Life
This Statue Looks Like An Ode To Mansplaining
Mansplaining is the bane of every woman's existence. Having men constantly telling women how to dress, explaining why abortion is "bad" or birth control shouldn't be made readily available is taxing on the soul. It's essentially listening to someone with zero experience give their opinion on something they don't understand. Sort of like if a fish came up to you and tried to explain walking. Although you did just find a talking fish, so the fishsplaining is nothing compared to the millions you're going to make showing it off to the media. I digress. It seems that the ancient art of mansplaining has been immortalized in this statue at the San Antonio campus of the University of the Incarnate Word.
The photo of the statue, which shows a standing man, his balls practically slapping a sitting woman in the face, mid-speech and obviously mansplaining something about uteruses, was posted to Twitter by user Cathy de la Cruz and has since gone viral. The title of the statue by sculptor Paul Tadlock, is "New Friends", which is quite LOL considering it appears as though either a sexual assault is imminent or the inanimate lady is mentally rolling her eyes at the man trying to explain to her exactly why her dress might be a little too high on the thigh. Or maybe he's telling her to smile more. Anyone's guess, really.
The implied dynamics between these two figures are pretty clear, and pretty reinforcing of conventional, outdated, sexist gender role stereotypes: The woman, small and cross legged, is lorded over by the man who, spread-legged, is quite literally thrusting his manhood, along with all his important opinions, in her face. The statue man is basically this:
Big sigh. So the woman statue is all:
Because:
THE SARCASM IS REAL. What we wish we could say to every man mansplaining is:
Because what we actually think is:
And when it comes down to it, the only thing you really need to know, when you're thinking about mainsplaining womanhood is:
Images: Getty Images; Giphy (6)
