“Goddesses on Parade”: Birth, Pornography, the Britney Spears Birthing Statue

 

A young woman I know very well (my oldest daughter, the amazing and brilliant Jeyoani, who is 30) wrote, but deleted, an incredible post about the Britney Spears birthing statue controversy.  (I am hoping she will re-post it!)  In that post she wrote that as a young girl of 10 or 11, it was being in the presence of, and seeing images of, women giving birth that made her a lifelong radical feminist, even though we were members of a fringe-y fundamentalist group at the time, and she was a little girl in a head covering and jumper who was not permitted to read mainstream books and magazines, much less feminist publications.  Nevertheless, seeing both real, live women laboring and giving birth, and seeing photos of women laboring and birthing published in books we had in our home, like Spiritual Midwifery, and in magazines, especially Mothering magazine, made her the radical feminist she still is today. 

Jeyoani said so many amazing things in that post– that women laboring and birthing in our own way are strong, powerful and yes, sexual (as opposed to sexy), because creativity and strength and self-confidence are sexual.  That there is a sexual component to birth (and I agree, but have so far feared to even go there), and that there is nothing pornographic or tawdry or shameful or embarrassing about it.  That she was ashamed of the feminist response to the Britney Spears statue, in that it evidenced feminist embarrassment about the processes of pregnancy, labor and birth.  Reflecting on something a member of the Women’s Space community had said, that the real pornography is a woman on a hospital gurney, her legs spread-eagled in stirrups, a male doctor standing between them, having his way with her, Jeyoani said that that position for birthing, besides being tantamount to torture, is comparable with the missionary position in sex:  man on top, woman on the bottom,  in this case compounded by levels and layers of patriarchal power topping female subordination.  

 

The knee-chest birthing position

Most interesting of all:  Jeyoani didn’t even realize that the image of the the statue above and in the post, Nothing Eww About It, was the statue everyone was talking about, was the source of the “Britney Spears Birthing Statue” controversy!  She thought I had simply chosen that image of a statue as an example, just as I’d chosen the other photos as examples, that the statue reminded her of similar art she has seen in midwives’ homes and offices, that in her opinion it was too artistic to have been the the statue everyone had been referring to as pornography, and that it didn’t look like Britney Spears to her.  To her, the statue was not pornography.

In her post, Jeyoani said that as far as she was concerned, women laboring and birthing in a woman-centered way, free of the interventions, restrictions and interference of patriarchal medicine, are “goddesses on parade.”  Hence, the title of this post.

Following is some birth imagery I have gathered, together with some thoughts and questions I am having.  I continue to be deeply disturbed by how feminists responded to the creation of the Britney Spears birthing statue.  Before I begin, here is an image of a woman actually giving birth in the position represented in the Britney Spears statue.  Although the woman’s body is covered, this photo demonstrates that this really is a position in which women labor and give birth.

Consider this statue:

On the website I visited, the caption beneath the photo reads, “Taina women gave birth squatting and alone. They tried to give birth near a river so that they could bathe themselves and their newborn.”

The creator of this piece is a Puerto Rican man, Reynaldo Real, who, his website says, is ”dedicated to the presentation of indigenous Puerto Rican life in clay.”

Does anyone think that this clay statue is pornographic?  If  it is not, then why isn’t it?  The woman in the statue is laboring in a common laboring-and-birthing position, as is also true of the Britney Spears statue.  But the position taken in the Taina statue is a position prostituted women also commonly assume, not only in film and paper pornography, but in stripping and exotic dancing.  In both statues, the baby’s head is crowning and visible, and in both statues the women evidence pregnant abdomens.  The women in both images are nude, physically fit and attractive.  In both statues, the facial expressions are not come-hither; they evidence something like concentration.

Is the Britney Spears statue pornographic just because the woman represented is Britney Spears?  Even though she was never consulted and did not give permission?  Are images of Britney Spears quid pro quo pornography?  If so, how so?  If the statue of the Taina woman is also pornography, why is it?  Because wherever women are nude and displaying their breasts and genitals, we are seeing pornography?  Are representations of labor and birth pornographic, per se?  Why?  If they are not, why aren’t they?  Is the statue of Britney Spears pornographic because it was created in the context of raunch culture?  Is the image of the Taina woman somehow not pornography because it was created by an indigenous man to portray the cultural event of birth amongst  his people?

What about this image which accompanies an essay written by the late Jeannine Parvati Baker,  a highly respected shamanic midwife and woman healer who worked tirelessly for women’s birthing rights until she died last January:

The position this woman assumes is similar to positions prostituted women assume for pornography.  She is young, traditionally attractive and nude.  She is touching herself.  She is grimacing, just as prostituted women often grimace in pornography. Is this photo pornography?  If it is not, why not?  If it is, why is it?

The photo above is of a woman who is not in labor, is not giving birth, but who is in the late stages of pregnancy.  She is young and traditionally beautiful. 

Is this photo pornography?  If so, why?  Does the woman’s beauty, in and of itself, make nude images of her pregnant form pornography?  Does rendering the photo in an artistic fashion make this photo pornographic?  Are we living in a time in which we are so surfeited with raunch that we cannot endorse, approve, view or accept any nudity, for any reason at all?  If so — and some in our radical feminist community may feel this way – how are girls and women to prepare themselves for what they will experience should they bear children?  For what their bodies will look like?  For what it might be like to labor, to deliver a child?  Not all girls and young women are fortunate, as my daughters and my friends’ and fellow birthing activists’ daughters were, to be included and wholeheartedly invited into the processes of pregnancy, labor and birth.  If we do not create and publish our own imagery, imagery of ourselves as strong and courageous women who create, author and control our own birthing experiences, in the company of women, assisted by women, attended by women, then how will our girls and women be prepared for their own similar labors and deliveries?  If we do not carefully appraise birth imagery created by others, including men, more for its accuracy, for how true it is to woman-centered, woman-controlled birthing, than for its potential prurience in the eyes of those who can be counted upon to fetishize all and every thing a woman does and is, then how are we not privileging men’s potential for prurience, their habit of fetishizing us, over our own vested interest in reclamation and re-authoring of this important bodily and procreative experience which belongs only to us, as women, which is wholly our own?  What will girls and young women have available to them to counteract (and condemn) the ubiquitous birthing imagery which is the creation of a patriarchal sadosociety,  images like this:

And this:

Like this:

Or this:

 

Are these latter images pornography? If not, why not?

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