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I actually love this, it reminds me of Metropolis crossed with the birth of Venus.
Oh wow you all really hate this statue.
Hereâs why I like it: @maryonthegreen ran a long and amazing campaign to make this happen, they got public support and a huge petition and ended up with two statue suggestions in 2018
Now, why didnât the statue on the left win? Well when it was announced feminist twitter pointed out it was designed by a man. I mean, I remember watching this entire argument play out on here, it was interesting to see.
and tbh it sucked watching a campaign led by women, being demonised for offering two statues one by a man, one by a woman - if youâve read MW you know the thing she cared about was equality. So I never got the arguments âin her nameâ, because they didnât match her actual words.
But this was way back in 2018, two years later itâs here, they went with Maggi, and so weâve got a statue designed by a woman, from a campaign by women and celebrating one of our most famous female writers. Thatâs a good thing.
I love it because to me itâs a massive combination of themes, I love the water like a raging wave, I like the mechanical aspect of the figure, it reminds me of how women are created in images that never match their thoughts.
Basically I like that I get to have a mental wank over what it means and what it says. Because isnât that what art is supposed to be about? Arenât we supposed to think actual stuff about it?
Can you call it an âevery womanâ? No, clearly not. So I donât agree with that promotion of it. I donât see âmeâ in that figure, but I wouldnât see âmeâ in a figurine of a fully dressed Mary either. I just like that itâs here, and that anyone can interpret it how they want.
And I think all the women behind it worked really fucking hard to make that happen. I get why people are angry with it being nude, but FFS, MW was writing a time when womenâs bodies WERE their cages, + here the cage is being freed by a fucking torrential wave of feminist thought?
I donât know why everyone shouting âyuckâ and âhate itâ on here has got to me so much... I guess itâs just yet another example of how feminism can never win against itself :/
Does it matter there was a fully dressed Mary plus books offered, but the campaign suffered some really vile harassment over the fact it was designed by a man, and then they went with one of our leading female artists interpretation instead, and everyone still hates it.
Should we even have public art anymore, I guess is my question.
As a final, final thing: isnât the title of the piece âA Sculpture *For* Mary Wollstoncraftâ ...not *of* her. So, just to clarify: everyoneâs upset about the Naked Not Mary, vs the fully clothed but Man Made Mary of 2018. Right?
Okay seriously last thing, but for the âfeministsâ showing up in my mentions being aggressively negative about how the female figure looks - the shape of its boobs, itâs hair, above AND below. You hate her for how she looks?
...REALLY???
...REALLY???
And obvs twitter scrolling means I see a tweet from fab @Hannah_Greig talking about Mary Shelleyâs husband, (MWâs technical son in law) Poet Percyâs memorial being nude, and I kind of love that that keeps it in the family.
