Girl with a pearl necklace

Can something private and lecherous become something public and empowering? This is a loaded question, and I am not sure of the answer, but a recent news story has brought this issue to light.

A sexual act, usually reserved for pornographic films and locker-room talk, has ascended from the dungeons of our discourse to the sunlit sidewalks of our community. I want to explore how the recontextualisation  of this act might have changed its meaning altogether.

An artist named Leah Piepgras has recently released a piece of jewelry titled “Pearl Necklace,” which consists of a sterling silver pendent shaped like a splotch of semen. The necklace is a physical rendering of the eponymous sexual act and is sold for $420.

For those who are unaware of the slang term “pearl necklace,” I will provide a description. For the prudish readers, please skip the next sentence.

The term refers to a sexual act where a man ejaculates onto a women’s upper chest and neckline.

The jewelry is described as “a visual marker of chaos turned perfection through an act of beauty and lust,” and “a physical reminder of a fleeting moment of pleasure.”

Although I admire the intended meaning of this piece, what really fascinates me is the medium that Piepgras chose to utilize: jewelry. She could have turned the sexual act into a sculpture or a painting, but instead she co-opted this prurient deed and commodified it.

This isn’t a painting that will hang immobile on a wall. She has turned it into a portable fashion accessory that can proudly be displayed in a private bedroom or a public library.

You purchase a painting or a sculpture to decorate your home, but you buy a piece of jewelry to decorate yourself. Paintings hide indoors, jewelry is flaunted in public.

In taking a wanton exploit out of the bedroom and into the community, Piepgras has begun to change what a “pearl necklace,” and all of its connotations, means. Low-art is high-art, debauchery is beauty.

The “pearl necklace,” or the “money shot” (if you don’t know what that one means then Wikipedia it) is a contentious topic among scholars.  

Writer Padraig McGrath argues that the money shot in pornography suggests the woman likes “whatever the man wants her to like because she has no inner life of her own.” He also believes the central theme of pornography is power and “violent ... eroticized hatred.”

Feminist author Susan Faludi offers a counterargument to these critiques, saying these scenes are actually objectifying the male performer, whose entire body, except for his penis, is off-screen .

Writer Richard J. Newman claims the way money shots are depicted is a “more or less absolute yoking in heterosexual pornography of male sexual pleasure to a woman’s presence.”

To me, the meaning of this necklace cooperates with Newman’s theory, and for those who choose to wear it, I suppose it can be seen as empowering.

By bringing the act into the public sphere, the wearers of the necklace are reclaiming an act some would call degrading and presenting it as dangling reminder of the power women have over men. It is a shimmering token that says, “Look what I can make you do.”

But I doubt many will look at the necklace in that way. The hurdle between pornography and meaningful art is a tall one for most people, so I can only imagine the difficulty in accepting pornography as jewelry.


E-mail: joskraus@umail.iu.edu