Although the countless sexist words our culture has generated are ubiquitous – in books, advertisements, music lyrics, films, and TV shows – it is when they are directed at a particular individual as a pointed verbal assault that they are the most hurtful and demeaning. Diane Jacobs, in her series of woven paper undergarments, has devised a highly affecting way to bring these words directly to the site of the intended target – the female body.

While bras and panties are the items of clothing that shield, however minimally, a woman’s erogenous zones from casual observation, they also can be the very articles that spur the misogynist male imagination. These often scanty pieces of clothing represent, in the mind of the rapacious man at least, the last slim barrier to full exposure and hoped-for sexual conquest. The artist’s canny tactic is to incorporate these derogatory words, as printed text, directly into the “fabric” of the paper-crafted object.

In Pinky Bra and Striped Undies, the works illustrated here, we can make out in partial and truncated form numerous slang terms for female breasts – “cupcakes,” “melons” and “torpedoes” – and for the vagina, such extravagancies as “cave of harmony” and “cornucopia.” What were once painful verbal slurs are now layered into a faux bra and panties and, in effect, imprisoned there, robbed of their striking force. Hard and callow words have been appropriated by delicate, woman-made constructions. These words now exist only through the courtesy of a woman’s body. They have become womanly decorations, impotent and harmless.

Pinky Bra and Striped Undies
Diane Jacobs