Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024: Pubic Hair and Porcelain Faces

Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024 [1]

 

 

I was pleased to see that John Galliano decided to experiment with an older ideal of female beauty in his latest collection for Maison Margiela; one with tiny waists, wide hips, and (at least the illusion of) hairy genitalia.

 

For I've long been interested in the question of female body hair and its removal; particularly from the pubic area due to a porno-aesthetic convention shaping our idea of what constitutes desirability. As I wrote in a post published back in January 2013:  

"I am slightly troubled by this trend. For whilst I understand the appeal of the hairless pussy on grounds that range from the practical to the perverse, still I can't help regretting the universal Brazilianization of women as I recall the words of Henry Miller: 'It doesn't look like a cunt anymore; it's like a dead clam or something. It's the hair that makes it mysterious.' [2]  

 

So, well done to Galliano for his use of couture merkins, fashioned from real human hair and visible beneath the sheer dresses worn by models. Perhaps this will start a new trend and maybe even encourage some women to go easy with the wax or refrain from relentlessly shaving every single hair [3].

 

 

II.

 

Of course, Galliano isn't really interested in reviving a more natural model of femininity. As he once admitted long ago, he hates female breasts for ruining the line of his designs.

 

And as the hyper-shiny complexion of his models indicates [4], his queer and slightly uncanny fantasy is to make a real woman resemble a porcelain doll; or perhaps bring the latter to life, fitting her out with all the secondary sexual characteristics of genuine womanhood, and then having her walk down the catwalk looking like a lurid Edwardian prostitute.  

To quote D. H. Lawrence: "It's just weird. And for its very weirdness women like living up to it." [5] But they might do well to remember, however, that the moment they take on that artificial china doll face, the fashion will change and the demand will be for something else.  

 

Having said that, Galliano does have a certain decadent genius and I can't help admiring his latest collection - just as my own perverse interest in the (related) topics of pygmalionism, agalmatophilia, and dollification make it hard for me not to adore the perfect porcelain features of the model pictured above. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024 by John Galliano was shown underneath the arches of what for many is most beautiful - certainly the most ornate - bridge in all Paris, the Pont Alexandre III. Click here to watch the show - inspired in part by Brassï’s dimly lit, over exposed nighttime photos taken in Montmarte in the 1920s and '30s - on YouTube.  

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Epilation' (8 Jan 2013) from where I quote this passage.

 

[3] Perhaps. But probably not. I suspect that all the body positive and natural beauty stuff will make little difference within a pornified culture. Some readers might recall that the visual merchandising team at American Apparel tried something similar to Galliano at their East Houston Street store in NYC ten years ago to little effect. See the post 'On Mannequins With Merkins' (21 Jan 2014).

 

[4] The astonishing glass skin make-up worn by the models was created by Pat McGrath; a long time collaborator of Galliano's - from his days at Dior until now at Maison Margiela, where he was appointed creative director in 2014. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Give Her a Pattern', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 163. 

Technosexual Futures with Reference to the Case of Tanya (RealDoll 2 Configuration 1)

Tanya: a second generation RealDoll

For her full details click here. 

Technosexuality refers to a rapidly evolving phenomenon that includes erotic fascination with engendered robots and artificially intelligent sex-dolls. For many, it is and will always remain a niche activity amongst a small number of slightly creepy men, mostly in the United States and Japan, who can afford to purchase a mechanical bride. For the love of a good woman doesn't come cheap, even when that woman is made in a factory; the RealDoll shown above, for example, Tanya, not only has gel implants in her pendulous 32F breasts, but a price tag of over $7000.

And, if you want to download the new Harmony Artificial Intelligence App released earlier this year to enable Tanya to better cater for all your personal needs, that'll cost an additional annual subscription. But it's only a small price to pay, surely, for something that allows you to become-Pygmalion and create a unique personality for your silicone lover, controlling how happy, shy, or talkative she is. What's more, as an added bonus, the Harmony app also enables users to create a fully customizable 3D avatar. 
 
For those futurists and transhumanists who get excited by this sort of thing, technosexuality is mankind's erotic destiny and they insist we'll all have artificial lovers by the middle of this century, transforming what is presently regarded as a kinky (and, in some cases, criminal) form of love into a perfectly legitimate and normalized practice.

I have to confess, however, that I still have my doubts about this - even though it's certainly true that increasing numbers of men and women are pleasuring themselves with crude robotic devices, such as vibrators and mechanical vaginas. And even though it's also true that the quest to produce full-sized, fully-interactive female sexbots is simply a further development of a trend (and a fantasy) that has been unfolding for many years.

