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Feminist Artist Leaks Her Own Nudes, Internet Responds Like Meatheads (NSFW)

Feminist Artist Leaks Her Own Nudes, Internet Responds Like Meatheads (NSFW)
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Arts and Culture Reporter, HuffPost

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Warning: This post contains nudity and may not be suitable for work.

Artist Molly Soda describes her most recent series "Should I send this?" as "a collection of text and images I would be too scared to show you."

Anyone who's tried to woo a lover via the Internet knows what she's referring to. The net artist uncovered an assortment of selfies and sexts she'd accumulated over the years that, for one reason or another, she was too afraid to actually send. Until now.

Yes, Soda leaked her NSFW texts and images onto the web, compiling them into an electronic zine hosted on New Hive. (A companion print zine is also available.) The project explores what it means to be vulnerable in the digital age, and the ways we censor and edit our own intimate output.

"This piece isn’t about me," Soda explained to Dazed and Confused, "it’s about everyone who has ever tried to achieve validation/intimacy via sending a text message, a nude ... anything vulnerable using digital communication." Anyone who's ever drafted 10 texts before sending one, or snapped a storm of selfies to find that one flattering shot, can surely relate.

Clicking through Soda's electronic zine feels like hacking into a frenemy's MySpace profile and finding more than you bargained for. There's a feminist bent to the revealing imagery, which displays pubic hair, happy trails and other, you know, natural occurrences of hair on women without apology. "I’m not really concerned with what men think of my body hair or my body anymore," the artist explained. "I’m more concerned with how I feel about my own body. Other women’s responses have really encouraged me. I have a lot of girls messaging me about how my stomach hair makes them feel better/less self-conscious about theirs. That’s what I care about –- not about whether or not men find it attractive."

Soda's work gained traction on Dazed and Confused, and, along with it, received a barrage of hateful comments from both men and women declaring Soda's work "not art" and "not feminist." One commenter on Facebook distastefully commented: "Another female artist posts pictures of her tits, ass and bush. Again."

Most of the negative opinions lodged against Soda either condemned the piece as narcissistic, pretentious and juvenile, or straight-up slut-shamed her.

Soda eventually responded to the comments on her Tumblr: "If none of my photos had been nudes and there had only been the text I included in my zine (which is 50% of [the zine]) no one would be calling me vapid or trash. Doesn’t that have something to say about us as a society and the way we view women’s bodies [and our thoughts on] them having control over their bodies and the way they choose to share it?"

Soda raises a good point. Whether or not you're a fan of the artwork itself, there does seem to be some archaic expectations of privacy and propriety in the air that cause a project like this to provoke such seething reactions. And while women can be critical of each other and their work, spewing hate on each other's work and dubbing it "not feminist" is probably, well, not very feminist. As Kayla Unnerstall wrote in Bullett: "Scrutinizing Soda’s delivery method only detracts from a movement that’s primarily about women having a sense of agency in their own lives."

At the end of the day, you don't have to like Soda's series. But you don't have to be a troll about it either. A woman can do what she wants with her body and no Internet commenter should fight that. Let's do away with words like "vapid" and "desperate" when describing female artists who work with their own naked bodies. After all, men have been centering their work around lady nudes for centuries.

Take a look at the zine in its entirety here and leave your (mindful) comments below.

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Before You Go

Art History's Most Erotic Artworks
Francisco de Goya's "The Nude Maja"(01 of14)
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This circa 1800 painting will go down in history as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art -- thought to be at least one of the first explicit depictions of female pubic hair. At the time of its creation, the Catholic Church banned the display of artistic nudes, so Goya's nude woman and its more modest counterpart, "The Clothed Maja," were never exhibited publicly during the artist's lifetime.
Katsushika Hokusai's "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife"(02 of14)
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There's almost no ambiguity regarding the erotic nature of this painting. The print -- a perfect example of Japanese shunga art -- depicts a fisherman's wife deriving pleasure from a rather unique encounter with an octopus. But do you recognize the artist's name? Yes, the man behind "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" had more than landscape likenesses up his sleeve.
Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"(03 of14)
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Ok, so you may associate "The Garden of Earthly Delights" with its array of terrifying, otherworldly creatures, but the painting has its fair share of sensual details. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, the work plays host to a whole carnival of sins, including the acts in the image above, in which nude men and women are seen frolicking with each other, horses, birds, mermaids, plants... you name it. Writer Laurinda S. Dixon described it as teeming with "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity."
Paul Cezanne's "Seven Bathers"(04 of14)
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Cezanne is well known for his various images of nude bathers, many of whom were women. "Seven bathers," however, portrays the figures of nude men -- though some are rather androgynously rendered. This scene of beautifully crafted male bodies is surely not the most erotic of subject matter, but the ways in which the artist toyed with classical representations of the body and the relationship between the viewer's gaze and nakedness makes for a borderline erotic aesthetic. It is assumed that Cezanne, due to a lack of available models, painted this from memory or imagination.
Titian's "Venus of Urbino"(05 of14)
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Mark Twain once called Titian's Venus "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses." With her unabashed nudity and strong gaze into the viewers' eyes, the nude female in this 1538 work of art is undeniably erotic.
Gustav Klimt's "Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung"(06 of14)
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Klimt, the Austrian symbolist painter with a penchant for gilded canvases, brought you uber-famous works like "The Kiss" and his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. While those images, not to mention the many nude figures that populate his other paintings, exude sensuality, there's nothing quite as erotic as "Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung."
Peter Paul Rubens's copy of Michelangelo's "Leda and the Swan"(07 of14)
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For early 17th century audiences, it was likely more acceptable for a woman to be shown engaging in explicit acts with a bird than with an actual human being. Hence, "Leda and the Swan," based on the Greek myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan and "seduces" a woman named Leda. Artists like Cesare da Sesto and Paul Cezanna also chose the crude story as inspiration for paintings.
Miyagawa Isshō's "Spring Pastimes"(08 of14)
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Created in 1750, this shunga scroll depicts a tryst between two men, one likely a samurai and the other a kabuki actor taking on a sexualized female role.
Édouard Manet's "Olympia"(09 of14)
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Look familiar? Manet's 1863 painting is based roughly on Titian's "Venus" and Goya's "Nude Maja." According to accounts from writer Antonin Proust, the painting of a prostitute was so scandalous that "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" at its debut exhibition.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Swing"(10 of14)
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This Rococo masterpiece from 1767 is full of symbolism, all of which centers on a young woman's extramarital affair. See that man hidden in the bushes on the left side of the canvas? He's not only on the receiving end of that kicked-off shoe, he's also getting quite a peek up the woman's dress. Erotic? Maybe. We'd settle for 18th century creepy.
Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon)"(11 of14)
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Picasso's famous Primitivist painting portrays five nude prostitutes allegedly from a brothel in Barcelona. With their unconventional female forms and relentless gazes, the image is a proto-Cubist version of erotica.
Egon Schiele's "Friendship"(12 of14)
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Despite the title, there's a underlying sense of sexuality in Schiele's depiction of two naked individuals, embracing in a twist of line and form reminiscent of the great Austrian painter's intense figurative works.
Diego Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus"(13 of14)
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Call it "The Toilet of Venus," "Venus at her Mirror," "Venus and Cupid," or "La Venus del Espejo," Velázquez's nude painting shows a woman deriving pleasure from the site of her own naked self. For a painting made between 1647 and 1651 -- a time period marked by the Spanish public's disdain for naked bodies in art -- the work was on the salacious side. (In case you were wondering, Titian and Rubens also made their own versions of Venus at a mirror.)
Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World)"(14 of14)
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