Merkin
For a general idea, concise article with interesting facts of what a Merkin is, if not familiarized with the term, visit this link "Pubic Wig Fashion". Merkins' broad use remain a niche market product. However, its audiences nowadays are mostly film industry and underground art scenes. For example, merkin's Wikipedia image article is a wig worn at the Burning Man festival. Besides merkin's current audience, there are three tentative concepts to arbitrarily explore:
- Along with the campaign "Free the Nipple", how could merkins disrupt the sense of indecency?
- Like the image above and through signs, icons and symbols, explore merkins as a medium of carrying messages
- What would a merkin made from a metabolic-reactive material be?
Through associating the "TATA TOP" with merkins, both as wearables, the movement "Free The Nipple" emerges as a thriving campaign that's creating a lot of momentum. Free The Nipple advocates to "empower women [...] and stand against female oppression and censorship[.]" The issue around inequality of top-gender exposure is what drives its agenda. Consequences for female topless exposure can cause a woman up to three years in jail and $2,500 in fines. "Today, in the USA it is effectively ILLEGAL for a woman to be topless, breastfeeding included, in 35 states". The idea and logic behind its illegality reveals its coherent narrative and brave endeavor. Paradoxical facts ranging from what Violet Rose's remarks, "[i]t is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breast, in America." (Alex S. Myles, in "Female Nipples causing an Internet Storm", extracted Sep. 11, 2015) Onto socially media policies like Scout Willies reflection on her Instagram banned account, "[w]omen are regularly kicked off Instagram or posting photos with any portion of the areola exposed, while photos sans nipple—degrading as they might be—remain unchallenged... So I walked around New York topless and documented it on Twitter, pointing out that what is legal by New York State law is not allowed on Instagram." (Alex S. Myles). Moreover, it was interesting to discover through this article and by Scout's account, that in the 1930s men's nipple exposure was illegal and after protesting, by 1936 men's bare chest were accepted.