JACQUELINE ANDERSON AND HER NSFW FIGHT FOR GENDER EQUALITY

JACQUELINE ANDERSON AND HER NSFW FIGHT

FOR GENDER EQUALITY

WORDS BY SHAUTA MARSH SUBMITTED IMAGES

In Jacqueline Buckingham Anderson’s house, if someone says, "Wow, that's so huge pussy of you," it means, “That’s damn awesome and highly courageous.” So move over Big Johnson, it’s time to celebrate Huge Pussy, a new NSFW clothing line and philanthropic effort aimed at empowering women. “I mean, really,” said Anderson. “Designing it was indeed a huge pussy move.”

A private art advisor, philanthropist, former first lady of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, creator of the sketch comedy “The Box,” and advocate for female empowerment, Anderson is constantly evolving. Her life’s goal is simple — make the world a better place.

While in Indianapolis from 2006 to 2011, she installed two million square feet of artwork to create the healing environments for IU Health’s largest hospitals.

A curvaceous stunner, Anderson was hard to miss in any room. Especially in the more conservative Indianapolis social scene. Stylish and completely unselfconscious, she was roundly regarded as a trophy wife. She was far from it. Both Anderson and her ex-husband Max Anderson made Indianapolis art aficionados want and demand more for the city.

Now, when not building art collections for her clients, she is a dedicated philanthropist who mentors women to find strength in themselves. As she talks about her life’s work, you hear pride and love when she pauses to say her greatest accomplishment is being mother to her children, Chase and Devon.

After leaving Indianapolis, she traveled around the world with her daughter Devon and started working on a master’s degree at Harvard University where she studied neuroscience and lifestyle medicine. She also trained at Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education Center and co-founded a wellness center in downtown Dallas. There, she created a year’s worth of programming.

Shortly after returning to New York, she started writing “The Box.” She also directed, produced, and starred in this sketch comedy series that used humor to address the harsh reality of inequalities women face. Due to the censorship issues with the word “pussy,” the series is no longer available on Amazon.com.

“When traveling with my daughter, part of our focus was studying the quality of life available for women around the world, where women have equal rights to economic empowerment, freedom of speech, and freedom over their bodies. In researching the difficult subject of how women are shamed for their bodies and for sexuality in other countries, I never thought I would experience censorship to the degree that I have here in the U.S.,” she said. “I was researching and writing about genital mutilation, bride burning, and using rape as a weapon of war, but I realized that the shaming of the female body runs through every culture, including ours.”

While tackling a serious topic through comedy is difficult to pull off, Anderson succeeded with several laugh-out-loud scenes in the series, including one in the episode “Big Balls” where Anderson plays a plastic surgeon by the name of Dr. Balzac. A man goes in to see Dr. Balzac about several options for testicle implants. Through comedy, “The Box” challenges gender definitions and assumptions that often remain unquestioned and unchanged.

“Season one reverses the shame associated with the female body and sexuality. My goal was to bring awareness to those accepted gender norms that shame women to create a new mindset that empowers the female body and mind. And those are the kind of gender norms we take for granted,” said Anderson. “Like the definition of the word ‘pussy’ to mean weak or the assumption that needing extra-large tampons is shameful. Each sketch tackled a different accepted norm that has been disempowering and reversed it. In the world of ‘The Box,’ pussy means strong, and magnum-sized tampons are sexy. It was my intention to empower women, and this is my intention in being an advocate for women as a mentor and philanthropist. After researching all that has kept women feeling ashamed about their bodies throughout history, I wanted to empower women to be bold, live large, and take revolutionary risks. And making ‘The Box’ was one of those challenges for me.”

I WANT PUSSY FLAGS WAVING PROUDLY. SO IT'S JUST NORMAL, SO IT’S NOT A BAD THING. IT’S JUST NORMAL. IT’S NORMAL TO BE GAY. IT’S NORMAL TO HAVE A PUSSY. THERE WE GO.”

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While getting the “The Box” (though briefly) on Amazon, Anderson encountered censorship issues around the word “pussy,” which was deemed by Amazon to be offensive.

“I honestly couldn't believe it. There is no cursing, nudity, or sex in the show whatsoever. We are talking about a five letter word that I was not allowed to use in a title. This is a feminist comedy and here I was being blocked by an old patriarchal paradigm. I said, ‘Wait, are you kidding?’ And no, they were not. In order for my show to go on Amazon, I had to change the title of the sketch called ‘Huge Pussy’ to ‘The Huge P Word’ as just the word itself was considered offensive content.” The episode portrays a world where calling somebody a pussy is like giving them the biggest compliment in the world,” she said. "I looked it up in the dictionary and sure enough, in the dictionary it says right there: ‘vulgar slang for women's genitals, weak, cowardly, or effeminate.’ I looked up ‘balls’ right after and found ‘courage or nerve’ in the definition. I looked at other titles available on Amazon for context, and there were shows called ‘Balls,’Balls To The Wall,’ ‘Dick,’ ‘Good Dick,’ and ‘Dick Night.’ And others that maybe I could be offended by like “‘Jailbait Babysitter’ or ‘All American Orgy.’”

