A sculpture of a beaver with a giant vagina has has torn the sleepy town of Bemidji, Minnesota asunder, awakening ardent debate about the right to bear labia—and inspiring mischievous, sticky-goo-squirting vandals…. A local art initiative was sort of asking for it when they gave giant beavers to a bunch of local artisans and instructed them to paint them however they wanted, for public display…. Local woodsy earth mama Deborah Davis named hers “Gaea” and dedicated it to a “celebration of womanhood,” its belly painted with a giant, anatomically accurate image of a splayed vagina covered in, uh, roses? Polka dots? Herpes? (Deborah Davis says her painting isn’t of labia, but hands clapsed in prayer.)
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a “controversy” that’s erupted in bucolic Bemidji, MN, which is about 30 miles north of where I grew up. Art being in the eye of the beholder, an art initiative featuring painted beavers has seen a few uptight sorts getting their panties in a wad over a question of interpretation. The question? “Is that an oversized vagina, or…just what in the Hell IS that thing, anyway??”
Originally, the idea was that the artists had carte blanche to do pretty much whatever they wanted to with their beaver (no pun intended). Of course, I don’t think anyone was seriously considering the possibility that someone with an overheated imagination might install an oversized representation of a vagina on their beaver, but one person’s art is another’s…uh, never mind.
This being northern Minnesota we’re talking about, the local chapter of Uptight and Outraged Women got their knickers in a twist over the (OHMIGOD!! IS THAT A….????) obvious and undeniable (AND HUGE!!) representation of a female reproductive organ. WHAT ABOUT OUR POOR, IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN???
The artist, Deborah Davis, was quite incensed and horribly offended that anyone could look at her artwork and see a vagina (yeah, how could THAT have happened??). Of course, she doth protest, that’s no vagina; that’s a representation of hands joined in prayer and supplication. I’ve looked at the picture very closely…and I’m going to have to come down on the side of the “I SEE A VAGINA!!” crowd. That doesn’t offend me; in fact, I find it rather humorous. I mean, what else are you going to do in Bemidji, MN, a small town of 13,000 bored and understimulated souls. Having grown up just south of Bemidji in a town of just under 1,000, going to Bemidji when I was a kid was our trip to the “big city”. Bemidji may not be the middle of nowhere, strictly speaking…but you can certainly see it from there. The “beaver vagina vs. prayer hands” debate is the biggest thing to hit town since the installation of the ginourmous 18-foot shrine to Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox, Babe.
At the very least, Davis’ beaver has turned into something of a small-town Rohrschach test. Hey, when you live in a small town in northern Minnesota, you really do have to take your titillation when you can find it. Meanwhile, the local Chamber of Commerce is laughing all the way to the bank….
