Snoqualmie

Roses sewn shut are understated and elegant, in a manner that underscores the violent horror of the operation. The image seems to operative via a strategy of visual catachresis; when we hear terms like "female genital mutilation," "female circumcision," or "infibulation," we might generally think of blood, infection, "The Color Purple," The Horrors of the Dark Continent, etc., but not of things soft and pristine, nothing muted.

That's on the one hand. On the other hand, flowers that have been hacked, then sewn shut, might be more accurate.

For practical considerations: I doubt that AI would find many places that would allow them to post ads that depict the real thing.

There was an interesting post on Female Genital Circumcision/Mutilation/Cutting a few months back at The Official Shrub.com Blog, which elaborates, I think, on a lot of the thoughts in your second footnote.

When I first saw the ad, which I think was at Pandagon, I didn't even notice the flowers were sewn at first. Then I saw the bindings and I thought they looked vaguely corset-ish, and the thing actually looked like a neat craft project. Then I saw it was about FGM and I realized they were going for Bad. I think the ad's good if your only criterion is "Is this ad visually striking? If so, then they'll read the text and get our message and that's what's important." But if you have a more complex set of criteria, like visually striking + gets people thinking along the lines you want them to in order to be receptive to the ad's message, I think it's a failure. In my case, at least, my mind was walking in the exact opposite direction before the text turned it around and gave it a stern look.

I suppose what I don't understand is why/how making us think of soft, pristine, muted, elegant things would be an effective tactic. Compared to the impression I have of the anatomical reality, the sewn-flower image makes me downright complacent.

But I do agree that a poster showing that reality would be somewhat hard to get placed. And there is of course a problem with inviting revulsion of people's bodies (which, modified or not, are still theirs). But I like to think there is a better image available.

Yes! The stern look! Precisely the problem to which I refer.

I don't where AI hopes to run these ads, but it may be trying to reach older women and men (with money to donate), from the middle class, who were raised in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, who were brought up to believe seriously in douching. This generation, as opposed to our own, was not raised on damaged = pretty, vis-a-vis Tim Burton, and genuinely couldn't handle a more graphic or accurate representation.

Along the lines of what DelightfulFormerHousemate is saying, Amanda at Pandagon posted a defense of the ad. I was somewhat surprised at how many commenters felt the ad was devastatingly effective, made them cringe, worked entirely without the text, etc. Maybe it is a generational thing. Or maybe they have idiosyncratic tastes. Or maybe we have idiosyncratic tastes. Or maybe everyone has idiosyncratic tastes and nothing means anything.

DFH, I see your point about the audience. But there's sort of still a sticking point for me that goes like: if this charitable campaign is trying to appeal to people with spare money (whoever they are demographically), aren't those the same people who are targeted by the expensive-living magazines with the creepy violence=sexy fashion spreads? It seems like they would still have to deal with the effects of that media culture.

Or reject it and set themselves up as an alternative, I suppose. I may have just answered my own question.

Zach: yeah, I saw that in the Feministing comments too. I'm kind of baffled by it, but that's probably just a damning reflection of my own aesthetic sensibilities.

I wish Amanda hadn't started her defense with:
There were some commenters at Feministing casting around for a reason to find these ads offensive (just a few, most were impressed by the ads)...
only because it's kind of a crappy straw-dissenter tactic. You can be unimpressed with the ads without casting around disingenuously for some cause for offense, and you can criticize something without automatically being offended by it. But she seems to be pretty offended by other people's criticizing the ads at all. I find that to suck.

And I should clarify that what I was baffled by above was the commenters who considered the ads totally shocking and effective. My unclear grammar offends me.

Yeah, Amanda can be just a tad annoying in her willingness to assume bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees with her. "You don't really dislike that ad, you're just flailing around trying to be a more-feminist-than-thou poseur!"

Huh. Here's an alternate/additional idea from one of the commenters in the Pandagon thread.

