Miss Student Body

by

Fifth Estate # 80, May 29-June 11, 1969

Author’s note: I tried to write a journalistic reportorial article about the “Miss Student Body” rape held on the WSU campus in honor of Fraternity Week, where mutilated people voted on the headless pictures of women in bikinis guided by criteria of the best “Bod.” This article was going to include an objective description of the protest demonstration of Friday, May 16, and other assorted responses of quasi-liberated men and women—but my anger got in the way. Sorry.

The American Dream. The literal translation of honky fantasy and frat-boy gang-bang sensuality. Miss American Dream. Two tits and no head, a faceless, headless, brainless, witless, bikini-clad, big-tit, bare-legged, beauty Queen. Yessir, boys, come and get her—if you know what I mean.

It was too real to be real. Women, deep down inside, pushed deep where it can’t hurt anymore, know how they are seen, know what they are used for, know but don’t want to see, don’t want to admit, don’t want to open up the old scars.

Big as anti-life, the pictures, displayed behind a glass window, guarded by grinning boyish charming frat-boys waiting to be chuckled over, patted on the head by the women they mutilate, indulgent smiles and nods of the head for America’s golden boys.

Big as anti-life the pictures, the headless pictures, the meat displayed without the spark, without the shape of the nose, the light behind the eyes, the smile, the worry lines, the birth-mark.

(And the headless bodies of Vietnamese freedom fighters, proudly displayed by Our Boys in Vietnam, the bashful smiles, waiting for the indulgence.)

No, it is not the same thing. The one leads to death—that is the more serious.

But what of the death of the mind, the mindless death, the mindless life of the meat? Do we have to show indulgence?

The picket line. Marching in a circle, the cute picket signs, the badly-suppressed anger, the attempt at Rational Discourse.

And the grinning faces of the frat-boys, the grins of those who keep their faces, the smart-ass grins, the fawn-like tender eyes of the beheaded women, standing now around their assassins, complying with their own murder.

The explanations and the response. “Boy, I’ll bet liberated women, once they lose all their inhibitions, are really Good Fucks! I’m going to make my girl go to Women’s Liberation meetings so that she can be a Good Fuck!”

A Good Fuck—hero’s medal of the Good Fuck, given to the woman who opens her legs the widest and shuts her eyes the tightest and only opens her mouth when she’s eating—and submits—with a fawn-like smile.

Alright, we keep repeating, the fratboys and their friends—they are victims, VICTIMS. They are not to be hated. It is this mother-fucking system which grabs everything it can get its filthy hands on to subjugate people, set them against each other, keep them passive, headless—that is the Enemy!

It is hard to remember. The pictures, the grins, the ballots, the fawn eyes; it is hard to keep the real enemy in mind in the face of such insolent reminders of oppression.

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