Melissa MacEwan has a remarkable post up documenting sixty-five examples of “gag gifts” which represent disembodied breasts. There are popsicles shaped like breasts (as above), pillows shaped like breasts, pasifiers shaped like breasts, frying pans made to make breast eggs, cake pans made to make breast cakes, soap breasts, slipper breasts, earmuff breasts, pasta breasts, candle breasts, mug breasts, and more.
Melissa writes:
I can, quite genuinely, understand why people look at one—or maybe even two, or three—of these items and dismiss them as “just a joke.” If I wrote a post about just a frying pan that turns eggs into boobs, I’m certain even some truly feminist women and men would defend it as just a bit of harmless kitsch. It’s just a joke; what’s the big deal? I get that; I really do.
Which is why I went for critical mass.
It isn’t just one “boob novelty” (or, as they tend to be called, “boobie novelty”). It’s sixty-five. If I hadn’t totally run out of steam, I probably could have included sixty-five more. And these things aren’t relegated to adult stores and websites—ads for the Jingle Jugs are being run on radio and TV during ballgames, and many of these items can be found in regular old party stores and gag shops like Spencer’s Gifts, which has franchises in every bloody mall in America. The “Stress Chest,” “Beer Boob,” and “Boobie Fuzzy Dice” are all sold at Spencer’s, right alongside Harry Potter action figures.
The ether is permeated with boob novelties (which is to say nothing of vagina novelties, women’s ass novelties, the women-as-toilets products, etc.), and while each on its own may not be such a terrible thing, the combined effect is having turned disembodied women’s body parts into just so much cultural detritus to be consumed or ignored. No rational person can argue that makes no difference to how women are viewed, as a group and as individuals, by men and by themselves. And that isn’t a laughing matter.
All of which I agree with.
I do disagree with her slightly here:
some readers may correctly note that one can increasingly find “penis popsicles” and the like, it is a false equivalence. In truth, the amplification of disembodied penis novelties serves merely to suggest a perniciously inaccurate illusion of equality… It’s a step forward only in a race to the bottom, and there is little to be gained by treating service to the lowest common denominator as a favorable equalizer.
She adds that “objectifying the body parts of either sex is exploitative.”
I don’t agree that disembodied body parts are inherently, in and of themselves, a problem. Disembodied hands, for instance, as in this mechanical construction that plays classical music:
Are really not problematic. Clearly, the mechanical hand is not comparable to the disembodied breasts — and that’s because there are different social meanings that construct disembodied hands, just as the social meanings that surround disembodied breasts are different from the social meanings that surround disembodied penises. Where disembodied breast novelties are problematic en masse, a disembodied hand, eye, or foot is not exploitative.
And neither does a disembodied breast have to be. In comments at Shakesville, Portly Dyke writes, “Even the stretch to find these items humorous means we all have to go back to 5th or 6th grade,” and I don’t think that’s true. I know highly intelligent, mature adults who think fart jokes are the funniest thing that ever happened. Senses of humor differer. Personally, I can imagine sex positive contexts in which a disembodied breast or penis would be genuinely funny, genuinely fun, and genuinely harmless.
But as Melissa MacEwan points out — that context is not the bulk of America, and particularly not given the ubiquity and social construction of the critical mass she has represented.
I urge you to go over and read her whole post. Not only is the whole list of items overwhelming to see in total, but she has a lot more smart comments about them.
UPDATE: Many of the images in Melissa’s post have been removed by Photobucket. As Melissa notes in comments, “That’s fairly ironic, given that they were images of fake breasts fashioned into various novelty items that are supposed to be “fun” and not offensive.”
MacEwan argues that, although one or two or three boob-novelties are no big deal, dozens and hundreds and perhaps thousands of them grouped together amount to a sexist assault on women.
I agree.
The thing is, boob-novelties aren’t, as a rule, a large part of my life. Outside of adults-only commercial settings, I see one of these things once every month or two. (I don’t go into kitschy gag-gift stores in the mall.) In other words, as a general rule I see boob-kitsch in quantities that, it would seem, meet the “one or two or three” rule that MacEwan agrees isn’t such a big deal. (In fact, I think MacEwan’s post contains the highest concentration of breast-novelties I’ve ever seen.)
I don’t want to dismiss her experience — obviously she saw enough of these things that it disturbed her — but I have a hard time understanding what situation she was in that she inadvertently got exposed to an oppressive amount of boob-novelties.
I think she means culturally.
“have a hard time understanding what situation she was in that she inadvertently got exposed to an oppressive amount of boob-novelties.”
Never been to a head shop, eh?
