Jacquelyn Jackson Johnston

Q + A about T + A

Special thanks to Tren, Sefer and Gear for help with the Logo

and to Andrew for help with transcribing text

Q & A about T & A

Tits. Ass. We all love them. Driving around Miami or walking around South Beach there is a never-ending array of sizes, shapes and silicone levels. You can find them around every corner, and thanks to contemporary trends in advertising, the whole world can enjoy our view.

Liquor and beer ads always provide good examples: if you drink Cointreau you will get a model clad in a barely-over-sized orange peel; and let's not forget about Disorono on the rocks, where a hot chick with an amazing rack gives you the eye while giving a piece of ice a proper lick-induced meltdown. Shall I continue? Nah, we live in the land of asses using alcohol to get tits. We know plenty of examples.

Wait… Have you ever wondered if you're being manipulated? Or are you taken in by all the tit and ass shots that you were just happy to sit and be subliminally convinced that Miller will get you laid tonight? Sure, it would be nice, if only we all could go out and find that one true product to set our sex lives on fire… Well good news, I think I finally found it boys… that one true myth that is so well constructed it just must follow through.

We've all seen it drive by, in its larger than life pink glory, clinging like the plastic it represents to the side of buses hurling people around Miami. I am talking about the gloriously manicured promise of tits and ass that are the POWER 96 ads. Ever seen them? Everyone should, it's all there, they've even removed that annoying part of woman we all wish would just float away- her head. All we really need is the T & A to sell the product.

Hold on to your dicks, cause here we go. Exactly what are they advertising with this image of a woman's torso, ass cocked high in tiny shorts with only enough left of a t-shirt to pass the FCC. Ever stopped to think about her missing head?

In art history this is a syndrome in the representation of women that is labeled the threat of CASTRATION. Throughout the history of painting, women are represented as lacking—lacking the phallus to be exact. This lack is described as the threat of castration, as though femininity is a state achieved by removing the almighty penis. Isn't this threat why it is so important to treat women like the objects they are? To put down the threat before she emasculates you?

Castrating the threat of castration! What an ingenious idea! Traditionally, artists just avert the female's gaze in order to allow the male viewers a dominant position from which to judge and oogle from a removed, protected distance. To exclude the glance, or better yet the face, is to castrate their humanity before they can threaten the phallus. But to remove the head entirely, that is a brilliant trick!

In fact, in Muslim art, the representation of the human form is prohibited on the basis of the danger of idolatry [worshiping the image of oneself]. The only way the human form can be represented in their art is by removing the head, which by their logic, turns the body into a tree—therefore inhuman and objectifyable.

In one bus ad, the advertising mavericks at POWER 96 have managed to touch on a concept debated in Western art, Feminist art history, and even in Muslin art from the 8 th Century.

What a beautiful thing. No, not the bitch's amazing rack and ass that just won't quit… It's a beautiful thing that advertising, in its quest to weave the myth of our culture's desires, has stumbled upon the very notion of femininity that has plagued visual representation for centuries—what the hell do we do with beautiful women if we want to look but not be caught?

We castrate them.

This piece was inspired by the ideas expressed in my NEWCUBE.tv Manifesto