Maybe a photoshopped photo of a woman & a man without a nose or mouth or eyes would get the picture across with short text.

See, I think that has potential. It could be less pretty and less elegantly distant and more human-related, but it wouldn't have to be bloody and graphic and accurate.

I need to stop reading blog threads and go do my laundry, but I can't go to the laundry room because my roommate went to the basement to retrieve his date's bike and they haven't emerged yet. Either he's gone into let-me-show-you-all-of-my-house mode again or they're getting it on, and either way I don't want to go find out.

I note that Amanda also just posted a defense of that pornography book that you hated. She does mention the problems you had with the book, but she sort of sweeps them under the rug.

Maybe his date has a really fascinating bike.

Yeah, she probably does. They might have needed to go into the lounge, which is set up all sexy-speakeasy-like from last night's party, to inspect it properly. On the sofa. By candlelight.

I've noticed the sparkling book reviews, at Pandagon and elsewhere, and I've read a couple of them. I'm not allowed to read any more, though, because my cat gets upset when I start shouting at my computer monitor.

I take DFH's point about AI needing to be able to display these images places, but only up to a point. Because I don't find the images striking at all, but rather understated and pretty in a way that misses utterly the horror of the Hacking-and-Scraping, Sometimes With Scalpels, Sometimes With Any Sharp Object Available, Sewing Shut, Sometimes with Needle and Thread, Sometimes with Acacia Thorns, Leaving to Infection and Scar Tissue "procedure." I actually think this is one place where it's important to call a spade a spade: if you want to convey the outrageousness of FGM*, then I think it's crucial to do it by showing the thing itself. Not pretty flowers or, you know, caged birds singing, which have this delicately metaphorical relationship to what you're actually talking about, but bloody, stitched, infected, scarified vaginas. Because I think that the unwillingness to show the uncomfortable nether regions of women's bodies in public is clearly, clearly, a big and very related problem. I take Di's point, too, about the probability of creating revulsion toward body parts - but it seems to me that the point of this campaign is to create revulsion toward maimed body parts. Makes you squeamish? Wrecks your lunch hour? Makes you uncomfortable and you don't know where to look? Good - that's exactly what you need to make people feel in order to effectively communicate your point that this is something awful that wrecks a lot more than a morning train ride or a magazine flip-through for the women involved. That's the entire point, and it's important.

Failing that, because I recognize that the FCC might want to interfere with my plan to display real mutilated vaginas at bus stops, how about stitched-together badly-cut pieces of raw beef and chicken? Because I kind of prefer the idea of using one piece of meat to represent another better than another goddamn flower-as-genital image. I'm sorry I'm ranting, but for some reason I've just hit my limit with this flower-vagina thing.

*Di, I'm using FGM because I can't bring myself to type out an acronym for your two footnotes. Also, I think I might feel more knee-jerk and less anthropological about it than you do.

Bravo! Bravo! I am pleased not to be the only one ranting here.

I don't know if anthropological is what I am being. I may just be being incredibly suspicious, in that I do not necessarily trust people to make things better without also accidentally making them worse. Ooh -- I am being holistically harm-reductiony. It has a nice ring to it.

In any case, I am wholeheartedly behind your ranting and ire and I like your meat idea. I would find that deeply disturbing and scary and gross and sad. Though I must point out that this stupid flower thing did, actually, fill you with indignation and ire and cause you to be galvanized and ranty, if only because it is so inadequate in its failure to convey horrible trauma.

Yeah, but it's making me ranty toward AI, not toward mutilators of female genitalia, which I don't think is what they're going for. I mean, it's making me rant toward you, but about them. When they are trying to make me feel ranty toward the other them. You know what I mean.

Meat! Stitchy meat!

I also liked the idea about the person with no mouth/no eyes/no nose as a possible alternative, as long as it was unpleasant rather than interesting and sort of neat. Like stitched nostrils, or a big hole where their nose should be. As long as they didn't look like cleft palate kids, because then you'd get people donating to the wrong thing.