SSgt. Hubert H. Howell’s Movable Porn Collage
Staff Sergeant Howell, a squad leader with the U.S. Army’s 124th Infantry Regiment in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, constructed this fantasy from magazines. He carefully cut out the objects he fantasized about possessing, and rearranged them each day, so as to not become bored with the composition. I’m not sure what he used to hold the cutouts in place—whether it was rubber cement or little rings of tape. We were sitting on his bunk one day, talking about the war, and he pointed out that the woman leaning against the car had been standing in the surf the day before.
Howell has pieced together a movable porn collage. He’s cut a dozen or so bikini-clad women from magazines and taped them into a scenic tapestry under his M-16, hanging over a wall facing his bunk. There’s a sleek and shiny sports car, and a rocky beach scene with women cavorting in the breakers. Every day he tries the swimmers in new positions. Sometimes they pose on the rocks. Sometimes they climb onto the hood of the sedan. They move closer to shore, then recede on the blue horizon. — From Night of a Thousand Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq
It’s a violent image to me. I don’t believe he’d considered how people in the U.S. would view it (in relationship to his assault rifle, suspended from a nail above, making the barrel of the woman seem aimed at the scantily dressed women in the image). I’ve always considered it ironic (and sad) in comparison to claims (made by U.S. supporters of the war) that deposing Hussein would improve women’s rights in Iraq.
I would argue that before we could make a reasonable effort to promulgate a higher standard of women’s rights, we would first need to understand and support those rights in our own society. I would presume that if we (myself included) ever reach such a point, I doubt that we’d then accept war as a means of propagating that standard (particularly because it is an abrogation of what we should most value and respect about women—their singular ability to conceive and nourish a human life.