Why is being female problematic? I have an entire identity that exists apart and independently from my gender. Normally, I think of myself as a student of art history and literature, as an intelligent and capable worker, as someone who’s motivated and loves to laugh. But that identity tends to come second, especially here in Sevilla. What's more important is my status as a young, blonde, American student. Here, piropos or catcalls are very common. But unlike in the United States, here it happens all hours of the day, all the time. When someone yells "guapa!" from across the street, some people consider it just a funny tradition, even flattering. However, I tend to find myself feeling ashamed, or vulnerable. At the very least, unsettled. It’s a form of low-level verbal abuse that women here have learned to live with- and they never say anything. And "guapa," by the way, means "pretty" in English. But it isn't an adjective--it's a noun. Which means that when a man yells "guapa" at me, he's labeling me a pretty thing.
If you’ve never heard or received a piropo, here’s a great clip of Amalia Ortiz, a spoken-word poet, on catcalls and why they aren’t just a funny compliment.
Some people have told me that I shouldn’t worry about the
catcalls, that they aren’t a big deal.
But I’ve realized that these catcalls are an indicator a larger societal
problem: the problem of being a woman.
I have the good fortune to be taking a class called Gender
in Contemporary Spanish Media with Dr. Carolina Sanchez Palencia at the
University of Sevilla. One of the works
she assigned this semester was La Regenta,
in which the protagonist, Ana, is hailed as being the most beautiful and
virtuous woman in her community. She fulfills
every expectation of womanly beauty and love.
And yet, exactly because Ana is so virtuous, and does not indulge in the
temptation of extramarital affairs, the most powerful members of society
conspire to have one man seduce her, which, of course, leads to her eventual
isolation and misery. This is a story
common to nineteenth century novels, including Anna Karenina and Madame
Bovary. In La Regenta, we see that Ana attempts to live up to the ideal of the
perfect wife, but when she does, feels pressure from her circle of friends to
give in to the attentions of the charming and wealthy Sr. Mesia. In the end, she finds herself completely out
of options.
We’re no longer living with these paradoxical nineteenth
century standards of female behavior, yet there are certainly residual effects
of this ideology.
Look no further than the Semana Santa processions in
Seville. This week, the week proceeding
Easter, Spain celebrates Holy Week with a multitude of processions honoring
Christ and the Virgin. Different
religious fraternities organize processions for their particular virgins. For example, last night I went at midnight to
see the Esperanza of Triana, one of a pantheon of virgins that are like patron
saints to the different churches and fraternities of Sevilla. The street was packed with people, all
waiting to see the Virgin. When she
passes, they cry, “Guapa!” (pretty!) Just as men do when they see a pretty
woman in the streets. (Click here to hear the people of Seville crying "guapa!")
Dr.
Sanchez-Palencia drew attention to the fact that while the people adore their
virgins fanatically, the image (the statue) itself consists only of a wooden
scaffold, a sculpted face and hands, and the fine draperies that hide the fact
that the statue has no body. By
contrast, there is an intense attention to the detail of the flesh of
Christ. So, la virgen, who represents
the ideal woman, and is called “guapa,” in fact has no body at all. It’s fitting that the ideal woman is only a
face and hands, a support for the expectations of the Catholic Church and the
believers, and lacks a corporeal identity.
While the virgin is a woman, she is the ideal, divorced from the
inherent temptations and sinfulness of the female body, and thus seems to lack
an identity.
I have also been surprised on occasion by “besitos.” It's traditional courtesy here in Sevilla to kiss someone on each cheek
when first meeting them, and when saying hello and goodbye. However, the custom can sometimes devolve into an incognito assault. The advice I’ve received from locals here
consists of, “Yes, you have to watch out for that.” But it’s not so much the shock of a piropo or of a stolen kiss that concerns me. Rather, it's the shock of realizing that
this person sees me only as a sexual object, and that simple fact allows him to break all
the normal rules. Sandra Cisneros speaks
on this theme in this short video, and I find her description of that shock and
surprise perfect.
Bearing all of this in mind, Cristina Lucas’ installation Alice bears multivalent consequences for women and their bodies. The work is installed at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, which occupies the buildings that used to comprise the monastery of the Cartuja de Santa Maria de las Cuevas.
Lucas’ sculpture refers to the episode in
Lewis Carroll’s work Through the Looking
Glass where Alice eats a cake that makes her grow to colossal proportions,
and she must put her head and arm out the window of the house. The wall text at the Centro explains that
“Cristina’s aim was to bring the book’s unsettling fantasy into the real world
and use it as a metaphor for the physical and mental imprisonment of women as a
form of oppression, trapped within the confines of their homes.” However, in addition to this reading, when standing
before the sculpture, I found myself thinking of the images of the virgin
during Semana Santa, who, like this sculpture of Alice, only possess a face and
hands. The rest of the body is just an
illusion. More than representing the
oppression of women who are expected to remain in the realm of the domestic,
this installation represents the problem of the female body. In the context of this monastery, which
represents abstinence from the sins of the flesh, and foremost, the temptation
of the female body, Alice makes it
plain that to be female is to present a problem for patriarchal society. Her body literally doesn’t fit within the
limitations of the monastery, just as my presence walking past certain bars
crowded with men watching the football games here in Sevilla also doesn’t fit,
and necessitates a “guapa!” or other remark in order to subjugate my presence to
the world of men.
For me, the installation Alice
came as a reassurance. I had been
struggling for some time now with confusion over how to feel about the
never-ending torrent of “piropos” and other small experiences that linger. So many times, I’d heard from other women,
“don’t worry about it. It’s just part of
the culture. It’s not a big deal. Just keep walking and don’t look.” But when I saw Alice, peering out of the
house and reaching out with one long arm, intervening in the normal reality of
this old monastery and defying all expectations with her surreal gaze, I felt
reassured. The bizarre experience of
seeing her face and hands emerge from an otherwise traditional Spanish building
upends our expectations and reminds us that there is no “norm” for
reality. In the moment that the viewer sees Alice’s
intervention in the architectural space of the monastery, the physical building
of the monastery and the ideology that building represents loses its monolithic
power. Women here consider piropos to be the norm, but as Lucas’
installation demonstrates, by questioning the expectations that mandate such a
norm, we deconstruct it.
