Tag Archives: by Rosa Hargrove

Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls: Choose One of the Above

Report on a cultural event

The exhibit, “Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls?” was in Gallery 178 of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Even before checking the map, I could visualize where it would be. In many museums in the U.S., there is an Africa, Asia, Oceania section (often dimly lit) where all “ethnic” art is crammed in while Europe gets the run of the rest of the museum. And this is where Gallery 178 was. I immediately started to get worried.
“Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls?” is centered around a piece in the MFA called Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. When the viewer walks into the exhibit, the piece is on a table at waist-level in a glass case. It’s a colorful piece depicting four women holding a long, white piece of silk with two other women siting on a pale green mat, while others pound silk on the right edge of the painting. This exhibit had been inspired by more recent interpretations of the piece arguing that the piece has sexual undertones due to the piece’s actual title: Picture of Pounding Silk– a common metaphor for desire. Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk was what inspired the exhibit, but the big question, at least according to the exhibit’s title, seemed to be what exactly Chinese women were supposed to be– court ladies or pin-up girls.
As I moved towards the left, navigating the space clockwise, I confronted the wall text introducing the exhibit. Part of it stated that, “In a sense, this exhibition is not about women, but about men. How men imagined or desired women to be.” While that was a thoughtful idea to acknowledge in the context of this exhibit, I rolled my eyes. Of course it’s about how men imagined or desired women to be. Isn’t that all art is?
On the first two left walls, there were domestic scenes from the southern Song dynasty with intricately detailed backgrounds. These paintings were subtly suggestive, inviting the reader to pay attention to small actions. Here, a hand on the knee, very little personal space between two figures, or Buddha hand citrons hinted at an erotic undertone.

When I turned the corner to the back of the exhibit, I initially didn’t fully take in the content of this set of paintings on the back wall. They were parts of a 12-page album created by Meng Lu Jushi during the late 18th or early 19th century. Many of them had a muted greyness to them, and all I could see from a distance was that there were women. As I got a bit closer, I was able to see that the scene wasn’t quite as conservative as it seemed from a distance. Small dots of pink turned out to be nipples, and I realized that unlike Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, the sensuality of this series was more pronounced.
I paused for a moment. Something felt strange about all of this. East Asian women are often sexualized in the Western imagination, and it was hard not to feel uneasy about erotic paintings of Chinese women being located in the back. It felt like stepping to the back of a 90s video store where the “adult” videos were hidden. Perhaps the curators meant to keep certain body parts away from the gaze of curious museum-going children. But something about putting the erotic pieces on the back wall and in a small alcove initially hidden from view felt needlessly prudish.

I turned towards the alcove where the paintings were even more explicit, with several nude and partially nude couples having sex. They were stunning, composed of thin lines, fine details and vivid colors. And it was these paintings that made me reconsider the exhibit as a whole. Seeing those paintings and the title of the exhibit in a Boston art museum initially made me think that I was just seeing another instance where East Asian women were eroticized.

But that conclusion does not do justice to the subjects. Regardless of what the wall text said, this exhibit is about women. Several of the paintings included women in loving embraces (sometimes with one another) and even being given a sex toy by an older woman. In other words, these women were exercising erotic autonomy. Just because a subject is erotic does not necessarily mean that it’s eroticized.

Nor does that mean that the exhibit is without its problems. Part of the issue, I later realized, is the title. While it’s empowering to see instances where women are acting on their desires, the fact that the title includes “pin-up girl” seems to trivialize these works. Pin-up girls are almost exclusively for male consumption, and it’s problematic not to notice the issue with making images of East Asian women available for mass consumption by a Western audience, even if it’s in a museum. When they’re the subject of the painting, they feel like agents, but in the context of a museum exhibit with a title that includes “pin-up girls,” it makes them seem more like objects. Additionally, the court lady and pin-up girl dichotomy is extremely limiting, and that entire question feels a bit silly. The question invites the viewer to only consider women as part of one of two categories, an exercise that’s neither provocative or productive. The exhibit doesn’t do a particularly good job of answering its own question, though perhaps that’s for the best since it’s a shallow one anyway.

Cultural Conditioning

Blog post on a cultural experience

“Wow, look at that hair! Is that a boy or a girl?”

