nettime: But SHE was a HEROINE - Mare Tralla

[abroeck@v2.nl (Andreas Broeckmann)]

From: mare@hrc.westminster.ac.uk (Mare Tralla)
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996

AS A WOMAN IN COMMUNIST SOCIETY.

A milkmaid, a weaver, a female tractor driver - all stereotypical communist
heroines. I guess in a way they were my heroines too, created by the
totalitarian regime and THE 'media'. All honored with the title of the
Heroine of The Socialist Labour. I knew only their names and I had my own
fantasy pictures of how they should look: ladies with artificially curled
hair, weight at least 120 kg. The last let see them as strong as possible.
Woman was working animal or slave, she worked in the public sphere, she made
her career and had children, looked after her drunk husband and even read
newspapers for him if he demanded.
But SHE was a HEROINE.

LIBERATION OF HEROINES

After 1991 she finally could stay at home! Long live housekeepers! Her
husband was making money, "a lot of cash".
She needed to learn how to be in the bed with bananas and pineapples, how to
use condoms and tampons. However, after all she seems to be happy! Therefore
she don't need feminism! May-be.
She is not a heroine any more: she is a toy - a Barbie doll in a beauty
factory.

FREEDOM AND BLINDNESS.

If she doesn't want to be a Barbie doll and if she wants to say how sad it
is to be one, she becomes a feminist. She makes attempt to liberate herself
once more, to get the freedom. To be a feminist artist in a post-socialist
country seems to be easy way to fame, because it is often seen just as
immoral and abnormal, the things people like to talk about but they don't
like to hear often, what was said by those they are making accusations of
immorality. I got a nickname "disgusting woman" because of that. And now I
am here escaping and learning to become a digital artisan, forgetting that
I am an artist, killing my ideals and trying to learn "how to sell myself
big!"
"I am a tomato soup a la Campbell, if you taste it you'll never forget the
delicious taste."
I am raped by consumer society, I am blind but I see better than before.

And it is so good to have tampons and computers and cyberspace, after all.
Maybe it can even make us happy.

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