Pervs have been so frequently sexually molesting a statue of a woman in Dublin that the bronze woman’s boobs are a different color from the rest of her. One woman—a real-life one—is trying to do something about it.
Molly Malone is a legendary figure in Dublin lore who very likely did not exist in real life. As the story goes, Malone was a blue-collar fishmonger… and that’s kind of it. That’s the whole backstory.
She’s more of a symbol of the blue-collar working class than, say, a heroic John Henry-type.
People Won’t Stop Groping the Molly Malone Statue in Dublin
She is the subject of an Irish folk song “Cockles and Muscles” that doesn’t do much to flesh out her backstory or give her much of an arc. She sold cockles and muscles out of a wheelbarrow and then died from a fever but then came back as a ghost to continue selling cockles and muscles out of a wheelbarrow.
I guess the moral lesson here is that you’ll work yourself to death and then some, which probably makes her a perfect symbol of Sisyphean working-class life.
Now her tits are discolored because creeps keep honking her boobs, and a student at Dublin’s Trinity College is advocating for the statue to be protected. Tilly Cripwell has been urging Dublin City Council to restore the statue to its original non-grouped appearance and to raise the statue onto a plinth which would make it much more difficult for passersby to absentmindedly grope this folkloric hero of the Irish working class.
Cripwell says she has witnessed firsthand the “disgusting behavior” displayed around the statue, particularly from tourists who come from all over the world to squeeze a statue’s tits. Squeezing Molly Malone’s boobs is right beneath kissing the Blarney Stone on internet lists of the top things to do in Ireland.
Believe it or not, there is a reason people squeeze Molly Malone’s bronze boobs beyond simple perversion and a lack of impulse control. There is supposedly a legend floating around that giving her boobs a nice firm squeeze brings good luck, which, frankly, sounds like a load of horseshit.
People use good luck to excuse all sorts of weirdo behavior. I’ll start believing it when I see a bronze statue of a man with a severely discolored crotch. “We jerk him off for luck!” the tourists will shout with glee as they milk the, oh, I don’t know, let’s say the ugly Dwayne Wade statue.
Cripwell argues that all the groping undermines the representation of women in Irish culture and it perpetuates a culture of disrespect for women. Dublin City Council is considering a request and will examine the costs involved with restoring the statue and raising it on a plinth.
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