![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3479\/3286575842_de57eeb797.jpg?v=0\")
Naked women. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to love, right?\nWell\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about Frank Cordelle.<\/p>\n
Naked women. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to love, right?
\nWell\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about Frank Cordelle.<\/p>\n
Cordelle is a photographer with a long-running exhibit he calls The Century Project<\/a>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a collection of pics \u00e2\u20ac\u201d nude girls and women ages birth through 100. (Get it? One hundred years of naked women = The Century Project.) The line-up for 2009 includes shows at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, Rhodes College in Memphis, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.<\/p>\n The pics are supposedly a celebration of the naked female body in a variety of shapes, sizes, races, and ages. Each photo comes with a little story about the featured female. Many of these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moving personal statements,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Cordelle calls them, are first-person blurbs about overcoming abuse, eating disorders, etc.<\/p>\n Cordelle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mission Statement<\/a> describes his exhibit as a project that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aims more generally to stimulate thought and discussion about subjects that are often taboo in our culture, or otherwise too personal, too painful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d An 8-year-old girl certainly has lots to tell us. But why does she have to do it in the nude?<\/p>\n Visual artist Karen Henninger comments, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if men REALLY got the issues, they would refrain \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as in take a break \u00e2\u20ac\u201d from female nudity. There is NO need for men to do female nudity \u00e2\u20ac\u201d unless it SERVES them. It’s pretty much a mainstream art thing. Female nudity is acceptable and will get you attention. So much for art being a place of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccreativity,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Henninger says. Check out the Met. Or any other museum. As the Guerrilla Girls<\/a> have noted for years, themes of female nudity melded with rape or sexual assault \u00e2\u20ac\u201d regardless of how the art is intended \u00e2\u20ac\u201d have been a constant theme in art history. Think Rubens’ Rape of Europa<\/a> or Hayez’s Susannah at her Bath<\/a>. Depicting women naked, vulnerable, or linked in some way to abuse has been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a constant way for women to be portrayed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the art world Henninger comments.<\/p>\n But back to Cordelle.<\/p>\n The problem is not female nudity or female sexuality. The problem is that The Century Project uses naked female bodies, eating disorders, and abuse in ways that promote voyeuristic interest. While childhood nudity should be free and joyful, in our culture that’s a big challenge because girls are already hypersexualized<\/a> at younger and younger ages. As a result we — as a culture — often don’t know how to see a naked female body (regardless of age) other than in sexualized terms. Is she available? Arousing? Sexually interesting? Or not?<\/p>\n I am anti-censorship. I’m a huge fan of feel-good sexual exploration and the freedom to accept our own bodies on our own terms.<\/p>\n The Century Project is not it.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same old-same old: girls’ and women’s naked bodies on display. I saw the exhibit and talked to the photographer. For the most part, the “moving personal statements” moved me to want to vomit. The exhibit visually exploited women and put their stories on display for no apparent productive end.<\/p>\n Check the photographer’s website and see what he has to say under the FAQ “Why Women?<\/a>” I remain unconvinced that he gets the issues. Cordelle’s explanation for exhibiting naked female bodies reinforces assumptions about women as different and needing special attention or unique protection. There’s something really off about it. He puts girls and women on display while claiming concern for our well being. Really, Frank: Don’t.<\/p>\n And P.S., Therese Shechter (Trixie Films<\/a>) has continued this convo over at the blog American Virgin<\/a>. Drop by and take a look!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Naked women. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to love, right? Well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about Frank Cordelle. Cordelle is a photographer with a long-running exhibit he calls The Century Project. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a collection of pics \u00e2\u20ac\u201d nude girls and women ages birth through 100. (Get it? One hundred years of naked women = The Century Project.) The line-up for 2009 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1906,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[323,216,851,21244,39,245,21370,21395,21411,876,18900,176],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-body","tag-century-project","tag-ethics","tag-feminism","tag-frank-cordelle","tag-girls","tag-guerrilla-girls","tag-men","tag-nudity","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1906"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}