Her Body: Redefining and Reclaiming the Female Form Through Feminist Art

What does it mean to be a woman? For the vast majority of human history being a woman means you are someone's wife, someone’s mother, or someone’s daughter. Your body, the shell of your being, is first and foremost not meant for you. Countless generations of patriarchal societies believed that a woman’s duty was to ensure the continuation of men through procreation. Today, America in particular has become a place where more and more women are claiming the rights to their bodies and identities. We no longer belong to mankind but to ourselves. This progression was only possible through the bravery of the leaders who came before us during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s, often referred to as second wave feminism. One of the most significant issues confronted during this movement was the perception of womanhood. Visual representations of the female body by feminist artists served as a powerful component of second wave feminism. Through installations, paintings, and performances, artists aimed to inspire women to examine and embrace their female bodies, revolutionizing prior perceptions of a woman’s body and its capabilities. This paper explores how artists played a critical role in the second wave feminist movement by acknowledging the female body for its unaltered beauty, biological capacities, and affinities with the natural environment. The female body was regarded as something beautiful rather than something to hide and through this, women were claiming ownership of themselves. This paper will emphasize selected feminist artists from the 20th century who used their art to promote the mission of female liberation by visualizing the female body in a way that had never been seen before.