Photo credit to Lauren Duquette Senior Staffer at The Daily Northwestern
Graduation is quickly approaching for seniors at Northwestern University, and those who didn’t land a lucrative consulting gig may be feeling anxious. How better to cope than to return to the warm, comforting safe space of the womb.
Now they can, metaphorically at least, with the latest campus installation, “PUSSYGATE.” The Daily Northwestern reports that student organizers installed the 20-foot-tall inflatable vulva at the school’s landmark arch with no particular motive, wanting students to form their own interpretations.
One student called PUSSYGATE (yes, ALL CAPS) a refreshing alternative to all the enshrined phallic symbols in academia.
Another student told The Daily that she compares PUSSYGATE to re-entering the womb — and said marching through upon graduation would be like a re-birth into the real world.
PUSSYGATE was set up around Weber Arch, a gateway which new students walk through to symbolically enter the student body.
“It’s some balloons that vaguely look like a vulva,” a grad student said. “I have no idea why it’s there. If people are trying to make some sort of statement, I have no idea what it is.”
Whatever the statement PUSSYGATE is trying to make, those tepid students afraid of entering the real world, will at least be provided with a symbolic dose of maternal comfort.
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