that.
It's not intended to arouse. It's intended to shock. It's intended to make people who are easily cowed by accusations of political correctness uncomfortable, and to give a thrill to owners who enjoy throwing around such accusations. It's intended to remind its owner of a woman's "proper" place so that he might never slip and start considering women equal persons.
Same here.
Agreed. For the boobs I just thought, really now? But then I scrolled down, and my first impression of the crotch was somewhere between electroshocks and umbilical cord ... ew.
Ew, I love how the series is called "object remix."
Yeah, because the likeness of a female is in the same category as a desk lamp - just another useful object.
I just read his comment below:
"As part of my object remix series, this stereo forces the music source into the center of attention and creates a radically new user interface."
Haha... uhhh the female body as a "user interface?" Really?
Wow, seeing that in someone's apartment would have me making "I just remembered, I left the, um, oven on. In my apartment. Where I live." excuses really, really quickly.
In what alternate universe is that in any way okay?
Dismembered legs/arms? Check.
Decapitated? Check.
White, skinny, busty woman's body on display? Check.
Focus on mutilation/penetration of sexual organs? Check.
This pretty much hits all the "appalling and objectifying" points.
......wtf.
Another fine addition to the list of products that scream "Don't date me!", for the man who wishes to remain celibate forever.
I can definitely see the problems with this. However, I gotta say, this is just weird and tacky enough that I really want it. It reminds me of some sort of beautiful ancient statue, corrupted by technology until it's just vulgar and very creepy.
Did I just lose my feminist card?
But then you'd have to explain it to visitors.
I know, it's so creepy it's practically commentary on itself...
On second thought, there's something kind of Ghost in the Shell about it, no?
And of course people say "it's only sexist if you think naked bodies of women are sexist." Oh, the ignorance of people. But how much better would it be if it was a little naked body with a pretty head and limbs and heels?
Either way, I don't get what's so cool about sticking a jack in a fake female body's crotch. These are probably the same people who think that the labia is the vagina, and get offended if you try to correct them.
what the fuck.
i think if i saw this in real life, i would smash it. a lot. and then throw it at whatever sexist asshole owned it.
On top of everything else, it's fugly.
Indeed. At least that disembodied furniture guy with the boob drawers and the vagina bottle holder has some sense of color and proportion. This is offensive on so many levels. My first reaction was "Dear god that's ugly" before "Dear god where is here head take it away please".
Quick, someone wrap a pink ribbon around it and say it benefits breat cancer awareness..."poof" instant respectability!
The thing about the profusion and familiarization of things like this is that every time I see one, I think of all the guys I know, like, and trust, and I realize that if I ever found out that one of them owned something like this I would probably never feel completely safe around them again... and I feel very little confidence that none of them ever would own something like this. You know what I mean? On a good day, some of them might be like, "Yeah, ew, that's pretty awful, I'm sorry," but in general I wouldn't want to have to be around them when they encountered it. Especially in a group.
I don't mean to write off the feminist guys who read and comment here, because I know that you do get it -- but it's not like I can make the same assumptions in real life as I can on a feminist blog, and it does depressingly highlight the fact that I don't actually know any male feminists, which in turn depressingly highlights the fact that I really don't know any female feminists other than myself... and it all starts to feel a bit hopeless. I know it's not, but that's how it feels.
Anyway. Sorry for the downer of a comment. The product is gross.
Some of us guys who read here regularly learned from feministing (and other blogs) not just why this is wrong, but also to stand up and say something even if we're in a crowd. Us male feminists who'll day something about crap like this are out here in the real world.
You get laid a lot for being a "male feminist"? That's the only reason I could see for feigning interest or belief in such inane trash.
troll alert? anyone?
Ew, just ew. Anyone who buys this has no taste.
