Freelance journalist, author and feminist activist, Eloïse Bouton questions our representations of gender. In an article published in 2015, Bouton, who enjoys getting tattooed asked an important, long overdue question: "Why do tattoo magazines continue to stick images of half-naked women on their covers?" We talk about media, feminism, tattoo, music and the importance of images and words. Text: Laure Siegel / Photos: P-Mod
As far back as she can remember, Eloise has always been attracted by counter-cultures. As an adolescent, she dragged her sneakers into various cultural underbellies - she is a big fan of hip-hop and likes the radical aspects of tattooing. As part of her English studies, she undertook a research project on African-American feminism and civil rights movements in the United States. "I met a lot of women with thug life tattoos, prison-style. I was interested, there was always a story, a meaning. One day, one of these women showed me a documentary about Maud Wagner, one of the first American female tattoo artists. She was a circus performer and had her whole body tattooed. I was fascinated by the counter-cultural, political and feminist aspects of her life."
Eloïse first got tattooed when she was sixteen - "I lied about my age" -, and received her first piercing a little earlier. She covers her body, tirelessly: "The tattoo went along with my reflections on feminism, gender, body. It was a way to break the doll image I was projecting of myself, a white girl with long blonde hair and clear eyes, that hyper-normal side that did not correspond with who I truly was and with what I wanted to say. I didn't necessarily do it to piss off my parents. But I definitely wanted to piss off people in general."
After she graduated from university, Eloïse started working as a journalist and quickly became aware of the necessity of feminism, everywhere, all the time. "I was initially involved in various feminist movements like The Beard ("La Barbe"), which denounces the fact that women are underrepresented in politics, culture and media. I was a freelance writer then specializing in music, and I was the only girl who wanted to write about hip-hop so I was told "Ok you're gonna do something about Beyoncé." I had a rock band, I was a professional hip-hop dancer, I’d written a thesis on it, I knew the scene well, but I was not credible because I was a girl." To be able to work, Eloïse broadened her field of expertise, from music to culture in general and then from culture to society, and more specifically to issues affecting women.
In 2012, the Femen adventure undoubtedly brought feminism back to life in France. Eloise created a national branch of the international feminist organization led by Ukrainian Inna Schevchenko. In November, a Femen action against the Catholic association Civitas, which had campaigned against same-sex marriage, took on incredible proportions. Media from around the world came to cover events where Femen were expected to turn up, if only to witness naked women take the street to scream their rage. With her right sleeve tattooed, black and red, Eloise was immediately spotted and banished from good society. "It totally killed me professionally. I told my employers that I was still the same person. I was an activist before and everybody knew it, but I think that the nudity used by Femen touched something sensitive.But no one wanted to work with me anymore, even if I worked under a pseudonym."
In spite of her years of militancy, the extent society’s will to control the bodies of women still manages to surprise her. "The weight of the church and of our Judeo-Christian heritage is still extremely strong in our society. A woman's body carries a pure and sacred dimension and must be transformed only because she carries a child or because she has her period and can have a child. But if you decide to strip naked when nobody asks you, and if you are strongly tattooed so that you have apparently disfigured your body in a vulgar manner to such a degree, that you interrupt a public event, and that in addition you carry a message that goes against all this, it is unbearable for a part of the population. We became the incarnation of sin." In February 2014, Eloïse became the first woman in France to be condemned for "sexual exhibition" after she’s taken her top of in the Church of the Madeleine in Paris to campaign for the right to have an abortion. Since then, she has been fighting for reform of the sexual exhibition law which she considers sexist and she has protested against the de-politicization of her actions. Following her conviction, Eloïse left the Femen to regain her freedom and her breath. She again tried to find her place in the media world that had banished her for fear of her "polemic", something she perceives as contradictory, as the media feeds on polemic, "It is the paradox of this milieu. Now editors think I have legitimacy to write about women. I get more commissions again even if I take care not to be locked in this "feminist vigilante" box. But I really appreciate the fact that I have the opportunity to write papers with a strong ideological conviction. I did not have this opportunity before. »
In October 2015, Eloïse took shots at the tattoo press in Brain Magazine, attacking this niche media’s inability to evolve with time: "I wanted to understand why magazines perpetuated this debilitating soft porn vision that has nothing to do with tattoos anymore.” At this moment, Eloïse was already angered by the burlesque pin-up shows common at conventions: "In counter-cultural circles, you expect people to be subversive, to challenge everything, but in fact many people fall back into even more normed patterns than those pervasive in general society. These people do not disentangle clichés as one would expect from them, but rather contribute to perpetuating them." She also suspended her Suicide Girls account, a glamour website created fifteen years earlier whose mission was to celebrate alternative beauty. "All these hyper-young girls, not really tattooed or pierced, these close-ups of vaginas, the comments of guys under the photos, it had really gone bad ..." It is necessary to go back to the source to understand the association of tattoo with female nudity. The first tattoo magazines were published in the mid-1980s by biker clubs with large amounts of spending money: "They created a very stereotyped image of genres, virile men and hyper-eroticized women. Until the middle of the 2000's, these magazines were sold on the shelves dedicated to pornography and contained erotic ads." The identity of the tattoo press, with its raw references to sex, social taboos and notorious underclasses, was forged: "It’s problematic that the nudity said nothing. A codified nudity with positions that are often submissive and hyper-sexualized. If these girls choose to go naked on their blog, it's not a problem for me, but in the specialized press, the only justification is to keep the commercial machine running and that's a problem. «
There’s a real danger that the tattoo media will no longer represent anyone anymore with this kind of gender representation. "The tattoo industry environment is changing, with more and more people coming out of Fine Arts schools and an ever-growing feminization in the milieu but the press remains blocked with this combo of ‘bad boy’ and ‘hot chick’ and continues to promote the image of an allegedly underground world that’s all of its own making. It is up to the tattoo milieu to discuss this and it would be important if the impulse to change were to come from within." Eloïse is at the forefront of driving this discussion. With Emeraldia Ayakashim, DJ and sound designer, she founded Madame Rap, an online media that intends to reconcile rap and feminism and highlight the women who make urban cultures groove. She continues to be an activist, for big and small causes. "I am also part of a collective which fights to have the term Human Rights ("Droits de l'Homme" in French - "Men's rights") changed into human rights ("droits humains" in French), the battle lines are very clear, but the resistance we face is immense. Small things like this must be part of the debate. They are very important to raise awareness". Her links : "Confessions d'une ex-Femen", Eloïse Bouton (Editions du Moment - 2015) "Les femmes en couv' des magazines de tatouage, l'apologie du soft porn" by Eloïse Bouton (Brain Magazine - octobre 2015) www.eloisebouton.org www.madamerap.com For further information : "L'art de tatouer. La pratique d'un métier créatif", Valérie Rolle, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2013 Portfolio "Inked Girls" - Portraits de femmes tatouées, Laure Siegel and P-Mod http://www.slideshare.net/LaureSiegel/inked-girls-version-tendue