Femen: Not Quite Buying This as a Feminist Protest

I first heard of the Ukrainian Feminist group Femen on a news report. Whilst the male journalists discussing Femen were all congratulatory on this group of Ukrainian women for getting press attention, there was no mention as to what exactly Femen were protesting. I had to look that up on Wikipedia. Femen protests against sex tourism, the legalisation of prostitution, and the selling of "brides" internationally. I support everyone of their protest policies but not how they choose to protest. 

There is lots of media coverage of the women of Femen. This has more to do with how the women of Femen choose to protest than the male journalists being interested in Feminist protests. Femen protesters bare their breasts. That is the essence of their political engagement: baring their breasts to bring attention to the issue they are concerned about. Unfortunately, the media images uses of Femen are all of very young, tall, and extremely thin blond women with bare breasts.

Now, not all the protesters of Femen conform to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. The problem is images like this aren't the ones which garner media notice:

And, this is the very image that the media should be using because it is representative of *all* women's bodies rather than that subsection of very young women who happen to be tall and slender. In using women's bodies as a canvas of protest, Femen are conforming to the norms of Patriarchal objectification of women's bodies. Their message is obscured by the medium of their protest because the medium conforms to the normalised construction of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. What they are protesting is important and it deserves real media coverage and not what is effectively male journalists getting off on women's bodies. 

Somehow, a picture of a Femen protestor managed to win an award in the 2012 the World Press Photo competition. The photo forms part of the World Press Photograph Exhibition which is currently on display at the Scottish Parliament. It is of a young woman with bare breasts with flowers in her hair. The only difference between this photograph and ones of Woodstock is the large cement buildings behind her. 

It's a lovely photograph but it doesn't match the political or social power of the other photos included in the exhibit. Walking through, it felt like this image was only included because it was of a half-naked beautiful woman rather than an image of political protest, particularly since the woman in this photo is neither carrying a placard nor covered in slogans. 

There have been a number of high profile feminist groups across Europe using their bodies as canvases for political protest, notably UK Feminista Muff March protest last December and the French group La Barbe's protests. The UK Feminista protest was raising awareness about the increase in labiaplasty in Europe and its relationship to the banned practise of Female Genital Mutilation. This involved a protest in Harley street with the women wearing merkins over their clothes. The women of La Barbe protest the exclusion of women in politics and culture by wearing beards. Both are protest art using the female body but they are inverting the construction of women as objects. Femen's political protest is obscured by the patriarchal objectification of their bodies.