Part 1: on the great mind of mankind Bo.
I tell you, we stopped being stupid when we came out. When we stopped to vegetate in the state of nature and embraced the state of culture. Because it’s at this very moment that man’s ability to think biological relations as systems of oppositions, duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry occurred.* So it has been decided now that boys would become men and girls would be women. Let me keep the dramatic tone. It’s funny how clothes used to divide and categorise people according to their sex. Why did we wear clothes? Despite the practicality of it in winter seasons and nice aesthetics? Nature didn’t give us the adaptability of animals, we didn’t got feathers or thick fur, we’re only made of thin skin. First, humans needed to protect themselves from the weather influences, then human needed to protect their body out of shame and prudishness. Human were aware they greatly surpassed Animals, psychologically and philosophically:
They are smart, because we all know that human species are the masterpiece of all species. They had a great destiny waiting for them and it was unworthy/ beneath them selves to believe they could share any kind of “similarities” with wild species. Therefore Humans had to hide any body parts that could link them to the degenerate species, therefore the sex, the chest, the back, the legs were to be covered. But as soon as humans were aware, as soon as they thought, the needed to dress up. And the shame of body took over. This phenomena is clearly depicted in the Bible for instance. In the begining, Adam and Eve were naked. They would run happily naked in the garden of heaven. Once they’ve tasted the apple of the knowledge, they blushed out of shame. Because they saw, they were naked.*
Bo: Remember when you were a child… Until quite late you never had boobs.
The Girl remembered the times she went on the beach. She remembered this times when she never wore a bikini top, her and her sister. Because their mum never bought them the bikini top. She remembered this one time, she had to make a presentation in front of her whole classroom: “Your summer holidays.” Great theme so far. She would archive all the beaches she went to (with) in a nice patchwork of herself -Malibu style. She took greater satisfaction in this specially because it was the first time she ever went outside of her continent. But The Girl’s proud filled up with shame when a dude through his finger at her “look you can see her nipples! She wears no bikini top!”
The Girl remembered: Until 14, boobs didn’t existed for me. And I remember this event that changed me. Changed me in the sense that it had an impact on the way I looked at my body. Physically, I had to change.
Bo was rowlling his eyes because he heard the story a thousand times.
The Girl: It’s not my fault. If boys were already slave to the binary toys industry and brainwashed by the patriarchal system they fell into. They made fun of me and I wasn’t in the proper disposition to respond back as I would wish I had.
Bo: Maybe you shouldn’t care too much about the others. What they think, what they want. Maybe you should stop victimising yourself.
The Girl: Easy to say. I can see you’ve never been to highschool. (picture of mean girls)
Bo: Imagine, if you had not been pointed out. You would have stayed in the ignorance of your identity: A true woman. He was drawing the body of a voluptuous woman in the air/with his hands.
The Girl: lol. No but it just broke my intimate connection to Mowgli. I mean the guy was dope. And before this “incident” (let’s call it like that blw…) I mean there was no clear indication this dude was a dude. And I could totally see myself in Mowgli.
Bo: I know Mowgli was your fav. (sad emoji)
Part two: on the reason why
“ until 14, boobs didn’t existed for me, therefore my bathing suit was the same as Mowgli’s ”
If you look at it closelly, sure Book of the Jungle is a great story until the moment we all fear, the seperation of man from nature. Mowgli is an orphan raised by a clan of wolves. Hedonist and independant wild beings, free from society, free from the pressure of conformity: Mowgli grew up the best way there is: savage and fearless. He has no fear of nature, he lived in symbiose with it and The Girl knew she would live her life as he did: unchained. At the end of Mowgli adventure, the separation of the best buddies isn’t the worst part of The Girl outrage to this story.(isn’t the worst part of the story that made her outraged// a rectifier) The worst part of the movie is that they dared to represent a human female. for The Girl, the obstination of the black panter would have been good enough reason to make Mowgli reunite with his kind. The threat of Sher-kahn and the black panther’s pressure were enough reason to capitulate. So she believe. No. It had to be “ her ”. The treacherous seductive female. The female. She had to be the missing link between nature and culture. Ones know, SHE is the yin to his yang: To his wildness, she behave, to his uncivilise and naïve manners, her looks are malicious and she master the butterfly gaze effect with perfection. She knows what she’s doing, obviously.
The Girl: Not again!
