Paleo Retiree writes:
Part of me thinks that this kind of mischief is exactly what talented, bratty art-school/designer types should be perpetrating. Another part of me is beyond bored with it — haven’t all of us lived through this kind of “challenging” controversy about a zillion times before? Mainly, though — and especially now that I’ve hit a certain age (I turn 60 in a couple of months) — I just don’t like being lectured at by unworldly, self-righteous, PC-addled young people, no matter how cute.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
I find the young woman’s photograph pretty hot, for whatever that’s worth. Her prose anything but, alas.
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Flipping through the portfolio on her website, you’re struck by how Pre-Raphaelite the arty zeitgeist is in our neo-Victorian times. The subjects are mostly young women, with the odd stranger dude being clumsily reached out to, but who is too nervous and self-doubting to press things forward with the dudette. The women are silent (maybe mumbling), solitary, awkward in their bodies, downcast or averted gaze, sad that no one’s calling them on the phone, withdrawing from the social world and into unspoiled nature — while still feeling too self-conscious about their body to let it all hang out and melt or become absorbed into their surroundings, and not feeling angry or frustrated so much as resigned and hopeless at their inability to connect to anyone or anything outside of themselves.
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That’s nicely described. Why do you suppose the too-ethereal-for-real-life pre-Raphaelite gestalt appeals so strongly to some of today’s hip young women?
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In that picture with her bush, it’s the only thing going on, and it heightens your awareness of it. “Yep, that chick has bush…. oh I get it. That’s, like, the point.” Her bush is too on-the-nose (…), or a spotlight shining in your eyes, or something else that makes you feel uncomfortable.
So, contra the claim that pictures like this are a kind of Muff Liberation Manifesto that will undo our alienated relationship with the bush, it just makes the viewer feel even more unsettled by the sight of it! And no matter if they’re male or female.
Hence: such pictures are not meant to reconnect us with our natural state, but to feed our existing awkwardness and discomfort, the better to keep us from letting our guard down and connecting with one another. “Inviting” is the last word that comes to mind to describe the mood.
In these arty Urban Outfitters scenes, if the bush is going to make a cameo appearance, it should be just another detail, with the main action or emotion going on elsewhere. Y’know, like, “Just a lazy Sunday afternoon reading a magazine while lying down on the couch in my underwear…”
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“Muff Liberation Manifesto” is hilarious. I think something you’re reacting to in her pic is just something that designers are trained to do: isolate and heighten one specific impact. It’s what commercial artists are often paid to do. It’s felt that media images and media designs *have* to reach out and grab passersby, and *have* to make a simple, bold impact. So designers and photographers have gotten really good at doing that. It doesn’t bug me, does it bug you? I’ve tried to learn a little from them and apply it to my own snapshooting hobby, in fact.
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Isolating a single object is OK, what I mean is that in drawing so much focus to her pubes she undercuts the stated or implied goal of becoming more comfortable with the natural state of our bodies. Zero-ing in on and blowing up the bush makes it feel like an object of fixation, when the whole point is supposed to be that it should be this everyday taken-for-granted thing — a detail rather than the sole focus.
Fixation on it makes it a political statement, like a TV reporter shoving a microphone in our face as we leave the office building — “Excuse me sir, we’re asking Americans today: where do you stand on The Muff Question?” It just amplifies the already high level of self-consciousness of our preoccupied culture.
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