Mandy Nolan’s Soap Box: Extreme tits

Little Boy: ‘Mummy, when I grow up I want to be a football player. Or maybe a racecar driver. I will conquer the world with my courage and my ability.’

Little Girl: ‘Mummy, when I grow up I want nice big titties, and I’m going to push my boobs together. I want men to desire me. I will allow men who conquer the world to conquer me.’

That’s pretty well the message depicted by one of the rides at the Brunswick Xmas Carnival. It’s titled, or should I say ‘tittled’, EXTREME SPORT STARS. The giant spray-painted mural that sits high above the Brunswick Xmas Carnival depicts male champions of extreme sport – gridiron, racecar driving. They are wearing their sporting outfits. Helmets. They are carrying the tokens of their sport and they are dressed. Not one of them is grabbing his sagging scrotum and pushing the contents together to create an impressive cod cleavage. That’s because they are telling the story of being champions.

The female images depicted look like porn stars or strippers, or at best ‘cheer-leaders’. Cheer-leaders being the group of conventionally hot women dressed like pole dancers performing strip-club-styled antics on the sideline. It’s bizarre. The mural shows women with giant bulging breasts that they are actually pushing together to make an even bigger one I guess. I was left wondering if pole dancing was actually considered an extreme sport. Or being super hot. Maybe that’s extreme.

Actually when you consider how many women die from violence or are victims of sexual assault I guess in a way just being a woman is extreme sport. It’s certainly more dangerous than racecar driving. It’s one of those images that leaves you a little shocked. Pouting lips. Erect nipples. While the male images declare men as heroes, men as defiant and strong and respectable. The images of women are purely around sexual consumption. If you want to tell little girls they’re useless pieces of shit, then this is the picture that will do it. Well done! If you want your sons to grow up disrespecting and assaulting women, then this is part of the narrative that you need to feed them. It’s one of those rides that you strap yourself to that propels you up and down in a motion guaranteed to make you physically ill. And if the ride doesn’t do it, the image certainly will. I didn’t even go on the ride and I was retching. I can’t believe this image tours the country, spreading the message of female objectification and general uselessness to generations of young girls everywhere. They might as well rename it EXTREME RAPE. Who doesn’t want a ride on that?

Our greatest achievement according to the carnie image is being decorative holes. We exist to service the mighty cock. I don’t think the image has gone unnoticed, but it certainly goes unchanged. Even my 16-year-old son stopped and gasped ‘WTF?’ He was appalled by the image and shocked at the dumb crudeness of the messaging. Kids interpret this message for what it is. It’s inexcusable. It’s embarrassing. And it needs to change. NOW. The image that sits above a children’s carnival ride screams rape culture. It screams about the lack of value of women. It perpetuates the stereotypes that fuel sexual violence. It’s worse than a Wicked van. I am not aware of tit smashing being an actual sport, and in lieu of its ever being recognised as an extreme action event, I wonder why they can’t represent women on an extreme sport ride as champions in their own right? Skydivers, tennis players, base jumpers. I think you’ll find there’re women out there on the ledge of excellence of far more impressive achievements than just having a nice rack. I mean if they want something really extreme maybe they could have an image of a woman giving birth. Without drugs.

I don’t know how this carnival ride has remained untainted. It’s crying out for some serious rad fem graffiti. Not that I endorse the wilful destruction of property. But in this case I endorse it a hell of a lot more than the wilful destruction of women. For Christ’s sake, get one of the many talented local street artists and repaint the women with respect.

I guess the fact offensive shit like that still exists reinforces the fact that violence perpetuated against a woman’s body is still called culture. Change it.