www.themuffia.co.uk

Response to todays 'Muff March' from Sinead.

The Muffia featured in the Guardian yesterday as having been part of the organisation of the Muff March which took place today. The march was a protest against labiaplasty cosmetic surgery. We were not involved in the organisation of the march, the organisers used the 'Muff wig' and have said they took inspiration from The Muffia.

We fully support the march. However I do not protest, I am an artist. And I have many questions about the topic of this particular type of surgery and speaking out against it.

Who are the women who are having cosmetic surgery on the genitals? Should they have a voice? Feminism has often spoken on behalf of women without talking to and listening to women about their lived experience.

How would a woman having had genital cosmetic surgery feel if she saw the march?

Do these women possibly suffer with body dismorphia and therefore is having genital surgery actually part of a very deep psychological/emotional problem that needs to be dealt with with great sensitivity like other cultural body issues such as eating disorders?

Eating disorders can be seen as a rational response to the culture we live in? Can we view cosmetic surgery in this way too?

I also wonder about the choice of doing the march on Harley street? This march, will not, I'm guessing, effect a cosmetic surgeon, or stop them from practicing. But I guess if it makes a woman whose going in for surgery question her motives that is great. But how can we create a dialogue?

Do we feel imperfect? Do we have to continually change ourselves? If so why?

I think it's a very simplistic view and a massive leap to connect labiaplasty surgery to pornography (although it can of course be part of it). There's something deeper going on.

Self hatred and body insecurity are not a specifically female problem.

The Muffia speech at the MUFF MARCH, 10th December 2011

We were invited by www.UKFeminista.org.uk

Thank you all for being here, your presence is a sign that people are no longer prepared

to passively accept the profitable hatred of women and the commoditisation of human beings.

This is the beginning of the counter-revolution!

I am Katie O’Brien an Artist from The Muffia.

Historically they told us

We couldn’t TALK,

THEN they told us we couldn’t VOTE,

THEN they told us we couldn’t DRIVE,

NOW they are telling US we can’t be WOMEN.

Popular Pornograhic aesthetic tells us we need to have childlike or grossly enlarged genitals to be accepted.

It is increasingly popular to get a Labia-plasty - which is slicing away of flesh that someone else has told us we shouldn’t have.

Harley Street traditionally offers Female Circumcision which we used to consider an out of date BRUTALITY.

Labia-plasty and female circumcision are the same. Genital mutilation!

Now it’s in YOUR High St.

Volvas are for sexual stimulation and childbirth! Not a focus for pain and disfigurement.

I thought SURGERY was for sick people – are women sick?

Yes! We are sick of being told what to look like!

Labia-plasty is just the logical Conclusion of Controlling Women and Converting their self-hatred into CA$H!

It’s not the thin End of the Wedge – the Wedge has been vaginally reformed, lasered, bleached, plucked and pulled and is now sitting in the Window of the Local Cosmetic Surgery.

Being PAID FOR of course by women who just want to be accepted.

Us – here – today. We accept You.

EVERYDAY We are SOLD conflicting messages & UnNatural desires,

YOU MUST BE:

Polished but Pure,

Clever but Slim,

Delicate but Dirty,

Homely but Horny

we are surrounded by representations of scphenzafrenic women!

But Let’s not Pretend this is someone else’s problem.

I have battled with self-hatred, eating disorders

The constant compare and dispair.

The shame and fear and the internal conflict WE ALL HAVE

It starts before we get out of bed in the morning.

ITS RIDICULOUS – WE ALL KNOW ITS HAPPENING

We have to KILL THIS IDEA!

What does Cosmetic Surgery and Nazism have in common?

They are Both PAINFUL Fantasies constructed to DISTORT, DOMINATE and

Commoditise the majority….But NAZISM didn’t last.

BECAUSE LIKE COSMETIC SURGERY IT WAS ANTI-HUMAN.

BUT let’s remember this, first and Foremost this is a woman’s fight.

To Defeat the Whisper of Insecurity

We must Accept Ourselves and SUPPORT the women around us.

So, Believe that Cosmetic Surgery is an Idea that Will Not Live Forever but we want to KILL IT

with Arguments, Active Opposition and accepting of women as We Are.

WE are Perfectly Imperfect!

WE are the counter-culture.

WE HAVE TO STAND ToGether JUST like Today or Fall ONE By ONE.

Women have seen this before & we are still here and GETTING STRONGER.