I may have mentioned before, though only in a brief caption, that I took issue with this memorial to the anonymous "Women of World War II." Well, now I'm a different person and much more open about calling out inequality. (Look at that, I've changed this year!) So why are the women of WWII immortalized with clothes on pegs and not faces and bodies? Are women's bodies to be exhibited only in the context of pleasure? I am glad they tried to pay tribute to the variety of female roles, but I'd like to think that women can be depicted heroically, too - not just our outfits.
It bothers me because women don't get the same consideration for heroic presentation as men. Because men get bodies and women get clothes. It's a monument, not a closet! It's hard to imagine a sculpture for "the men of World War II" not having even a single anonymous male figure to represent the larger group. The absence of physical representation - despite the fact that this is a monument to real human beings - is startling and telling. I'm glad we have a statue. But we also need to think about how it is presented, and what that says about our attitudes towards gender and heroism.
I was reminded of all this the other day as I was strolling up Whitehall and saw the monument again. This time I took a moment to look around as well. Lo and behold, all in the immediate vicinity:
It bothers me because women don't get the same consideration for heroic presentation as men. Because men get bodies and women get clothes. It's a monument, not a closet! It's hard to imagine a sculpture for "the men of World War II" not having even a single anonymous male figure to represent the larger group. The absence of physical representation - despite the fact that this is a monument to real human beings - is startling and telling. I'm glad we have a statue. But we also need to think about how it is presented, and what that says about our attitudes towards gender and heroism.
I was reminded of all this the other day as I was strolling up Whitehall and saw the monument again. This time I took a moment to look around as well. Lo and behold, all in the immediate vicinity:
Individual statues, depicting male figures in heroic attitudes. And we couldn't have even one woman looking courageous? I understand that at the time most leaders were male, and therefore dominate in military memorials. I'm not trying to rewrite history, I'm trying to rewrite our attitudes towards gender and representation. I'm trying to make amends for the fact that I can now name all of those field marshals and not a single woman who was part of World War II.
And, of course, this succession of sculptures leads up the road to that most phallic of monuments, Nelson's Column. It's amazing how your view of something can shift so suddenly in a new context. Virginia Woolf nailed the experience - down to the location! - in A Room of One's Own: "If one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical.”
If you assume something is the norm, you tend to question it only when it doesn't work for you. And it takes people a while to break free of the assumptions they have learned or been raised with. Once we're past childhood we have to learn to re-question things, perhaps constantly. It's the only way towards progress.
Love,
Annie
And, of course, this succession of sculptures leads up the road to that most phallic of monuments, Nelson's Column. It's amazing how your view of something can shift so suddenly in a new context. Virginia Woolf nailed the experience - down to the location! - in A Room of One's Own: "If one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical.”
If you assume something is the norm, you tend to question it only when it doesn't work for you. And it takes people a while to break free of the assumptions they have learned or been raised with. Once we're past childhood we have to learn to re-question things, perhaps constantly. It's the only way towards progress.
Love,
Annie