To be fair, a pacifier shaped like a breast kind of makes sense. That’s kind of what it’s representing, isn’t it? I’m not sure that can be counted as something that objectifies women. I agree, however, that the rest of the things do.
Madeline,
I suggest you look at the pacifier in question, if you haven’t hopped over to Shakesville yet… it didn’t seem like it was designed to soothe a baby, at least not to me or to her.
I tend to agree about the boob novelties, largely because of who they’re marketed to and who’s socially “allowed” to have them, in most cases. Boobs have a much longer and more prevalent history of being objectified, and very publicly, than penises do.
However if we’re following along with that argument, there are two things that occur to me:
a) what about the ever-growing “bachelorette party” market? I keep seeing more and more products that are supposedly intended for this kind of event, and there’s a much higher penis-to-boobies ratio in the novelties. I have never been to a bachelorette party where any of this kind of stuff came into play, but I assume something must be driving this offshoot of the novelty head-shop industry. Especially considering that bachelorette parties tend to be all-female affairs, is this a move towards equality (where everyone gets to have sexualized novelties of whatever body part) or is this a form of “women adopting male sexuality” like Ariel Levy would say? I tend to think the latter line of argument tends to make some pretty old-fashioned assumptions about what women’s sexuality is, personally.
b) What about butt-shaped novelties? Not quite as prevalent, but there are a LOT of these too, and they are not clearly the butt of one gender or another, they’re just a butt. Everyone has a butt. They’re often considered sexy regardless of your persuasion. It’s definitely the same kind of dumb/sexualized humor as the other body parts, but gender isn’t really involved, except insofar as who’s socially allowed to enjoy this kind of thing. Even if we don’t like boob-shaped novelties because it’s adding to a legacy of objectification, would we still want to reduce the prevalence of butt-shaped novelties? Is it exploitative? My guess is that butts are fine, unless you’re being prudish about the whole thing.
I was partially raised in a culture where ancient religious traditions involve giant disembodied penises celebrating fertility, including penis novelties sold as part of religious celebrations, little kids of both genders licking penis lollipops, etc. So maybe I just see all this “detached body part” stuff as a normal part of human culture.
This made me think of a small performance of the Vagina Monologues I went to, where chocolate vagina popsicles were being sold for charity. Just a quick example of when dismembered body parts are not exploitative!
I agree that it’s neutral unless there’s a non-neutral context, and I echo that I’ve seen easily as many disembodied penii, feet, hands, heads, butts, and everything else. If there’s a lack in any department it’s vulva novelties, but that can possibly be explained in the difficulty of making a recognizable disembodied vulva.
Yes, they’re very juvenile, but low humor doesn’t always constitute an oppressive quality.
Of course, I have my own bias. I made vulva- and penis-shaped sugar cookies with a friend of mine for a weird folks event in SF, some years ago: we took little silver ball decorations and gave some of them genital piercings. :-) That event — I totally forgot until now — was also where I got the tiny metal penis keychain I’ve had for years. I love my lil’ penis. Almost no one recognizes it without a closer look because it’s very small and stainless steel.
Oh, I’ll add that of the items she pictures in the post, I *do* find the ‘disembodied female torso’ ones (the remote control, one of the mice, a cup, the ‘plush girlfriend’) kind of squicky: that actually seems to be objectifying on a level connected to people and gender, rather than decontextualizing the body part.
The boob-shaped drinking devices, on the other hand (like the beer topper) just seem like the result of basic subconscious/early memories coming to the fore. I mean, I’m not exactly Freud’s greatest fan, but there’s gotta be some recognizance. “Ahh… I feel strangely relaxed and nurtured when I sip my beer this way. Wonder why…”
Ahh… I feel strangely relaxed and nurtured when I sip my beer this way. Wonder why…
I’ve always gotten the impression that the sorts of guys who buy boobie drinking mugs still hadn’t been weaned in the first place, and that such things were for times and places where breast feeding between a 35 year old man and his 68 year old mother would be somewhat awkward.
I should wave the flag of historical sociology and point out that disembodied penii and vaginas are a historical norm btw, and that disembodied boobies are in fact quite abnormal given the depth and breath of human society. I’m pretty sure that modern cosumerist soceities are absolutely unique in commodifying breasts to a greater extent than penii or vaginas, especially given that we do so pretty much because they’re a secondary sexual quality that are viewed as psychologically “safe” to view or consume in comparison to actual genitalia.
R. Mildred,
Because I am the most pedantic man on the planet (or at least this thread), I feel compelled to point out that if you were going to give a Latinate plural of “penis,” it would be not “penii” but “penes.”