Mad Woman

So it's finally happened. I've turned into the kind of mad old lady who shouts at newspapers in the tube. (So much hinges off the double meaning of that word, "mad" - if a woman is angry, it's clearly because she's insane, not because she's frustrated and beaten back and beaten down and has just had enough. Mad.)

Picked up a copy of the Metro off my seat, flipped through it to read the comics (I wanted to dive back into my Carol Shields novel) and saw a picture of a naked woman. Oh, don't get me wrong, it wasn't a Page 3 girl or pornography or anything, it was definitely an art print, a Man Ray or something, a woman bent over double with her arse in the air, headless, limbless, so that the curves of her torso formed a geometrical shape.

And then the tagline - blah blah blah, some artist has put together a lovely coffee table book of the female nude celebrating the female nude as "sign, symbol and as designed object."

I was so angry I tossed the whole newspaper over my head with a snort. But no, that wasn't enought. Couldn't concentrate on the novel, with those words banging around in my head. SIGN. SYMBOL. DESIGN OBJECT. Woman? No. Person? No. Human being with desires and wants and needs and aspirations and talents and a personality all her own? No.

SIGN. SYMBOL. DESIGN OBJECT. NUDE.

I took out a biro and grabbed the newspaper back. Scrawled across her naked and reduced-to-object back.

HUMAN BEING
NOT A SIGN
NOT A SYMBOL
NOT A "DESIGN OBJECT"
I AM A HUMAN BEING
I AM A PERSON

Left it open and face up as I got off at Oxford Circus. Will anyone see? Will anyone care? Probably not, but I feel better for doing it.