Fruit Feminism, Sexuality And Art
A banana, a cucumber, an eggplant; most of us would agree that all of these resemble a penis; even those who may never have seen one. In high school, students practice putting condoms on bananas to emphasize safe sex. But, I ask; what about the women? Where is the representation of female genitalia? I bet if you asked men what females have down there, many would reply with ‘a hole. ’ Such is the pathetic nature of our society who glorifies male genitalia in the form of Greek statues and ostracizes women who seek to express their sexuality. Thankfully, in this midst comes an artist whose work started gaining prominence from 2016 and to this date is the talk of the town. A description below would suffice to give readers an idea of what exactly I’ll be arguing in this paper. Attached at the end of the paper are her works of art.
A bloodied orange, half a papaya with a finger inserting the shot while stroking the seeds gently, a guava oozing out fluid right on its flesh. These are just some of the creations of Stephanie Sarley. Despite facing an immense backlash from critics, she is lucky to have been born in 21st century, for in 1638 an “A” would have been painted on her dress just like the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter. To anyone who hasn’t heard of Stephanie Sarley would surely have come across some of her works. For as long as we have known or seen, art has been dominated by the fetishism and sexualization of women; having been reduced as subjects of the male gaze while also being viewed as something to censor and exploit. This is where Sarley steps in, inspired by domesticity and stereotypical archetypes of women, Sarley draws attention by focusing on clever depictions of the female genitalia in her artistic videos and illustrations featuring her stroking and penetrating fruits with her fingers. This is also where intersectionality comes into play as for long even after having her instagram account deleted three times, Sarley is still working towards carving a space for her and many others where they can express their power, feminity and sexuality without shame or judgment. Her critics have a lot to say about how her content is ‘disgusting, offensive, disturbingly risqué and bizarre’ but I argue there is nothing wrong with her art as what she is doing is what many women have struggled with for pretty much most of their lives and that is simply paving an identity for themselves in spaces dominated by false ideals and toxic masculinity.
In parodying porn click bait culture with her risqué’ videos, she has reclaimed an authentic representation of her womanhood where the women creates the art and is also the art. In videos seen where she is gently caressing a fruit and it oozes out, she is in fact challenging people to learn more about the power of their imagination. She too believed her bold art served as a reflective mirror for people where they could project what they willed on the imaginary representation of the vagina. Her work falls under the genre of ‘erotic surrealism. ’ Feminists may have come a long way as they are seen challenging typical socio-normative standards of what is acceptable and what isn’t but there is still time to go before they can live without constant subjugation in their awareness raising processes and movements.
The primary concept of using fruits as a medium to explore sexuality is the mere fact of seeing how certain movements can garner a certain reaction or how different textures can be combined or manipulated to elicit an explanation of a specific sexual technique. This isn’t all Sarley attempts to explore but also she leaves enough room for viewers to interpret her videos as they will and in this way she is restating that art can be anything for anyone – it is a matter of interpretation!
Controversial but good, some may ask does that make sense? I say, it absolutely does and I’ll tell you why. Sarley started incorporating sexuality in her art as a means to be expressive and open in a way that resonated with her experiences and I believe having that fingering fruit content accessible online has not only promoted talks of sex-positive art but also was very much needed in a society that constantly tells a woman that she can’t own her sexuality. It is good because having her account disabled and her posts removed multiple times only goes to show that she is challenging perceptions of female sexuality. It’s not only a work of sexual humor but one that opens up spaces of discomfort. In a way it is promoting a space where we can learn to let go of our internalized misogyny. And this discomfort is good because not only does it bring what is viewed as a taboo to the fore but also urges us to confront our discomforts because we can’t always just ignore things that may be outside our realm of experiences; we ourselves have to learn to square with our uneasiness. Her illustrations that have explored BDSM have also received negative responses but again those pieces of art are honest depictions and quite sex empowering even if BDSM isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. This is because it just doesn’t give a picture of pretty sex or easy sex with no communication of human emotions as seen in Hollywood TV but they represent a place where sexuality is explored with no boundaries, there is pain and pleasure intertwined with emotions showing raw and powerful sex or even (cheeky sex) as is said; different strokes for different folks.
When work like hers is influential and out of the ordinary; it is often copied, trolled or at times removed from social media platforms for being ‘sexually suggestive, inappropriate, pornographic, nude or unlawful. ’Sarleys instagram account where she posts most of her work has been taken down thrice, she has had to deal with meme accounts trolling her and posting their own watermark on her art. If credit isn’t given where it’s due it obviously feels like a blow to the heart as your hard work has gone into curating the piece as it is. But despite all those content policies of instagram, like Magdalena Olszanowski has suggested, women employ certain technical and aesthetic strategies that goes from privatizing accounts to using photographic techniques to abstract the body or taking the risk to post artistic nudes but all in all these artists use creative strategies to maintain their imaging practices and circumvent censorship. This is what Sarley had been attempting to do when her work was censored and plagiarized, sending reports to instagram that her content was in no way pornographic but it hadn’t been better for her because she had faced considerable harassment before her accounts had been restored.
Accessible now on several websites, Sarley has been quoted saying that she views these memes, copyright infringements and hate responses as ‘waves of inspiration’ that have affected her work intensely and she would incorporate all of these in her future works. But as Olszanowski suggests, it would be right to say Sarley has succeeded in anthromorphizing nudity and feminity while challenging internet censorship. “Intersectionality, a paradigm that makes the interactive process of social marginalization visible”, has allowed Stephanie Sarley and several other artists parodying food fetish in their art to question systems of power that try to keep women and their work behind closed doors away from the public eye. This is similar to what Jessalyn Keller argued in her text on teenage blogging and activism that although it encompasses consciousness raising, media making and education; the process has highlighted a concept that Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber use which is ‘bedroom culture’ where women are figuratively and literally confined to their bedrooms and are discouraged for being active participants in the public sphere. However, better put forward is this statement by Linda Duits; bedroom culture demonstrated that "the domain of the girl was the home; the personal that feminism aims to make political, visible". Blogging provided these girls a distribution network where they could interact with like-minded people and all those women using social media to highlight problems that are not personal but political in every aspect have led them to realize that the only way to change and grow is to share consciousness and to build a politics that will change their lives and inevitably end their oppression as stated by the Combahee River Collective.
Also, for all those women who receive unsolicited dick pictures from men need to realize that it’s not their fault and they haven’t done anything wrong because posting pictures that may seem provocative or so just show how comfortable women are with their sexuality and expression; it’s the men that need to realize that that is a disgusting move and it shows they have no respect for women and artists whose work is sex-positive. Sarley having received those numerous times has responded saying how people who have no respect for her art are not welcome on her page. Linda Alcoff argues that speaking on behalf of people can be problematic just as speaking about them can too so one would think it’s always better to remain neutral so where men and women both post distasteful comments on Sarleys works, she doesn’t go responding back with hate; instead she leaves that space open for all to have an interpretation of their own. In this way, she remains neutral and lets the online community experience her art as they will.
As the Crunk Feminist blog states; in the hierarchy of genitalia, penises are the chief but being accused for ‘writing with their pussy’ has gathered them positivity from Michele Wallace who’s quoted saying, “what’s wrong with writing or organizing from your pussy? It’s a real place. ” And Sarley too says, “Vaginas are the center of life, yet considered an obscenity still by many. For centuries the phallic symbol of the penis has been comfortably displayed in all forms of art but not the vulva as much. It's time for society to stop viewing women's bodies as a threat, something to censor, or exploit. ” Let’s hope the efforts of so many women of all classes, races and sexualities only lead to the progression of society and there is representation of raw femininity however so it may be expressed.
