I can’t find a bigger version of this picture but this is the best I’ve found; it’s a photo taken by Robert Capa during 1944 where a French woman (center) was punished by having to shave her head because of a disgraceful affair with a German man that resulted in the child she was holding. The picture is freaking amazing in the kind of astounding hostility it shows. Basically, humans suck. The swarms of women who are crowding around her turning their heads to look at the woman in the center. You can’t see very clearly, but the group of people behind the front line stretches very far to the back and almost all of them have their heads turned to the woman up front with her baby. Most of the people in the crowd are wearing gleeful smiles like they’re amused at the fate of the woman who had a baby with the German soldier.
Looking at the picture stresses the eff out of me because people can be so incredibly close-minded about things they don’t know or don’t bother to understand. And also, kudos to Robert Capa for snapping this amazing photo.
Here’s a closer-up version of the center:
I came across the photo via today’s edition of the NY Times, in an article called “Tracing Roots Fostered by War, Severed by Shame.” (Great title, ain’t it?)
Posted in: ranting | Tags: art crit
10 comments for this post.
July 10, 2009, at 10:16 pm
In the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers, the US soldiers were in … some European country, and there were scenes where women who slept with German soldiers were forced to have their heads shaved out in the streets. I never thought that something like that ever happened in real life.
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July 11, 2009, at 4:39 am
your title just seems out of place with this post. i’m sure you have some reason that you rationalized to make sense in the context of the post, but i can’t believe it makes that much sense.
but yeah, i totally agree with you. those french people were so close minded and intolerant. i can’t believe they did that. they’re so misogynist and anti-women’s rights. all those pathetic frenchmen that were taken over by the Nazis shouldn’t have just surrendered, they should have just left the country entirely, and left all those frenchwomen in france so all the frenchwomen could hook up with their Nazi hero conquerors and make babies with them without worrying about getting their heads shaved.
and i can’t believe the US aided and abetted such intolerant and closed minded behavior by fighting the Nazis and kicking them out of france. they should’ve kicked out and killed all those intolerant and closed minded french people instead.
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Amy Reply:
July 11th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
you make no sense and should stop trolling my journal if you’re gonna be butthurt over an argument we previously had.
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darrenko Reply:
July 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
no, not trolling. and no, not butthurt. just wanted to let you know how weak and nonsensical this post was. somebody has to.
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Amy Reply:
July 12th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
the issues i was talking about in the post have NOTHING to do with what you mentioned in your follow-up comments. once again, like last time, you refer to things i never even mention and try to argue those points. please, for my sake and yours, stop commenting on this journal, period.
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darrenko Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
oh right, of course. your post is dealing with issues like “gender”, “Power”, “the Patriarchy”, “Feminist Hermeunetics”, “Sexism”, “Sexual Politics”, and other such dated notions of Cultural Marxism that make up university liberal arts departments. i must’ve been confused.
“…please, for my sake and yours, stop commenting on this journal, period.”
Fair enough. You seem too self conscious and insecure to effectively receive and deal with criticism aside from sputtering that your interlocutor is talking about something else, has nothing to do with your original point, etc. ad infinitum.
Just remember that if you consider yourself “brave enough to talk knowledgeably about social issues” you should be able to take it as well as dish it out.
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Amy Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
yes it deals with all the points you just mentioned, but what does the US and the Nazis have to do with my criticism of the fact that crowd in the picture was being judgmental and hostile? who cares if the french woman had an affair with a german? why is the crowd sneering at her and the baby? what do all those points have in common with your very cleverly discussed and witty remarks about french men and whether or not they surrendered to the germans?
let’s disregard on whether or not the germans’ relationships with the french women were consensual/non-consensual — let’s just consider the by-product: the child. i’m solely talking about the open hostility towards the french woman for events that took place in her personal life. maybe she did love the german man, maybe she was raped. whatever the case, society is frowning upon her for what happened, for the baby that the affair resulted in. is it their place to judge?
nowhere in my post did i state that french people are all inherently evil and close-minded just because of this one picture. of course you, once again, extrapolated WAY further than was necessary and then thought that that was a relevant point of discussion in my post — and then if i disagreed, i must be insecure and self-conscious……
likewise, because you’re so keen on saying that i will brush off criticism just because it has “nothing to do with my original point,” go answer the questions i asked you in the other post about east asian media and race.
just remember that if you really find all of my opinions so difficult to digest because i seem to be logically faulty in my arguments, you can stop coming here, reading my posts, bothering to comment under a new fake name and email address, and then pointing out every single sentence of my thoughts that you find so bothersome.
July 11, 2009, at 4:43 am
f,
umm….so you watch a show based on WWII, a war in which millions died and untold amounts of agony and despair were experienced, and the thing you’re shocked and indignant about is the fact that some frenchwomen had to get their heads haved off??
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f Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:03 am
the thing you’re shocked and indignant about is the fact that some frenchwomen had to get their heads haved off?
I was only addressing something that was similar to what I read in this post. I’m not even going to bother arguing with you, bud.
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August 30, 2009, at 6:48 pm
U don’t really understand what happened at that time in France. After the Americans, the English and Russian soldiers freed Europe it was time for the people of France who use to live under German occupation to get their revenge on the French citizens who collaborated with the enemy. The collaborators were known to inform the german about where were hidden the jews or the people of the Resistance. That’s surely why this woman got shaved. I’ve seen a lot of pictures like that and I think it’s a tiny punishment compared to all the people who have been tortured, killed and sent to concentration camps.
Sorry for my english
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