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Professor Paglia attended a presentation and lecture by a "feminist theorist from a large Ivy League university who had set out to 'decode' the subliminal sexual oppressiveness . . . [and] to expose the violent sexism . . . in fashion photography". The presentation featured slides of cosmetic ads. One was a Revlon ad of a woman standing in a pool in water up to her chin. "Decapitation!" the feminist theorist shouted. "She showed a picture of a black woman who was wearing aviator goggles and had the collar of her turtleneck sweater pulled up. "Strangulation!" she shouted. "Bondage!".
When the "lecture" was over, Professor Paglia, "who considers herself a feminist, stood up and made an impassioned speech. She declared that the fashion photography of the past 40 years is great art, that instead of decapitation she saw the birth of Venus, instead of strangulation she saw references to King Tut". After Professor Paglia finished, "she was greeted, she says, 'with gasps of horror and angry murmuring. It's a form of psychosis, this slogan-filled machinery. The radical feminists have contempt for values other than their own, and they're inspiring in students a resentful attitude toward the world (New York Magazine, 21 January 1991, p. 38).
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