Marianne Batlle: “dick dolls”

Marianne Batlle, Deborah Beauty, 100% super angora, 12” x 7”

Variations on the Feminine Phallus

On a psychosexual level, how can one not immediately be fascinated by Batlle’s obsessive fetishism – does it simply signal a clear case of penis envy? But isn’t this too facile an approach? Certainly one could argue that the artist has never accepted that she doesn’t have a penis. And so her disavowal is expressed through the fabrication of phallic festishes by way of dick- knitting, creating her own obsessively lady-like collection of cocks. But if we take a look from another angle, this is a woman who clearly doesn’t envy penises per se but would rather propose to us a different kind of penis – a feminized one.

By Deborah Zafman, Ph.D.

2008