It turns out Walter was right. This Swedish ‘display of one anorectic and one obese woman is a demonstration against modern society's obsession with how we look.’
On first glance, I saw rich and poor, over-fed and starving, haves and have nots. Walter saw two women trapped in psychological compulsion; I saw the women trapped in global inequality.
Which begs the question, is either scenario a choice? I’ll leave psychology to the experts and should probably do the same with sociology. Scholars and activists have long been asking why some people end up with more stuff than other people. Advantage, and disadvantage, are inherited and internalized through generations. Do the experts know whether we have any more choice about how fat or skinny we live, figuratively speaking, than about the color of our eyes?
Regardless of what the artist intended, if you or I walked by this statue on our way to work every day, would it bother us? Make us more generous? Less greedy? Would it broaden our compassion?
The citizens of Växjö have mixed feelings about the work, which has been subjected to vandalism and cranky letters to the editor since its placement there in 2006.
Can art change anything? For this to be possible, we’d have to assume we inherit, along with all our social and psychological accouterments, the freedom of choice.
Photo Lars Aronsson, Creative Commons Share Alike License
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Two Women, many perspectives
Susan, you both had interesting perspectives on these statues.
Walter saw two women who were unhealthy, suffering from mental disorders that affected the shapes of their bodies.I don't mean to discount his observation - it is one valid way to look at these statues.
But I believe that his reaction stems in part because he is an American, and in our culture, women whose bodies do not fall within a very narrow range of shapes and sizes are automatically classified as unhealthy. Women are allowed to be different heights, different colors, and differently abled - but we are not granted the same ability to have a wide range of weights, because our culture has decided - contrary to scientific evidence (see, for example, the blog Junk Food Science) - that fat is unhealthy and so is some kinds of skinny. I always question that assumption. It is not scientifically valid - nor experientially. I have a 300lb female friend who is a vegan and a triathlete - her fitness and health vastly exceed my own, as a moderately active diabetic.
Your own observation was different, but similarly assumed that the women were disadvantaged, in this case, through access to resources that they are not how they are "supposed" to be.
My own background and thinking gives me a different perspectives. I see two women of different shapes and sizes. I don't know anything about them, so I don't know whether they are healthy or not. Their size doesn't impact that, especially without knowing their actual health factors, like, whether they exercise (it is possible to be fit and fat, or lazy and skinny), their genetic predispositions to disease (fat people tend to survive certain things like cancer better; thin people sometimes have fewer joint issues), or their nutrition. I cannot assume that either is different than how she is supposed to be, and my initial assumption is that one woman is larger than the other because that is how her body functions.
I see two women who are naked, as society tells us that women's bodies are public property to be evaluated, investigated, and commented on. As women, we are told whether we are "too fat" or "ugly", as though we are obligated to have our physical selves meet some white, heterosexual, thin-privileged standard. As a person with a chronic illness, I am sensitive to that! My body will never measure up by those metrics.
But most of all, I see two women whose bodies represent part of the range of what women's bodies can be. I don't think they're at the extreme ends, and both look outwardly very abled. But they represent part of a spectrum, and on that front, I find them beautiful, amazing, to be wondered at and admired in their variety and in their potential.
I thought that might be an interesting perspective to add to the mix. Thank you both for yours!
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'Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.'
Neil Gaiman, Sandman
Body images
The quote I found on Wikipedia, interpreting this piece, wasn't attributed to the artist, so it may very well not reflect what Marianne Lindberg De Geer had in mind when creating it. Unfortunately I haven't found an English discussion of this sculpture in the artist's words.
It is interesting how differently three observers have responded to the work.
I recently watched 'Earth,' a movie without a single human, but with plenty of bumpy, blubbery, wrinkly, sleek, boney, sinewy body types represented by a wide variety of creatures. This morning at the pool, we had the same range, but the bodies were all human. So why do we seem to find variety so interesting and lovable in the 'natural' world, then turn around and want humans to squeeze into certain ideal dimensions?
There are health risks related to how humans treat their bodies, a matter apart from body image. A friend who is a doctor wrote this: 'People won't exercise and they love eating too much junk food and drinking too much beer. They are too weak to do what is in their best interest. So after I give advice and see them later, they should be better, but they're worse. After a while, I'm surprised when people follow my advice.'
I wonder how this doctor would respond to the Swedish sculpture. I'll have to ask.
Re: Weighty questions
Susan, our discussion last night of this sculpture, and our different takes on it, had me waking up this morning thinking about it. Thanks for your research. Art often leaves us guessing, looking for "meaning".
In my experience this is usually true of abstract and non-objective sculpture, which draws the ire of observers, perhaps because they are made uncomfortable by what they don't immediately "understand" and therefore consider useless or inappropriate. Hence, cranky letters to the editor and vandalism.
Here we have a representational piece of two women in physical extremes of unhealth. If they, or only one of them, were healthy the objection might have been that this is pornographic "art", because both representations are of unclothed women.
To address the question in your blog, if I walked by this sculpture on my way to work every day, I would think of my sister, a brilliant Ph.D. dropout, who committed suicide twenty-five years ago while suffering from anorexia, bulemia, and depression. And I would applaud this artist for choosing such a subject.
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Water Color Visions