Bo: It’s meant to be. Every Disney cartoon have to end up in a romantic story: princesses waiting for prince, princesses brushing their hair and dreaming of prince, prince seeking for princesses, fighting dragons, oceans, monsters to find and rescue princesses. There has to be a girl. Because it’s been proved and validated/certified/sponsored by Disney, that girls are men’s “essentials”.
The Girl: Yes the jungle book was never a love story until The Girl showed up. And I liked this disney because of the ambiguity of the main character. It’s because Mowgli was naked that the ambiguity worked. He didn’t had a gendered clothing like a cupcake dress or an armor.
Bo: Why armor would be genderised?
Bo and The Girl are flipping the pages of the book…
The Girl remembered pictures of warriors and soldiers’ uniforms in a book entitled “Dressed to kill”. The Girl: Look at this, boys have to be the ones to fight, they’re the only ones who had the proper outfit for it! Look, back in the 1950s, women were wearing extra skirts on the battlefield.
BoBo sarcastically: Because they had to protect their sacred fertility.
The Girl: It looks like a big clumsy pear, I’d rather be naked than to wear a diaper-skirt.
Bo: Women needed to protect they magical powers and mystery under extra layers of fabric. It’s like a big onion. Men were determined to be conquerors, “they hunted and fought and conquered worlds, lands of which women were the guardians.” The woman was the guardian of the land. The woman nourished the progeny and the kingdom. Women were docile or as Claude* called it: “static object/beings.”
The Girl: I’m annoyed by you bringing up the past all the time. I’m sick of being so influenced by our history.
Bo: It’s simple sociology darling, sorry but you cannot erase history. If you do so, then it’s denying our existence.
The Girl: I don’t want to be a land. I’m no land.
Bo:
No but it’s serious bullshit this prince and princess love story. I tell you the truth from our friend Claude*, on these prince and princess alliances.
If you go back to the first organisations of tribes and clans, you will learn that people first had sex with their sister and brother and that incest was actually a common thing.
You’ll learn that incest had to stop for a ‘greater purpose’ than morality or medical matters: exogamy.
There was no wrong feelings. No feeling of disgust concerning incest. Having intercourse with your brother or cousin seemed quite handy/‘easy going’ because you didn’t have to search too far to get it done.
So no reason to find improper/indecent for a woman to have intercourse with men in her clan. However, this bad habit had to change because it was socially and economically more interesting that she be part of the “trade”.
Women were found to be very good assets to expand men’s territories and in order to create new alliances. They became the first slaves to men’s expansion.
The Girl: So women were used for the production of heirs, to mark and be the guardians of men’s great expansion. It reflects the positive desire for exogamy, in a negative form. Women were forbidden to have sex with their brothers. This way their family could benefit from new lands and dowries inherited through their husbands.
Bo: Precisely. it is socially useful that women be part of the goods by which each clan, instead of closing in on itself, establishes a reciprocal relationship with another clan: “Exogamy has a value less negative than positive … it prohibits endogamous marriages … certainly not because a biological danger is attached to consanguineous marriages, but because exogamous marriages result in a social advantage.*
The Girl: Once married women stopped being their fathers’ burden to become their husbands’. It was a rule that women were possession to be given out. They were not meant to stay within the family. She awed to be ‘other’.
Bo: Yes, ‘the group should not for its own private purposes consume women who constitute one of its possessions, but should use them as an instrument of communication;’ Lévi says.
The Girl: Like Marie-Antoinette was the pillar to the Franco-Austrian ‘friendship’. It’s really a bougee habit to enslave woman this way.
Bo: And her only duty was to give an heir to seal the alliance.
The Girl: Yeah but even though these economic formalities are outdated, they have an impact somehow on the way today’s society considers women. Women are more likely to become models of stability and control. Strong family figures, the ones who unite the blood-line, figures that lead you back to your roots. Exactly as the little girl is depicted in Mowgli’s ending.
Bo: Your roots as for your native land?
The Girl: The roots are connected somehow to your land, your country, so it’s seems like as soon as a woman becomes a mother, she incarnates a static aspect of society. She maintains the life of the tribe by providing children and bread, nothing more; she lives condemned to immanence; she incarnates only the static aspect of society, closed in on itself. Since she is the first home to host the child, she remain a ‘home’ for the rest of her life. Her womb was the first home to the child therefore she is assigned to be the ultimate sanctuary.
