The latest feminist artist to shake her lady garden at mainstream beauty standards (ie. pubeless, Barbie-like women) is 23-year-old photographer Rhiannon Schneiderman.
The message of her 'Lady Mane' series, featuring photographs of a woman wearing a giant, over-styled merkin (AKA pubic wig), is simple: "Fuck you. Enough is enough."
The series is both a beautiful and hilarious ode to women's bodies - hair and all. But does the act of artistic defiance risk getting lost in a society so used to seeing mainstream minges plucked, shaved and waxed within an inch of their lives?
While making a powerful statement Rhiannon also pokes fun at current beauty standards. Using curled, plaited or dip-dyed merkins, she exposes the absurdity of the extreme lengths, and not to mention pain, that women go through to style their pubic hair.
"I guess if I were to simplify it, it just came out of this frustration with the idea of 'femininity' and gender roles," Rhiannon wrote in an email to the Huffington Post.
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But, she explains, the issue is also close to her heart.
She started to develop the idea for the series while at photography school in a "one of the seediest areas" of Florida. "I was constantly ridiculed for not wearing a bra, not shaving my legs, not sleeping with men, etc."
The consequences of such rigid beauty ideals among women is widespread. With girls as young as 11 or 12 getting Brazilian waxes, we're in desperate need of healthier standards of beauty. But are arty merkins the solution?
Take a look at the photographs below and let us know what you think of the series.
