I’m Back with Some Breasts in a Box!

Hoochies, I’m back!

I’m working on a longer post, but I actually just wanted to share with you a wonderful performance art piece from 1968. Valie Export, a Viennese artist, created what she called “Tap and Touch Cinema,” where she wore a box “theater” around her middle and invited passersby to reach in and touch her naked breasts… as she forced them into direct eye contact. I thought I’d draw this to your attention because I really think it confronted the objectification of women and was extremely socially provocative.  In a way she was saying, “you can fantasize about an anonymous body as much as you want, but can you look into a real woman’s eyes while you do it?” Incredible…

Frailties of the stronger sex

The prospect of a male pill has appeared on the horizon various times over the last 50 years, but the issue of side effects scuttled every effort. Scientists, May reports, “actually discovered an effective vaccine that completely stopped the production of sperm without interfering with sex drive.” But it also made users’ testicles shrink by a third, so the researchers abandoned it, concluding, “The psychological trauma of shrinking testes just cannot be overcome.”

— from “What the Pill Gave Birth To,” Michelle Goldberg’s review of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation by Elaine Tyler May, Basic Books, 224 pages, $25.95.