I assume it is sexist because it portrays the female form, right? It can't portray a female body as art (see Venus de Milo), or as merely a novelty (see thatsnutz.com) because that would be wrong. Clearly the female form should never be seen in public, in art, in decor, in any reason, at any time, because that would be "misogynist" no matter what. Right?
Here is a thought: Grow up. If they started selling coat hangers with dicks to hang coats on, I wouldn't be out bitching about it. If this exact same thing was made with a male body, would any man complain? Fuck no. Get over yourselves. gtwilfong@gmail.com if you have anything else to say.
What is it with these guys and the phrase "female form," anyway? It's like they can't even talk about a body without abstracting it away from the physical reality of it being a person into some kind of weird pseudo-metaphysical, Mathemagic Land type stuff.
Well, considering this is NOT a person, in reality (you know, that place that you feminists seem to live far outside of?), I fail to see your point.
This is not, was not, and never will be a person. It is an artistic representation of an ABSTRACT female body. Once again, get over yourself and grow up. The world isn't against women, you do it to yourselves.
Are you "like"ing your own comments (or getting your friends to come here and do it)? Lame. Either way, I definitely wasn't talking to you, bub.
You were talking about me, bub. You are just upset that I ruined your pitiful little argument. Fuck off.
Congrats on winning the internet. I bow to your obviously superior intellect.
OMGZ, I know not to feed trolls, but he totally said what I thought he would say. "It's only sexist if naked women are sexist."
Unfortunately, there is sexism in this because it was not made to be 'art,' it was made to be good looking to guys. Notice how 'good looking' is 'torso?' That's because these are the regions that are supposed to be the ones guys like, ergo the only ones that matter.
It wouldn't matter as much if this kind of stuff wasn't everywhere, but it is, so here we are.
And men would complain if it was a 'make form,' because guys don't want to be lookin at that kind of shit. It's gay.
Male. 'K' Always does that me. >.
You win the thread. It's official.
Also, @ Misspelled: You said "I think of all the guys I know, like, and trust, and I realize that if I ever found out that one of them owned something like this I would probably never feel completely safe around them again". Are you saying you think they might rape you? Like all the other men being arrested and charged with false rape accusations by pissed of women? The same men that cannot seek any sort of recourse afterwards? Fuck off.
Oh, honey. If you can't make sense of a comment without making potenitally lethal leaps of logic from one MRA cliché to the next, then don't try. No one wants to see you hurt yourself.
my jaw just dropped... seriously NO COMMENT.
It distresses me that this pig is from my city.
That is disgusting.
Could somebody please report the troll? My computer isn't allowing me to do so.
I agree that this is a little too creepy for words and is something you would expect to see in Clockwork Orange. That said, I can see why some people could find it strangely compelling. I think whoever compared it to Ghost in the Shell is on to something.
Re: troll -- done and done.
Re: Ghost in the Shell (that was me, also) -- Yeah, I can't quite pin it, but there's something so sort of disembodied and mechanical about this that it almost comes full circle to being creepily Borg-like or something, instead of just being a vulgar inert image. I mean, wouldn't it just be eerie to actually imagine music coming out of this?
Yes it's tacky, but honestly, I don't see what's so bad about it. At best it's just supposed to be funny. At worst, it's just tacky. If one of my male friends had it, I'd just constantly give him hard time about having lousy taste, not be afraid of him. Owning or creating something like this doesn't make anyone a rapist or or violent towards women in anyway. It just means they should never be allowed to decorate...ever.
Not all sexists are violent, and not all discomfort stems from a fear of violence. If I found out a man I knew owned this, I wouldn't fear for my safety, but I'd definitely start to wonder about how much he really respects women. Shag carpeting is tacky, a disembodied women speaker is quite far beyond that.
And considering that 1 in 4 women will be raped, and most of them by men they know, is it such a wonder that seeing something so creepy could worry a person?
yeah wow! this is just tacky! it reminds me of that tacky leg lamp from "a christmas story."
