South African artist Frances Goodman recruited models via the Village Voice, bedazzled their shaved naked crotches with stars, spirals and shimmering “I Do’s” and took these portraits. She tells the GalleristNY that the “vajazzling” is empowering, as a way, presumably, to take the “shaved” happening out of the influence of pornography and capitalist culture. “There’s a push-pull,” she says, “of like who are you doing it for.” They’re currently on view at (Art)Amalgamated where, according to the gallery, the series “employs the female gaze and reclaims the practice for women across the world.”

Wait, hold on a second. Let’s not get crazy. What’s with the assumption that the practice of shaving, bedazzling, and hey, let’s say even pornography, exists solely in the “non-female” gaze, at this day and age? What’s with the assumption that it needs to be taken into an art context in order to be emancipated, that it even needs this shiny, demonstrative empowerment, because it cannot possibly be done for the vagina-bedazzler herself? Well, they’re pretty pictures anyhow, and riffs off the consent theme quite glamorously. Curious. Conceptually damp, but curious.