The problem, for those who dream of a technosexual utopia, is that many people find the sexy cyborgs presently in development profoundly troubling, problematizing as they do the fundamental distinctions between natural and artificial, human and machine, alive and dead.

There will almost certainly be individuals strongly opposed to the idea of sexual congress with beings born of the pornographic imagination and assembled in the Uncanny Valley; men and women keen to preserve the unique onto-moral status of humanity and the purity of love as something existing between consenting adults - not man and child, or man and beast, and certainly not man and sexbot, no matter how lifelike and human the latter may appear.

Even David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots (2007), can’t quite disguise his discomfort. Thus, whilst happy to speculate about technosexual futures, he doesn't actually advocate erotic relations between humans and robots, nor does he wish to suggest that sex between two people will become outmoded. In fact, Levy claims that only misfits and the sexually inadequate might willingly opt for exclusive relations with non-human objects, thus reaffirming a belief in authentic, healthy, natural sex whilst denigrating those who choose to love differently. 

Personally, I don't really have any objections or qualms about sex with synthetic lovers, though I do find the desire for techno-intimacy somewhat perplexing; I can't see why you would want a sentient machine to moan with pleasure one minute, only to then start moaning that you never listen to them or ask about their day the next.

Surely one of the main advantages of a conventional (non-sentient) doll is that it doesn't have thoughts and feelings and doesn't get moody or have headaches. One is tempted to suggest to those who insist on knowing the full girlfriend experience, that they date the girl next door and allow the alluring Tanya to remain blissfully unaware and withdrawn into the perfect silence and impersonal mystery of her own being as an object.

To make her whisper the words I love you is to collapse technosexuality into sentimental humanism ...


Note: readers who are interested in this topic might like to see a recent news report on RT America, with Trinity Chavez, discussing the ethics of sexbots: click here. 

Baby/Doll (With Reference to the Work of W. B. Yeats)

 

Admit it, we're so much nicer than 

   the real thing mewling and puking ...

If I were asked by some kind of investigative committee into poetic activity: Are you now or have you ever been a reader of W. B. Yeats? I would have to answer no. 

However, in the interests of full disclosure, I would also have to admit that I did once (unsuccessfully) attempt to read his esoteric study A Vision (1925) and that I am of course familiar with three of his most famous verses: 'The Second Coming' (1920), 'Leda and the Swan' (1924), and 'Sailing to Byzantium' (1928).

But I'm certainly not a Yeats scholar of any kind, nor even a fan of his writing; it's too traditional, too nostalgic, too mystical and too Romantic - in short, too Irish - for my tastes. When I don't find it boring in its lyricism, I find it politically pernicious in it's völkisch nationalism and myth-making.

Having said that, there is at least one other poem by Yeats that fascinates and horrifies in equal measure ...

'The Dolls' (1916) tells the tale of a doll-maker and his wife who has recently given birth following an unplanned pregnancy, for which she is shamefully apologetic in the face of hostility to the newborn child from her husband's handcrafted creations, one of whom "Looks at the cradle and bawls: / 'That is an insult to us.'"

But it is the oldest of all the dolls who kicks up the biggest fuss and screams with indignant rage: 

"'Although
There's not a man can report 
Evil of this place,
The man and woman bring
Hither to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'" 

This is obviously upsetting to the couple, as one might imagine; and upsetting also to readers of the verse. Creepy, malevolent dolls are bad enough - but creepy, malevolent dolls that bad-mouth innocent living babies, are even worse. WTF is Yeats playing at here?

Well, let me reiterate: I'm no Yeats scholar - but I know a woman who is ...

According to Dr Maria Thanassa, here, as elsewhere in his verse, Yeats is affirming the superiority of art over nature and the fact that he subscribes to a material form of aesthetic idealism in which artificial objects, such as handcrafted dolls, are infinitely preferable in their porcelain perfection to biological entities, such as babies, who cry, vomit, and defecate all day long without restraint and are subject to disease, cot death, and all the other forms of sordid stupidity and defect that characterise mortal existence.      

For the doll-maker, his beautiful figures are the result of hard-work and exquisite design; the child, on the other hand, is the unfortunate consequence of a quick fuck and carelessness on the part of the woman. It takes talent, discipline and dedication to be an artist, whilst anyone can be a human breeder. Thus we should value things born of the mind over things born of the body.

Obviously, in as much as this analysis of Yeats's thinking is correct, I find it problematic to say the least - even as someone fascinated by objects and sympathetic to agalmatophilia, pygmalionism, and all forms of doll fetish.

Were I the doll maker's wife, I'd get my child and get out of there ...     

See: W. B. Yeats, 'The Dolls', in Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1916). Click here to read online at allpoetry.com 

Thanks to Maria Thanassa for her kind assistance with this post.