Chicks Who Love Guns is a movie in the movie, featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. I was not sure if it was appropriate to title this post with what may sound like a gender-based discriminatory statement. Still, nice looking girls holding heavy weapons have a place in our imaginary. Like in Japanese anime, Israeli Defense Force female soldiers are young and often pretty girls, performing duties reserved to men in most countries in the world.
Gender classification of roles
I wonder if it is the fact that in the country where I was born women were not allowed to serve in the army, until very recently, that fascinates me looking at these pictures — as if I would see a group of female seminarians walking down the streets of Rome dressed in their cassocks, the typical catholic clerical clothing.
Then I look at these pictures once more
Then I look at this pictures once more, and I think: they are just young kids.
And in some way, I feel sad.
The photographer
Rachel Papo is an Israeli who was born in 1970 in Columbus, Ohio but was raised in Israel. She began photographing as a teenager and attended a renowned fine-arts high-school in Haifa, Israel. At age eighteen she served in the Israeli Air Force as a photographer.
These two intensive years of service inspired her current photographic project titled after her own number during service — Serial No. 3817131.
The webpage of Rachel Papo’s project is here: http://www.serialno3817131.com/
More pictures of Tzahal soldiers on The Incredible Tide Facebook Page and on a previous post dedicated to IDF girls.
