For all our advancements in society, talk of women’s bodies and women’s sexuality is still a highly politicized, highly taboo topic of discussion – – especially in the United States. Swedish feminist cartoonist Liv Strömquist uses humor and history to pull back the curtain on these topics in a way that will make you laugh, make you squirm, and make you think.
(Please note that this is an 18+ book with adult themes throughout.)
Cover by Josefine Edenvik and Keeli McCarthyWritten and Illustrated by Liv Strömquist
Translated by Melissa BowersFrom Adam and Eve to pussy hats, people have punished, praised, pathologized, and politicized vulvas, vaginas, clitorises, and menstruation. In this feminist graphic novel, Swedish cartoonist Liv Strömquist calls out how genitalia-obsessed men have stigmatized women’s bodies, denied their sexuality, created a dubious gender binary, and much more. Her biting, informed commentary explores history and taboos from the darkest chapters (the Salem witch trials) to the lightest (when menstrual blood was used as a love potion). Like humorists Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant), Strömquist uses the comics medium to reveal uncomfortable truths about how far we haven’t come.
One of my favorite signs from the 2017 Women’s March on Washington was “My Uterus is Private Property.” Never has a body part been so legislated, debated, discussed, and taken apart by those that do not have it. Women’s sexuality has quite the double standard around it, especially in the United States: men want to control it via legislation that restricts access to healthcare (which means they have to talk about it), but at the same time hold the attitude of “don’t you dare talk about women having periods and bleeding and enjoying sex, those are gross topics.” (Note: When I refer to “women” I am not only referring to ciswomen but those that identify as women regardless of gender at birth.)
These attitudes towards the gender binary are certainly not new. What has been new in the last generation or thereabouts is the increasing agency of women (and some men) to push back on this gender binary and open the door to these previously taboo topics. Herein is the goal of Liv Strömquist’s “Fruit of Knowledge” – – to break down these stigmas and provide readers with the ammunition to change this conversation through the more accessible means of a graphic novel.
Originally published in Sweden in 2014, this graphic novel is translated beautifully for the English-speaking market. Melissa Bowers has taken great care not to do a literal translation from Swedish to English, but to translate the language in a way that reads like an American wrote it. Her work keeps nuance and natural language in place, allowing the script to flow just like a conversation, not a rough Google Translation of Swedish to English. There are still references to the original Swedish work throughout, such as Swedish hip-hop group the Latin Kings and national newspaper Aftonbladet. They don’t take away from the overall message of the work, and a quick look at Wikipedia will fulfill lingering curiosity.
There is a great deal going on in these pages, both in scripting and artwork. Strömquist takes great care to cite sources throughout, though some of them are crammed on the side of a panel in small lettering. Future editions of this book would do well to have an appendix with these references (and perhaps some further reading) should the reader want to explore some of these topics in greater detail. To balance out this dump of scientific and historical information, Strömquist injects some very in-your-face opinions and humor. You can easily imagine portions of “Fruit of Knowledge” being performed on stage, a la The Vagina Monologues.
Most of the artwork is the flat cartoon style fans of “Love and Rockets” and the Hernandez brothers will appreciate. Time is not wasted on too much detail in persons and scenery; to do so would take away from the greater message; if anything, the artwork adds the level of humor to make topics of sexual pleasure and menstruation easier for readers to digest. There are times where the art is switched up to show more detail, or even eschewed for photographs, particularly in cases of paintings and ancient sculpture. Strömquist does seem to rely on this just a little too much; there were many places where I was questioning if this was really a graphic novel or just a prose book with some illustrations on the side. Words also become artwork. Several panels use text that appears to be cut and pasted right from a scientific paper or article in the panel like it’s a ransom note, and others use oversize lettering (the flat-media equivalent of shouting) to make their point. Again, it’s not overused, but used just enough that makes calling this a graphic novel a bit of a misnomer.
Continued belowThe majority of this work is in black and white; save for a few panels that use the color red to denote menstruation (naturally). The entire fourth section, “Feeling Eve” (a treatise on the ideas of guilt and shame women have with their bodies, dating back to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the guilt and shame they felt after eating from the Tree of Knowledge) is the only section done in full color. It doesn’t add anything to the narrative, nor does it take anything away. It does stick out like a sore thumb, and I’m not sure what Strömquist was attempting to achieve with this artistic choice.
The other place where this work falls flat is the ending. It just . . . ends. There’s no final thoughts or final thesis to tie together 140+ pages of ideas an opinions. Just a simple “Ok, that’s all for now!! Thanks for your interest!!” (and a figure skater with a very visible period).
Perhaps that itself is a statement of how we should approach women’s bodies and women’s sexuality: without grand fanfare or fuss, to just discuss them and end conversations much how you would end a chat about the weather or movies recently seen.
And if that is what the reader remembers, then perhaps Ms. Strömquist has succeeded after all.
