It was a beautiful re-entry into the United States, because I was struggling to understand what I thought to be a new world in the US.” It didn’t really occur to me it would speak to people in such a highly personal and political way, as a group. “It was a nanosecond of: ‘Oh my god.’ I had to sit down. Photograph: MGM/HuluĬrabtree was returning to the US, when she first saw pictures of demonstrators in Handmaid’s Tale costumes on social media, she said.
Coats cloaks and capes exhibits series#
It really did a number on my head.”Ī scene from the second series of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. She told the Guardian: “I came at it from a very masculine, white male, 1% of the population design-mind. The version adopted by protesters is the one made concrete by designer Ane Crabtree for the television series of the book.
What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state?”įirst introduced in her novel in the form of “some fairytale figure in a red cloak”, it is a uniform – as Atwood’s heroine Offred explains – designed to be understood in terms of violent oppression and the fertility of the handmaids in a largely infertile world. She added: “In countries that prohibit birth control and reproductive health information, the state claims ownership of women’s bodies through enforced childbearing. But everyone seeing these groups of women know what they mean in the context of the individual protest, whether it be Ireland, Argentina, or Arizona.” “No one can accuse them of being immodest: they are well covered up. Ten handmaids escort Margaret Atwood around Britain’s Hay literary festival in May. Because it’s a visual symbol, women can use it without fear of being arrested for causing a disturbance, as they would be for shouting in places like legislatures. “It has even been used on posters in the context of the Trump-Putin relationship, with Trump as the handmaid.
“The handmaid’s costume has been adopted by women in many countries as a symbol of protest about various issues having to do with the requisitioning of women’s bodies by the state,” she told the Guardian. What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state? Margaret Atwood The Canadian author believes the use of the handmaid’s uniform is both flexible and powerful, allowing women to protest in locations where they do not have a right of audience. Why the handmaid’s uniform has come to represent a constellation of issues affecting women is as telling as the phenomenon itself, with Atwood among those reflecting on why the costume she imagined as the most visible articulation of the subjugation of women by the imaginary state of Gilead has become such a potent medium for dissent.
In London, protesters put on the cloak and bonnet to protest against Donald Trump’s visit to the UK and the policies of his administration. It has been donned by pro-choice protesters during Ireland’s successful referendum to revoke the eighth amendment of its constitution and by abortion rights campaigners in Buenos Aires. 02:04 Why are protesters dressing like The Handmaid's Tale in Argentina? – explainer
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