questions

So, random story from the library yesterday. It was actually pretty quiet for most of my shift, what with it being a holiday and all. There were no classes, so fewer people were on campus, but the library was still open so those of us at circulation got quite a bit of homework done. Of the few questions we did get (besides students asking for reserve books), one really stood out.

Two students came up and were looking over the counter at our chairs and arguing about the color. They then asked--no, essentially told me that they were going to check out the chairs in the study rooms to see if they would suit their purposes. Apparently they were doing a dress rehearsal for the upcoming production of "The Vagina Monologues" and needed a chair as a prop.

Um, no. You may not take the library furniture away to use as a prop. There is plenty of other furniture around the campus, and I will not allow anything to leave the library that has not been properly checked out. And no, the chairs do no not have barcodes. She had a lot of nerve to assume we would let her have any chair she found suitable.

But we already know she has a lot of nerve--the whole campus knows. The other thought I had when she explained why she needed the chair was, "oh, so you're one of the girls who posed in her underwear for the posters all over campus." Until that moment I hadn't had a face to put with the image, but now I do.

The posters advertising the production feature the five female performers clad only in their undergarments standing in a line. The photo is framed so that their heads are not included in the image, which really only makes it creepier to me. But that's not the worst of it. There is another version in which at least two of the girls are no longer wearing even the underwear. They are positioned against each other so that it's still technically not an R-rated image, but it's very disturbing. I cannot wait for the show to be over so that the posters will come down.

Clearly, these five girls (they are all undergrads, so I will continue to refer to them as "girls") are very comfortable with their bodies and don't mind shoring them off. But is that really the best way to advertise the show? This may be an all-female outwardly progressive campus, but there are plenty of us who never wanted to see that, not to mention the large number of male workers and professors who will see the posters. And isn't an advertisement like that self-defeating? I've never seen the show and will not attend this production, but wasn't the purpose of it to de-objectify women? Why would they want their poster to make them faceless, just bodies for everyone to stare at and lewd minds to lust over? I don't get it, and I can't wait for it to be over.

-Kim