In Dublin's fair city / Where the girls are so pretty / I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone. These are the opening lines of an old Dublin song, designated as a kind of anthem for the city.
Molly walking the streets of Dublin is depicted in the song along with her song declaring that she sells live seafood. It has been argued that the song captures the spirit of Dublin. It tells the story of a working-class woman who dies young but lives on indefinitely through lively cultural traditions.
Over the years Molly has become a tourist attraction with an evolution of the belief that touching her bosom, semi-exposed, would bring good luck! Resulting in a discoloration from a dull brown to a now shiny gold. In recent years, people have painted over her breast in protest to stop the fondling, with the writings; 7 years bad luck!
About a year ago, a young busker, witnessing tourist after tourist groping her breasts, launched a campaign with the tag leave molly mAlone, arguing that Molly is being touched inappropriately. She proposed changes for the original colour of the bosom to be restored, for tourists to be discouraged from touching it, and for the statue to be raised on a higher pedestal to match other male statue figures. She poses the questions why should women be represented by having a busty dress? and why is this allowed to be done to female statue figures and not to male ones? This campaign interrogates the question of why this has become part of Irish culture, and demands a move from patriarchal history. Some commentators would agree to desexualise the fishmonger, where others argue that it's just a statue of a fictional figure.
It drew me in, walking daily by this statue, seeing tourists touching the statue's breasts and experiencing something of Irish culture, to then witness another side of this, an offence to women. I was surprised, how this one statue became "all women"?
Psychoanalysis teaches us that there is no relation between the sexes, that even by erecting one female figure next to a male one does not make them equal. Yet, isn't this protest to leave Molly alone, loaded with contemporary movements, actually a rejection of femininity, of the not-all? Not-all are the same!
This demand to cover her up, where the representation of this idea of sweet Molly needs to be made whole, produces the opposite effect, it takes away something of her otherness.