Mons Pubescent

“The apparel oft proclaims the man, “ advises Polonius to Laertes. And Thomas Carlyle would write a novel entitled Sartor Resartus, literally “tailor re-tailored.” But what about woman?  If we take the cover of the recent swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, where the model Hannah Davis, flaunts her mons pubis can we conclude that neither clothes nor hair make the woman? The shot leaves little to the imagination, but there is little to imagine. What if Joanna Hiffernan the model for Courbet’s “The Origin of the World,” who also happened to be an inspiration to Whistler, had struck a similar pose. Hiffernan’s pulling her bikini bottom down would have been a far more far more sensational news event. The current epidemic of Brazilian waxing, of which Ms. Davis is apparently the latest public victim (Kim Kardashian’s  recent spread in Paper is another prominent example of a similar phenomenon) has reduced the female genitalia to a state of pre-pubescent nothingness. Pedophiles must be entralled. The Sports Illustrated issue has raised some eyebrows, but when you scour the newsstand to see what all the hullabaloo is about you almost need to be told that something provocative is going on. A risqué pose with a model in a state of undress is nothing new, but what’s disconcerting is to find a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a little girl in the guise of a woman. Unless of course you have a predilection for these kinds of things, you could pass the newsstands where the Sports Illustrated cover is brazenly displayed, thinking that the female genitalia had actually been whited out. It’s reminiscent of another parable, the Emperor’s New Clothes, but also of the experience of dining in one of those trendy new restaurants where you pay a lot for very little and a chorus of praise accompanies minuscule portions which are nearly impossible to see.

The Origin of "The Origin of the World"

Whistler’s “Symphony in White, Number  1: The White Girl

The 2/9/13 Arts, Briefly column of the Times cited Paris Match as reporting on a unique finding regarding Courbet’s famous and infamous “The Origin of the World” (“The Other Half of ‘The Origin of the World,’" NYT 2/8/13) According to the Times’s recap of the Paris Match story “a collector says he has discovered the top half of Courbet’s portrait.” In passing the Times piece mentions that the painting was “once owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.” Along with the notoriety of the painting’s wanton pose, Lacan was also notorious for the precocious way in which he terminated his patient’s sessions. Cutting short sessions would, one thinks, mean that Lacan was able to see more patients in one day than the average Freudian and this delicious tidbit might provide some insight into where all the additional money went. But the discovery of the model’s identity is also good news for lovers of an ideal of feminine beauty that is currently held in low esteem. While a truncated nude might be tantamount to the esthetic advantage of low definition (b&w in film, minimalism in art), the closing of the circle here strengthens a worthy cause. The sitter or spreader who, the Times remarked, was  “thought to have been Joanna Hiffernan, a model and muse not only to Courbet, but also Whistler,” can now can be a spokesman for the pubic hair and a posthumous protestor against Brazilian waxing, anorexic photography and other forms of pedophilia that have infected our culture. Were Anna Magnani, who sported hair in her armpits, still alive, she'd undoubtedly be pleased that the identity of  Courbet's model was uncovered.