To be honest, I really can't get past the creepy convex boobs. And I have incredibly little to say about the...outlet. Ugh.
Oops, I meant concave. Either way, you get my point... :\
Troll gone. Thanks for alerting me, folks.
meh looks like the kind of stuff a hormonal teenage
boy who never saw a real live naked woman might want.Other than type tacky and/or sad.
the outlet in the crotch skeeves me out more than just a little. All me and my sister had to say about this was: classy, real classy.
I don't see this as any worse than, say, a chrome scrotum hanging off a truck, or one of those eerily realistic dildos, or any other disembodied appendages used for fun and profit. Yawn.
I don't find either of those products to be analagous to what we see here. In the case of truck balls and dildos the anatomical resemblances are integral to the design and purpose of the product, whether to make your sexual experience more "realistic" or to make your truck more "macho". Additionally the truck balls are more of an additive product - you're not cutting testicles off something else, and the balls aren't disembodied, they're meant to appear as part of the body of your truck.
Joke's on the buyer because it only plays queefs.
Now that's funny.
Like Louise said higher in the string, it's high tacky art, or can be. One would have to look around the person's apartment or house for other clues to see if tacky irony was what was intended. Scattered beer cans and empty pizza boxes would tell you something.
A hallmark of tacky art is its ability to shock and offend and clearly that worked with the bulk of commenters here. If this were displayed in Susan Sontag's or Gloria Steinem's place, it would be hailed as a powerful statement about American society.
gag me with a zircon - encrusted pair of tweezers, fer sure!
first it was the Hillary Rodham Clinton urinal target, sold by some online gun supply place called militia.com I think, whom was unsexist enough??? to have one of both Al Gore and NY sen. Chuck Schumer, along with " Hanoi" Jane Fonda.
But now we've got this assholic stereo contraption which I'm sure will be a hit with every frat house pig in America. Guess the guy, and I'm sure the creator was a guy; must have been inspired by watching Friday the 13th at least a 1,000 times over and over again. this dude is one SICK MOTHER FUCKER!
i. am. just. so. fecking. depressed. right. now. i hope for the best for my nieces, as they enter the adult world. but, how can i truly feel things are better for them as people, when a product such as this exists. urgh.
It gets more disturbing the more I think about it. See the location of the "power/volume knob"?
I can't see him either succeeding with relationships or developing any appreciation of good sound.
wow. we can get a NSFW tag or something? i used to read this at work (now ive usually got little people hovering when checking the interwebs).
and yep. excredibly disgusting.
As a female I actually don't hate this. My take on this is that the "object" is the mannequin, not women. I wouldn't want to date or hang out with any guy who had one unless I was very sure that he was viewing it in the same way I am (unlikely) and not the sexist "cool naked female body objectified for my viewing pleasure" way that most men who would buy or want one of these would. However, to me (a music lover) there is something powerful about the image of music emanating from the female form. That is really the only reason I can find for why this one doesn't give me the same creeps that shower boob soap dispensers, crotch pencil sharpeners and naked women chairs and urinals do. Of course, I have no idea what the artist intended, maybe just to get attention.
Now, I know I'm just a fledgling feminist and all, but the more I think about this, the less it bothers me. It's not my taste, certainly, but.. well, as an art student, in my mind there is a difference between THE female form and A woman's body. The female form is an absolutely beautiful thing, it's something I use in my art all the time- sometimes to indicate or say something about women, but also sometimes just because it's the most beautiful thing I know.
Anyway, I digress. My cursory look at that artist's portfolio and statement about that piece tells me that it isn't the tacky "novelty" crap it's being assumed to be (ie those awful crotch pencil sharpeneres). I think he's actually commenting on how in a society that's very much based on the male sexuality, female anatomy (especially breasts) is the way to get "attention." Hence, the speakers being "the center of attention." I may be giving him too much credit, though.
Doesn't this object defeat the purpose of "Women should be seen, not heard?"
