To me it's very inappropriate:
i) given how modest 18th century women were about their bodies, Mary W would probably be mortified to have a naked Barbie doll stuck on a plinth that has her name on it. I checked up on the Lincoln Memorial statue that Mindlessness was sharing the other day, and yep, Lincoln was accorded the dignity of having his clothes on as he sat in that deep armchair of his.
ii) There's a whole feminist debate about representations of naked women, titilation and the treating of women as sex objects. Even actual Barbie dolls have been criticised for overly representing women as slender caucasians, thus setting up a cruel yardstick in the public imagination that the majority of women can't compete with. This statue is continuing the same un-woke narrative, quite possibly* disrespecting if not contradicting the ideas that Mary W was fighting for.
(* "quite possibly" because I have never read a word of Mary W in my life.)
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
Last edited by Lisnaholic; 11-11-2020 at 08:15 AM.
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M Wollstonecraft: Statues of Women
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