Femen Activists Get Naked to Raise Political Awareness

At Der Spiegel, "The Body Politic: Getting Naked to Change the World":

The Ukrainian activist group Femen has made headlines around the world by baring their breasts to protest against prostitution, exploitation and corruption. But can their naked stunts change anything, or are they just providing images for a sex-obsessed media?

Oksana Shachko, a girl with a doll-like face, is supposed to go to prison for five years.

It's a cool spring Thursday in Ukraine as the 24-year-old walks through the streets of Kiev with her attorney. She is wearing a leather jacket and black boots, and dangling an almost-finished cigarette between her fingers. Five years, because she bared her breasts in public once again.

The hearing at the Interior Ministry is at 5 p.m., and they are in a hurry. They walk past tall, brown and gray buildings from the Stalin era. They discuss ways to put a positive spin on the expression "kiss my ass," which is what Oksana said to the Indian ambassador. "It was a happy protest. A happy protest for the rights of Ukrainian women," Oksana finally says. She's decided it's what she will say in the hearing at the Interior Ministry.

Shachko is a Ukrainian women's rights activist, and her weapons are attached to her pale, petite body like the two halves of an apple.

Her weapons are the symbol of femininity, motherhood and sexuality, and filmmakers and marketers have used them millions of times to sell everything under the sun, from yogurt to vacuum cleaners. They have put Oksana and her fight onto cover pages around the world, and they've made her and her fellow activists into the cover girls of an international protest movement -- the icons of a naked rebellion.

Their supporters believe that by using these weapons, the women have invented a new feminism. Their critics say that they are turning themselves into pornography with these weapons.....

Oksana is a professional icon painter and lives in a run-down studio apartment in Kiev with greenish mold on the ceiling. In other words, she has a profession and is living an ordinary Ukrainian life of poverty and turmoil. But her apartment is full of protest signs, and she has drawn a picture of a Femen activist, with flowing hair and bare breasts, on the wall. It's a self-portrait of a woman who is causing a lot of trouble.

She was released from a Moscow prison a few days ago, after having tried -- topless -- to steal the ballot box containing Russian leader Vladimir Putin's ballot during the March 4 presidential election. The stunt got her two weeks in a prison cell.

Now she stands accused of hooliganism and occupying the Indian Embassy to protest a claim by the Indian Foreign Ministry that women from post-Soviet countries are going to India to work as prostitutes.

Although the Indian Embassy denied the claim, this didn't stop Oksana and three other women from storming the building. They waved the Indian flag and banged it against windows and doors, shouting: "Ukrainian women are no prostitutes" and "kiss my ass."

There's lots more at the link.

Plus, from Saturday's Toronto Sun, "Topless activists protest Euro tournament."

VIDEO: "More Topless Ukrainian Protest Ladies!"