Is anyone else as disturbed by the Barbie-esque appearance of the genitals as I am? No hair, no labia, no detail whatsoever, just like a Barbie doll. In this grotesque thing (what do we even call it? Speakers? Statue? iPod plugin? Musicsexbot?) women's genitalia are just a void nothing, that you can stick something into for your pleasure, be it listening or sexual. Disgusting.
If you have kids are they only allowed to have dolls which are anatomically correct? Would this object be less offensive to you if it were anatomically correct? Perhaps the artist or designer intentionally made it idealized as part of the symbolic artistic creation.
The object itself can say very different things depending on the context of its display, as I tried to suggest in my earlier post by theoretically placing in the spaces of prominent feminist thinkers. You and others imagine it in your vision of an archetypal frat house. Does your perception of it change if it were displayed in the waiting room of an ob/gyn office, a plastic surgeon's office or an artist's studio or gallery?
The posted reactions here reveal a lot more about the fixed perceptions of the posters than the object does about its creator. I'm beginning to have more admiration for him, similar to the admiration I had for the Yale art student last year who (intentionally or not) created quite a performance art piece with her collection of menses or miscarriage senior project.
This is ... really bad. I really don't want to see the male version of this.
BTW: trolls should be deleted, not fed.
I agree that in the abstract it's objectifying and mutilating, etc., but I am most stuck by how viscerally disturbing it is. For some reason I find it really disgusting, more so than some other examples of disembodied body parts I've seen on this site. Maybe because it's not even half joking? It seems so... clinical.
A) Oh noes! What about teh childrenz! This is a red herring argument. This object was not created for children, it is not a doll. It has nothing to do with children. That is so illogical and left field it really doesn't deserve argument.
B) Idealized. Idealized? Really? Females having no genitals and no pubic hair (i.e. prepubescent in appearance) is an ideal to you, eh? Talk about fixed perceptions.
C) If it were in a doctors office I would cease going to that office. My perception would not change. Art display? Who knows. This object was created FOR CONSUMPTION, not for display at a museum, and the artist/designer knew that, and you know that. I spot a strawfeminist.
Er, sorry about the post misplacement.
A) You're the one who brought Barbie doll into the discussion, not me. I thought your analogy odd.
B)The model is not by any stretch of the imagination prepubescent. You're really reaching to call me a scumbag with that one. It's not my ideal but it's not a new idea that objectified female depictions lack anatomic reality such as pubic hair and labia. Playboy magazine of the 50's and 60's come to mind.
C) How do you know what the designer intended? A poster above apparently found some comment he made about the piece which seems to belie your interpretation of his intent. I certainly don't know what his intent was and I seriously doubt you do. But of course you seem to think you know what his intent and my intent is. I think you're clueless and inflexibly minded.
I've been accused of being insufficiently pure on my feminist thoughts, so your calling me so doesn't really bother me. Once you're elected queen of the feminists, it might.
....i actually like it. i would probably have it in my den or something. very funky. the cord coming out of the vagina is kind of weird but the speaker boobs made me laugh. i'd probably put a necklace on it.
In case anyone out there wasn't sure if women were seen as objects....
now you should be.
oh, i don't know. it kind of has a venus de milo feel to it.
I must have lost my feminist card too. I laughed a little to myself, but when you work in retail you change enough mannequins that they don't remind you of real people. Well maybe victoria's secret is different because their mannequins look real, but where I work they are headless. Some are legless, too. I'm also an art student and I think it is fun to do humorous art. He juxtaposed two things you normally wouldn't see together in a way that makes people uncomfortable. Artists love to make people uncomfortable. The jack is just punny to me since they call the receiving end the female .
So it does what good art does, it makes the viewer feel something, it makes them react.
Well, as an art piece it kinda fails. I can't get angry at something that looks like a bizarre long-faced alien with black eyes sucking on a juice box.
Plus, I'd feel really creepy playing with that knob.