A South Park Commentary on Sexism
By Hillary Taft - Sunday, April 5th, 2009
The latest episode of South Park is…how shall we say it? A bit over the top. The name of it, after all, is “Eat, Pray, Queef.” Queef refers to a vaginal “fart,” so you can imagine some of the gross moments in this episode! But there’s kind of a bizarre feminist point in there, which mainly consists of men having a double standard regarding their gross bodily functions (farting) vs. women’s (queefing). This bodily function divide is used to showcase a greater inequality between men and women, whereby men always get what they want and women still have to prove themselves twice over.
Notably, the episode portrays a political process whereby when men get upset about something, they immediately get the town taking action and end up having a bill passed. We see a sea of mostly male faces at the local “congress.”
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this episode actually ended up pro-feminist or not, but I felt it was actually more thought-provoking than you might immediately think due to the overt crassness of it.
Be on the lookout for a very disgusting but hilarious scene where Martha Stewart queefs out confetti and decorations, and Hillary Clinton is given a little queefy nod too.
You can watch the full episode online here…I warn you, it’s a bit graphic. (In a cartoon way, of course.)
