Three women walk into a piercing parlor. Two out of three want nipple piercings. None of them know each other. They stand around and marvel at their mutual womanhood. How wonderful it is, after all, to be a woman.
It cannot be a coincidence that so many women want their nipples pierced in March, AKA Women’s History Month.
I call bullshit. Women can get their nipples pierced any month of the year and make a feminist statement. Or they can get their nipples pierced because they feel like it, and the act doesn’t need to be a declaration of womanhood at all. The same sentiments apply to the 11 other months in the year, which do not need to be explicitly designated to women in order to have everything to do with women.
Maybe March wasn’t even feeling particularly feminist On March 8, 1911, when International Women’s Day became a thing. Maybe June would have liked to have been considered a month for women, but June is Bicycle Month. Shit happens.
I say all of this to highlight the reasons why it is ridiculous to dedicate 1/12 of the year to women. It’s as if we forget that half of the global population has vaginas. And because we only celebrate womanhood in March, those with vaginas should contemplate such acts as nipple-piercing to celebrate their womanhood. But only in March. To do so April 1 would be absurd.
What would Elizabeth Cady Stanton say?
At the Seneca Falls convention in in 1848, women did not stand together and say, “Let us all collectively pierce our nipples as a feminist statement!” Rather, they voiced the rights of women, examined the collective conditions of the female experience, and ultimately composed the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances.” Interestingly enough, nipple piercings were never discussed.
The way I see it, there are several key issues, here. Firstly, that our society sexualizes and politicizes women’s bodies to the point where something like a nipple piercing is made into a radical statement. Secondly, that we accept the public celebration—read abbreviation—of women’s history as a period of 31 days. And finally, when we consider these points together, we begin to apprehend the problematic assumption that some things are feminist and others are not. This is to say, there is a certain absurdity in our acceptance that March is the most feminist month, and the nipple piercing is the most feminist piercing.
Either everything is feminist, or nothing is.
The fact that women’s history month is a thing proves that we have a long way to go for women’s parity. I learn about white men in my history classes, and I learn about women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community in electives. It would take me an entire month to discuss only Alice Paul, and arguably, that isn’t enough time. The legacy of women’s history should be a continuous and ongoing discussion. Between Eve, Billie Holliday, Betty Grable, Rosa Parks, Ellen Page, Laverne Cox, and my mom, we have no shortage of great women to discuss. And that discussion can never be an afterthought. On behalf of women’s history, I give the middle finger to March, and invite you to celebrate women all of the time. Celebrate the women in your life, and the women who made this world possible. Cheers to them.
To answer my question, “What do nipple piercings have to do with Women’s history month?”
Absolutely nothing.