Still, her series was accepted into more than a dozen film festivals, which became the impetus for what became a feminist product line.

“Big Balls’” (one of her episodes from “The Box” series that was not banned on Amazon, despite the title) was being shown on Hollywood Boulevard. “I took my daughter to the opening. It was her spring break and I thought, ‘let's go, but let's write a new definition for pussy first.’ I wrote down on a piece of paper: orgasmic, other worldly, resilient, flexible, life giving humanity vessel: a huge pussy holds the future,” said Anderson. “To me, these descriptors were a much better definition than ‘vulgar.’ Then, I created a prototype and had it printed on a tote bag. I carried it on the red carpet with my daughter in Hollywood. It was a very empowering moment because here we are at the premier of ‘Big Balls’ which Amazon had no problem with, but we were celebrating pussy and the new definition with our tote bags.” As she and her daughter walked the red carpet and then along Melrose Avenue carrying Huge Pussy totes, people began to ask where they got their bags. “We couldn’t walk ten feet and not be stopped,” said Anderson. “It had a celebratory quality that made people genuinely happy.” So Anderson got to work creating a line of over fifty Huge Pussy products. But again, she encountered censorship and the internet shut her down.

“After hiring a team and investing in an effort towards gender equality, the Huge Pussy products which bear only the words ‘huge pussy’ were banned from advertising on all platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Snapchat. I compared it to make sure this was indeed a violation of freedom of speech by putting a product that had ‘balls’ written on it instead of ‘pussy,’ and that was allowed. This fear ran really deep,” said Anderson. “Even having a Google email address with pussy in it is not allowed. I tried to register hugepussylife@ gmail.com, and the result was ‘This username is not allowed.’ Then I tried Bigballslife@gmail. com. ‘This username is taken.’ It was devastating since I had to let go of my team who worked very hard, but I won’t back down when a challenge is worthy of the effort. My main focus is not selling products, nor will it ever be. But it was important to have the products out in the world to reverse the shame around it. That is the point of activist art in the first place — to change culture. I didn’t set out to create a line of products. I wrote a feminist television series, but when I realized how terrified the world was of the word ‘pussy,’ it just seemed not only ridiculous, but harmful to women. How could I look at my son and say, ‘what you have makes you strong and courageous’ and look at my daughter and say, ‘what you have makes you weak and vulgar?’”

Anderson gives proceeds from the show and sales of Huge Pussy products back to organizations she cares about like Her Future Coalition, an organization fighting sex trafficking, as well as organizations dedicated to freedom of speech. Now she is partnering with artists to create special editions of the products to maximize the awareness and philanthropic efforts to support women in need. “I'm not going to single any one country out specifically, but I think people are pretty aware where women have fewer rights. I could be killed for making a film about female empowerment or carrying a bag with an empowering definition of the word ‘pussy’ on it in other places, but here in the United States, I'm banned from putting my feminist television series on Amazon and banned from advertising a feminist product line. That is blocking a woman’s right to our First Amendment, as well as blocking her from economic empowerment, and that is what has kept women down. We are further behind than we realize because of antiquated notions about female sexuality.”

But why Huge Pussy? Why not just Pussy? Anderson believes that the female body and the female mind have been encouraged to be small. So having the two words together is refusing to be small and refusing to be shamed.

“The Huge Pussy tote bag wasn't something I was nervous for my daughter to be carrying around New York City,” said Anderson. “A bag that says Huge Pussy is like carrying a massive weapon meant to empower women. It says, ‘I will not back down. I will not be shamed.’ I mean, if you're a man setting out to assault a woman, you're not going for the woman that has a tote bag that says ‘Huge Pussy’ across it. Absolutely not. You don’t want to mess with her.”

Anderson wants to change the way we think and feel about the word pussy and ourselves as women.

“I remember when calling someone gay was used as an insult, like ‘oh, that's so gay.’ Well, let's now look at gay pride, the companies, the people, and the support around it. That's what I want for Huge Pussy. I want pussy flags waving proudly. So it's just normal, so it's not a bad thing. It's just normal. It's normal to be gay. It's normal to have a pussy. There we go.” ✂