Nude Mary Wollstonecraft Statue In North London Draws Ire: ‘Why So Naked?’

Mary Wollstonecraft – the “Mother of feminism” – has been immortalized with a statue in north London that has drawn some confusion from social media.

The statue, which was erected over 200 years after Wollstonecraft’s death, was created by Maggi Hambling, who used silvered bronze to combine female forms, which were intertwine together to rise into a figure of a naked woman that is standing free, which the artist called “vital contemporary discourse for all that is still to be achieved,” Harper’s Bazaar reported.

“This sculpture encourages a visual conversation with the obstacles Wollstonecraft overcame, the ideals she strived for, and what she made happen,” Hambling continued.

Wollstonecraft, who was a British writer, educator, and philosopher, was best known for her work “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” which was written in 1792 and discussed the principles of female emancipation. She has been described as the leader in the battle of the gender equality movement by Millicent Fawcett and a feminist pioneer more than 100 years before the suffragettes, the Mary on the Green campaign website, said.

The statue of Wollstonecraft was in development for some time as a campaign to raise £143,000 ($189,000) needed for the sculpture were underway, starting in 2010 by a small group of volunteers from her hometown of Newington Green, England, the campaign said.

Now that the sculpture has been erected, Twitter has some questions about the appearance of Wollstonecraft, and they were looking for some answers.

One Twitter user appreciated the honoring of Wollstonecraft with a statue, but wondered why she had to be so “naked.”

Another Twitter user wondered why she had to be reduced to “a sex object?”

And another Twitter user just wondered why Wollstonecraft had to be “so tiny, so shiny and so naked?”

And still, another Twitter user gave their opinion plain and simple. They said, “I hate it.”

Hambling responded to the backlash by telling the Evening Standard, “She’s every woman and clothes would have restricted her.”