I didn’t turn towards the tourists, partly because I was embarrassed and partly because I didn’t want to embarrass them by revealing that I knew Mandarin. But their words suddenly made me very aware of my unruly afro and androgynous look.  It’s a strange feeling, knowing that somebody is scrutinizing your body, eyes searching to figure out what this alien creature is. Some feature must have given me away, because after a beat, a woman exclaimed, “It’s a girl!” and the group broke into peals of laughter.

In the U.S., my large afro was my grandmother’s sorrow and the delight of white people in supermarkets. Its size attracted some attention at home, but in Taipei, the comments and stares followed me everywhere. On my morning walk to Chinese class, commuting adults stared at me and groups of kids would pause, mouths open in an O. Initially, the stares combined with the sticky morning heat made the small journey feel endless. For someone as shy as myself, passing under each person’s gaze felt like being put through a gauntlet. Going out felt impossible, and I would retreat to my dorm room as soon I could. Socializing was very difficult when going outside required so much mental energy and my body constantly felt as though it was being stared at to figure out what I was.

But later I found that my hair, the very thing that made me anxious about being around people, was what would get me to fully experience Taiwan. Eventually, hunger (the greatest motivator) and the need for interaction pushed me to go beyond the wordless exchanges of the 7-11.  One day, I got up the courage to order food after school (“Could you kindly give me a shaved ice?”). Since she already had my attention, the shopkeeper peppered me with questions about my hair. “Is it real or is it fake?” “Can I take a picture with you?” In the U.S., the frequency of those questions used to irritate me. But by the time I had been in Taiwan for awhile, hungry for social interaction due to my shyness, I started to grab at every warm question like I was starving and they were bread crusts. Every time I felt the surge of pride in understanding and responding to a question about my hair, an unfamiliar one would pop up. “What do you use on it?” “How long does it take?” The momentary embarrassment at not understanding faded away, and I became adept at smiling, nodding, and gesturing to attempt to communicate until I could go home and, hours later, figure out what was being asked of me.

Handling those simple questions gave me the confidence to continue conversations with the shopkeepers and people that I met. Soon people began to ask me, “What are you doing here?” and “How do you like Taiwan?” In the beginning, I wouldn’t have known how to respond. All I knew of Taiwan was my bedroom and the stares of strangers.

After a month of being there, something changed for me. I stopped seeing the scrutiny and questions about my hair as a hindrance and began to see how those blunt questions and observations were simply gentle curiosity that was rooted in warmth– a warmth that I had mistaken as invasive. A Taiwanese friend confirmed that the body is viewed differently in Taiwan, and that pointing out physical differences was not meant to be hurtful; it was simply another topic of conversation, especially between Taiwanese people who know each other well.

When that realization occurred, Taiwan expanded for me. After we covered the topic of my hair, I had conversations with shopkeepers about their children and how much better Taiwanese food is than “American” cuisine. And one day on the subway, a young Taiwanese woman a couple of years older than me stopped me to ask about my hair.  “It’s so cool!” The woman, Joanna, said it with a tone that allowed me to let my guard down, and after a short talk, we exchanged numbers before parting ways, making vague plans to see each other again.

Surprisingly, I mustered up the courage to follow through on those plans. To my even greater surprise, I made it to Shìlín night market without incident and was rewarded with a wave of relief upon seeing Joanna outside. We proceeded to spend the evening drinking 奶茶 (nǎichá–milk tea) and eating various fried foods while I told her the U.S. isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and she told me that neither was Taiwan, though I’m not sure we believed each other. For Joanna, it probably felt uneventful. For me, I was ecstatic to connect with someone and make them laugh intentionally, for once.

After that, we spent many evenings indulging in 臭豆腐 (chòu dòufu–stinky, fermented tofu) and talking in the Taiwanese night markets. Our conversations taught me so much about this little island, and the topics ran the gamut from gay culture in Taiwan to politics to dating, inevitably returning to food. As I got to know Taiwan– the students, the trains, the bubble tea stands–I no longer noticed being stared at and no longer felt like an oddity. As anyone with curly hair can testify, proper conditioning takes time, and the cultural kind is no different.