About birthing positions:The only unnatural position is missionary,at least to give birth in. It’s a personal choice and until it comes right down to the moment of truth,even the laboring woman isn’t sure what position she will assume.

No,this is not a realistic representation of a woman,Britney or not,giving birth. It is indeed meant to look sexual,as in pornographic. Here’s what gives it away:

The bearskin rug with a roaring mouth shows up in a number of pin-up art works. It is intended to represent a man under a woman’s sexual power or at least he’s having an open mouth,roaring orgasm.

“Britney’s” pointed toes and lifted feet are a couple of the physical signs of orgasm;so is the exaggerated sway of her back and raised ass (lordosis). There is a myth that some women have orgasms during the labor and/or delivery of her baby. It certainly can appear that way—as we all know,myths are mythic because they contain a grain of truth—but no,it doesn’t happen in the real world. This is a doggy-style fuck-me pose that Mr. Edwards came up with,perhaps after veiwing some photos of women in labor soon after or while looking at porn. Yeh,in certain ways,a laboring woman can look totally turned on and ready to be mounted. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This sculpture is Mr. Edwards’ fantasy of women being good for only one thing and it isn’t giving birth or being a mother. I like to think of myself as open-minded but this sculpture offends me. There is something repugnant to me about perceiving a woman as a sexual plaything,no matter what she might actually be doing,such as giving birth. It’s the depersonalisation that bothers me….After all,women have 5 biological functions (you guys have 1) and as biological functions,they are therefore sexual;laboring and giving birth are 2 of them. Mr. Edwards has turned a compelling,primal,sexual moment in the life cycle of a woman into an ugly joke,a visual pun. His spin is so sordid,it appalls me.

I’d love to sit his ass down ask him what was he thinking,what was his motivation,what ‘inspired’ him. I think he would spout a lot of bullshit—I’ve read some his remarks—all the while secretly wondering just how far can he push women (and men) into agreeing that there is something artistic about this piece of sculpture. He’s like a little boy who has finally understood what a dirty joke ‘really’ means. Brrrrrr. Or an immature male that has finally,FINALLY gotten laid and has to tell everyone about it,so everyone will know that He Is Now A Man.

I’m sure some highbrow somewhere can bullshit about the aesthetics of the piece—no pun intended—but I think that there is more of a desire for shock value than artistic aspirations. It also gives us a disturbing glimpse into Mr. Edwards’ sexuality.

It isn’t art,it’s obscenity because Mr. Edwards can’t see the beauty in womanhood/motherhood. It scares him so he twists it into a grotesque display. This is what you get from a guy that saw porn when he was way to young to understand it but he got turned on by the dirty forbidden pictures of women as sordid,sexual beasts. I have often wondered:What sort of culture is developing,with very young people going online and finding a vast array of human sexual behavior filtered though male sexual fantasies (pornography)not only available but thrown at them,when they are too young to understand what they are seeing,too young to realise that porn lacks emotional depth and has only a superficial relationship to reality.

To put it bluntly,it’s misogynistic. There’s no way to dress it up—-people will try but they will fail. This isn’t art. This is hatred and fear of women and their messy animal bodies. It isn’t ‘pro-life’;Mr Edwards is trying to dress up his hatred and fear to see who will buy into his agenda. He’s really a sad,twisted little escuse for a man. I feel sorry for any woman who has a sexual relationaship with him. God forbid she dare to get pregnant and give birth—-like Elvis,he will never be able to have sex with such a creature again…..like KFed,he will never be able to have a relationship with a woman that is about anything more than doin’ it doggy-style….I think Mr. Edwards is a too-young porn freak all grown up. He is a product of his time;so his his work. It’s really spooky.

*In addition* to that issue is the issue of the artist trying to leverage Britney Spears’ fame for his own aggrandizement – as I said before, if I were her, I’d sic the dogs on him.

And even if this position, Mike, is “perfectly natural,” which I’ve been told that it is, is that what really comes to mind when you see this?

First, the position the sculpture is in is perfectly natural despite what you lechers might think.

Second, if I was Britney Spears and someone sculpted me giving childbirth in *any* position without my permission, I’d sue his chisel off.

I do wonder exactly where the legal lines are here. If someone wanted to create some gross sculpture of me and stick it in a museum, do I have any legal rights on the matter? This is particularly interesting as in my academic field we have entire codes and committees designed to protect the abuse and dignity of participants in research of any kind. We must gain written permission from you to record your voice and then we go through procedures to make them anonymous. Assuming academic research has as much right to exist as this sculpture…. I don’t know the answer here.

In teaching a class the first thing I would get to would have been the “non-political” pro-life message, then the creepy sex/birth pose, etc. Then I would have said something along the lines of “I hear what you’re saying and see what you did, and those don’t fit.”

Koon’s Michael Jackson and Bubbles still my fav bizzare contemporary sculpture. At least that didn’t have a head coming out of anything.

…oh and ONLY #29?!

Now, this may be wrong, but I’ve heard that it’s possible to give birth on all fours, that it’s actually a fairly comfortable way of doing it. But, uh, the position Britney’s in looks rather sexual, doesn’t it? Surely that would be an immoderate way of giving birth.