Tumblr allows individuals to create a space which is uniquely their own while also allowing for the incorporation of outside influence. I used Tumblr to create a blog, feminaloy.tumblr.com, which conveys how Mina Loy’s understanding of feminism compares to the contemporary viewpoints of feminism today. Contemporary feminism is dependent upon an accepting culture for individuals, especially women, regardless of their choices. In this way, intersectional feminism promotes the belief that individuals should be able to make choices in their own lives and that these choices should be respected. In using a Tumblr blog to explore the differences between Loy’s feminism and contemporary feminism, the project’s form allows Loy to be put in conversation with writers, artists, and scholars across time, including feminist theorists Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler.
This particular form allows viewers to go from an excerpt of Loy’s poetry, to an analysis from Butler theory, to a tweet or a GIF without hesitation, and this unlimited formatting means that readers are able to construct their own links between the posts, developing their own understandings and theories as to how the blog comes together to form one cohesive argument. All posts within the blog are assigned tags to note whether they are original works, excerpts from Loy and theorists, or posts from my research which compliment or complicate Loy’s ideology, all of which can be found by clicking the icon at the top of the screen and entering any of the following tags into the search bar: original, mina loy, feminism, aesthetic, primary, secondary, or anti-loy. This project was inspired originally by Loy’s poem “Parturition” and her Feminist Manifesto as well as by an interest in how Loy’s feminism conformed to Butler and Beauvoir’s feminist theories.
In the end, this project reflected the modernist desire to subvert traditional representations of femininity as it focuses on how the female body is viewed by others in the world. This project highlights the desire to create a new representation of gender through its emphasis on the evolution of gender expectations and female appreciation and equality. This is accomplished through the original poetry incorporated into the blog, the use of analyses on Loy’s work in relation to Butler and Beauvoir, the use of contemporary sources to explore what feminism means today, and through images of the female body, which depict the female body as a subject of beauty rather than as an object of desire.
Sources:
Beauvoir, Simone De, and H. M. Parshley. The Second Sex. South Yarra, Vic.: Louis Braille
Productions, 1989. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,
2006. Print.
Loy, Mina, and Roger L. Conover. The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.