Wigging Out with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol: Self-Portrait  
from the Fright Wig series (1986)

I.

A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair; or, rather less convincingly, synthetic fibres. Whilst concealing baldness is certainly a popular reason for wearing one, there are many others; some people wear them on religious grounds, for example; some do so simply for the pleasure of enhancing, disguising, or transforming their appearance. 

The Case of Andy Warhol is particularly interesting ...


II.

If, initially, Warhol wore a wig as a young man in the 1950s in order to hide prematurely thinning hair, he eventually styled his public persona upon a never anything but artificial looking collection of silver-white wigs. Indeed, Warhol's wig-wearing might even be seen as a wonderful piece of performance art concerned with self-creation and self-promotion.    

Made from hair imported from Italy and sewn by famous New York wig maker Paul Bochicchio, Warhol opted for his trademark silver-white wig in order to look slightly alien and also in the knowledge that if you have always looked old, no one can guess your real age. Allowing his own hair to protrude at the bottom of the wig ensured no one mistook it for anything other than a piece of artifice.

Strangely, however, just as the wig came to be seen by others as Andy's natural look, so too did Warhol grow to feel it was an essential element of his identity - we might almost say that just as some wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he wore his soul upon his head. 

And so it is that when Warhol had his wig snatched off his head by a young woman at a book signing in October 1985, it was as much a violent assault as when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously injured the artist back in the summer of '68. Indeed, Warhol described this shocking and painful later event as the day his greatest nightmare came true. 

Nevertheless, real trooper that he was, Warhol simply pulled up the hood on his Calvin Klein coat, smiled, and continued signing copies of his newly published work America. It might also be noted that although the perpetrator of the assault was held until the police arrived, no charges were pressed.


See: Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry covering this wig-grabbing incident at the Rizzoli bookstore in the Soho district of Manhattan, Warhol describes his assailant as very pretty and well-dressed and suggests that this may have been what prevented him from pushing her over the balcony.  

Upskirting

Calvin Klein ad featuring Klara Kristen 

Photo by Harley Weir (2016)

As long as there are young women wearing short skirts and pretty underwear then the phenomenon of upskirting is not going to go away - even if you criminalise the activity, as is now proposed. All (heterosexual) men want to catch a glimpse upskirt or peek downblouse, be they 18th century French painters, like Fragonard, or 21st century voyeurs surreptitiously using a smart phone.

Without wishing to subscribe to the moral hysteria that surrounds this subject - and even though I'm not female - I can understand the objection to some prick taking an unauthorised photograph and then posting the image online or circulating it via social media. Everyone is surely entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy within a public space and not to be sexually harassed or humiliated.

Ultimately, however, I see this more as an ethical issue rather than a legal one. Or perhaps simply as a question of etiquette; one simply doesn't do this kind of thing in polite society. It's so rude! as a member of the Brodie Set would say.

The problem, of course, is that we don't live within polite society. We live, rather, within a pornified (or sexually liberated) culture where the recording, distribution, and consumption of images via sophisticated technology - including images that are intended to be obscene or provocative in nature - has become absolutely normalised.

Because I'm a bit old-fashioned, it seems to me to be bad manners to upskirt a stranger without their knowledge or consent. But ads such as the one shown above, featuring a picture by the young and highly acclaimed (female) photographer Harley Weir for Calvin Klein, clearly help construct a kinky code of conduct that encourages and endorses what at one time would have been branded as overtly deviant behaviour.

After the orgy, there's clearly a need for a new sexual ethos. But who could we possibly task to draw up such? I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable handing the job over to feminist academics such as Clare McGlynn and Erica Rackley, for example, who argue that upskirting belongs next to revenge porn on a continuum of image-based sexual abuse, reinforcing as it does a rape culture that fundamentally violates a woman's human rights.

As indicated earlier, I'm really not convinced that we need a more comprehensive politico-legal response to upskirting. I would really rather there were fewer laws, not more.

Nor - at the risk of minimising the nature and impact of upskirting - do I think it's helpful to encourage women who have had some creep take an illicit photo regard themselves as victim-survivors. To feel that your dignity has been stolen and self-worth destroyed simply because someone caught sight of your knickers (or even your genitalia) is, I would suggest, an overreaction.

And, finally, anyone who imagines for one moment that life and love can be made to unfold entirely within a framework (and safe space) of human rights is laughably mistaken: for life is tragic and love is deadly and we are all of us - whatever our gender - violated and humiliated on a daily basis by the evil genius of the world.

Notes 

As far as I'm aware, there is still no specific law against upskirting in the UK, although, in 2010, Scotland broadened the definition of voyeurism to explicitly cover the non-consensual taking of images beneath clothing - presumably this included kilts - either for the perpetrator's sexual gratification, or in order to cause the victim harm or distress. It should be noted, however, that there have been successful prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under the common law offense of outraging public decency. One might have thought that this suggests there's no real need for further legislation, though if women like the Conservative MP Maria Miller (Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee) and Sarah Green (of the End Violence Against Women Coalition) are successful in their campaigning, then the horrific crime of upskirting will soon be on the statute books.

See: Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton, 'Beyond Revenge Porn: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse', in Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (April 2017), pp. 25-46: click here to read online.