Alright, I can't put the blame on my girlfriend. It was an easy extra-credit assignment for one of her classes, and she asked me to go with her. Unfortunately, I had no idea that I had just signed up to be filed into an auditorium of about 200 people. 200 people being: 100 women, 10 men, and 90 "gals" that put both my buzz-cut and penis size to shame. I felt like a black man that had accidentally walked into a Ku Klux Klan meeting, without a hood on.
On the topic of groups with ridiculous identity-hiding costumes - enter the Guerrilla Girls.
Now before I continue, I'd like to make it very clear that I fully support equal rights for women, as it makes me sound like a genuine person, and just may pardon a portion of my offensive behavior.
The Guerrilla Girls are, in a nutshell, a group of feminists that like to "prove that feminists are funny". They each wear yellow jumpsuits, a gorilla mask, and perform under the names of dead women artists. Yes, it is as bizarre as it sounds.
During this presentation, and sequential longest hour of my life, I stared wide-eyed into the masks of three feminists as they threw bananas into the crowd, performed a rendition of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" commuted to tell fat people that it is okay to eat like pigs, and instructed the audience to mad lib a song titled "We're not afraid of these words" (or something close to that), shouting only the words: LESBIAN, VAGINA, and FEMINIST.
Now there's two chemicals here: feminism, and a parody of feminism. It's not uncommon to find either of these in the world...but all together formed as one stance? That just doesn't work.
Example - A few years back, PETA gathered as many Hollywood faces as it could and launched a campaign against Kentucky Fried Chicken, mainly due to the fact that the chickens they raised were (believed to have been) handled violently, and killed in tortuously inhumane ways. Seeing as this was a very serious matter to PETA, and that they wanted to be taken very seriously...there's one thing that was completely left out of the game plan - making it seem humorous. This is the kind of shit that PETA lives for, what motive would there be to mock their own beliefs, and make themselves look like even bigger ass-hats than they already are? Even PETA knows not to do something that moronic...and they're crazy enough to turn down a bucket of southern fried crispy chicken with a side of buttery biscuits!
Maybe the Guerilla Girls could use a lesson in Chemistry. When you take a weak solute (their ability to push feminism as a serious subject), and add in a powerful solvent (the levity of the presentation), you get a solution more heavily influenced by the solvent in the reaction.
I would be lying if I said I was not entertained, as I spent a majority of the performance holding back (mostly inappropriate) laughter...but holy shit. If there's ever been an example of how not to promote something you strongly believe in, this would take the banana bread cake. -RG
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