Pre-Raphaelite Beauties with Machine Guns

[sharplittleteeth]

Boing Boing linked to this amazing photo essay:

Rachel Papo's Serial No. 3817131

It documents the everyday lives of young women in the Isreali Defence Force.

The photos are beautiful. But there's something sad and disturbing about seeing a young women standing on her bed beneath a poster for The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind wearing full battle fatigues, or another talking sadly on her mobile phone with an assault rifle beside her.

It's not that I think women don't belong in the armed forces, or anything like that. It's that they have to be there - because military service is compulsory in Isreal, and because young people need to be forced into being soldiers because the political situation is so fucked up.

"My service had been a period of utter loneliness," writes Papo in her Artist's Statement, "mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all."


And yes - some of these women have faces that would make Dante Gabriel Rossetti weep. But those Boing Boing commenters frothing over the pictures like they were soft porn? Epic fail, dudes. Epic fail.

Comments

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing it wasn't the artist's intention. It was more this sentence that prompted my response:

But there's something sad and disturbing about seeing a young women standing on her bed beneath a poster for The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind wearing full battle fatigues, or another talking sadly on her mobile phone with an assault rifle beside her.

It struck me that you were particularly moved by the fact that they're girls, and that the juxtaposition of 'normal' femininity and weapons seemed particularly poignant. Seeing a guy talking on his phone next to an assault rifle might not have produced the same reaction. Given your reply though I'm guessing I misread it. Sorry!:)

[sharplittlteeth.livejournal.com]

No, don't apologise. You have a point.

I mean, this is explicitly a photo essay about women. Some of them are very, very beautiful.

So yes, there's a certain amount of sexual attraction that colours my reaction to these photos that I wouldn't feel if they were photos of young men.

But I hope that's only a small part of it. I've felt similar sadness and disquiet looking through photo essays on young American GIs in Iraq.

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Now we're getting to it, some of them are (to use Mr Rossetti's favourite phrase) stunners. With really lovely hair. I found myself oddly glad they didn't make them shave it all off like GIs have to.

Conscription's a freaking horrible thing. When it looked like Bush was going to introduce it I agreed to marry an old internet mate of mine so he could move down here. War's fucking awful full stop. But then I'm not saying anything new, there.