Duchess Kate Middleton Gets Her Portrait Painted

South African artist Paul Emsley's portrait of Kate Middleton. [Image: Squarish painting of the head and shoulders of Kate Middleton perfectly centered and directly facing the viewer, her hair perfectly coiffed and falling over the shoulders of her conservative blouse. She smirks or barely smiles a tight smile. The background is midnight navy; she wears a slightly lighter navy blouse or dress with an ascot and matching stud earrings. The style is photo-realistic and incredibly detailed, yet also has a meticulously hazy "airbrush" "soft lens" or "memorial montage" appearance. The colors are heavily on the cool blue side, creating an almost deathly pallor, though judging by the snapshot from the painting hanging in its environment it may actually be warmer and livelier than it appears in this particular photograph.]

A snapshot from the portrait's unveiling, showing the large size as compared with people in the crowd, and a brighter, warmer and crisper color palette.

So, in case you don't recognize this woman or her name, congratulations! You probably live a fulfilling life that excludes garbage tabloids. She's the woman who recently married Prince William, Britain's heir to the throne (did I use the correct title there?) and whose clothing, behavior and body have been scrutinized (such that we need to invent a new word with a much stronger meaning than "scrutiny") by the international press and legions of People With Opinions. I sometimes enjoy a bit of tabloid gossip and often enjoy picking apart some person's sartorial choices so long as I'm not that person, but I'll be quite honest: the attention paid to Middleton gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I see photos of her dressed in absurdly stuffy, age-inappropriate clothes and primly yet fearfully clasping a matchy-matchy handbag in front of her groin I want to take a deep breath because it feels suffocating.

Anyway she commissioned this portrait and has gone on record saying she thinks it's "amazing." (Quipped Jeanne Becker, a Canadian TV commentator, “Interesting to hear that Kate thinks her new portrait is ‘amazing’. Shows she’s not vain.”) Middleton studied art history in college and, together with the director of the National Portrait Gallery, chose Emsley as the artist. Judging from his past work one can see why:

Nelson Mandela, by Paul Emsley. [Image: highly detailed photo-realistic black & white portrait of Mandela's head and shoulders. He's lit softly from the side, and the thin application of paint and the web of wrinkles illuminated on Mandela's face create a delicate lacy effect. Mandela gazes directly at the viewer with a thoughtful, resolved expression.]

Michael Simpson, by Paul Emsley. [Image: color portrait of the artist, and elderly white man, softly lit from above. The application of the paint and the facial expression create a similar effect to the Mandela portrait but the overhead lighting creates a medical or scientific effect, as if the subject is under examination yet fully aware of what he is and what the viewer will find.]

Emsley explained to People, “If you are working with someone [...] whose face is just a lovely face, it’s harder to find something in the portrait that gives it some sort of gravitas. In this case I’ve tried to do that with the smile and the dimples and the shadows around the face.” Art critics and the masses have found rare common ground in generally hating it. I've gotta say, I'm not totally on board with this portrait either. As pretty much everyone else has pointed out, the real Middleton is much prettier and younger, "fresher" looking than in this painting. Were one not a professional artist and blogger with a reputation and Google history to consider, one would perhaps point out that she appears constipated, to boot. She could have her pick of virtually any portrait artist in the world, and this is what turned up?

But as my comment policy proclaims angelically from the sidebar, "[...] any artist who has taken the time and considerable expense to plan, make, fix, remake, market, network, defend, and show their art-- no matter how shocking, expensive, or crude it is in appearance-- is deserving of consideration." So the following is my critique.

The portrait is a large square-shaped realistic painting of a young white woman (Middleton) from shoulders up on a navy background. The style is extremely detailed yet meticulously soft-edged. It brings to mind contemporary traditional Korean and Chinese official paintings which feature perfect tonal gradations and perfectly defined shapes:

An unknown couple stands in front of a huge official painting (mural?) of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

One of legion official Mao portraits.

 The Kims share a soft muted tone with Middleton's portrait, implying dignity and stateliness, perhaps suggesting statuary or an ethereal rather than carnal body. I chose this portrait of Mao because of its size and head-and-shoulders composition. Even the frame is similar to Middleton's portrait. These kinds of political icons-- and at this point they cease to be portraits, exactly-- are the theoretically rich subject-matter for thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, who argued that the simulacrum of the 20th century was its own truth, i.e. "hyper-real," an idea which Warhol thankfully expressed in a much breezier format:

Mao, by Andy Warhol. [Image: three black-and-white screenprints of Mao's official portrait, each colored with different silly Easter-egg color combinations.]

Returning to Middleton's portrait the (probably accidental) references to both iconic dictatorship and the hyer-reality of the simulacrum (and theoretical issues of mass reproduction) are quite witty. Middleton, though a monarch (I think?), is probably not that powerful, as rulers go: she wasn't uber-royal before marrying William, she is a woman in an antiquated monarchical system based on male heirs, she is objectified as (to put it crudely) a royal breeder, and most of all she is stripped of nearly all privacy and autonomy as the most public of public figures, ever on the verge of the public turning against her. Middleton smirking through these classic signifiers of authority could be read as a postmodern ironic twist on 20th century iconography of power, a "cult of personality" representation in a time when "cult of personality" has mostly vanished. Yet one could call the media frenzy over Middleton (and, by extension, Diana) a modern day cult of personality; in this modern version, rather than push his or her image onto the public, the public extracts images from the (seemingly reluctant) leader.

If one makes the associative leap from dictator-icon to Warhol's famous commentary on reproduction and media, Middleton would be an interesting parallel to Warhol's famous "Marilyn Monroe": she's a female symbol, a persona whose face is reproduced daily in media all over the world.

The painting's style could also refer to studio photography. Yet another postmodern irony: we've entered an age of photography, yet this painter was hired to do the same thing as a camera simply because of tradition and unadulterated posh-ness. We know from media reporting that the painting was composed of thin glazes of oil paint, and though Middleton sat for the artist twice he also used a series of photographs shot for the portrait. I'll leave it to those who are interested in the theoretical implications of photorealism to finish this thought because frankly I'm too lazy to do anything more that spit out the name, "Gerhard Richter."

Blue. There's quite a lot of blue in this portrait, particularly navy. Navy is the color of power, a hue typically recommended for business women who are trying to be taken seriously by their co-workers. It's also, obviously, the color associated with The Navy. Older associations between blue and power include blue and purple as colors reserved for royalty.

Blue is also the color associated with the Virgin Mary in Western iconography. Ties between British and English royal women, virginity, and the cult of Mary are many, the most obvious being Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria (of the respective eponymous eras).

Blue is also the color of abstract thought. I don't know if it is listed as such in any guidebooks to symbolism, but one cannot help but notice that blue is very strongly associated with technology and science, featured in many logos. It's often representative of spirituality (as opposed to Earthly existence), perhaps because the sky is blue. This portrait not only features blue clothing and background, it also seems to have a cool blue tinge to the entire composition. I've also noticed this practice in portraits from the late 1700s and very early 1800s together with a haziness and softness which seems to express the ideals of the humanist Enlightenment and Neoclassical era: that Man is a rational creature with a soul, that humankind is both capable of and destined to rise above our Earthly, carnal bodies, that our real self is our ideal, best self. People still use these conventions to represent loved ones who have died; the haziness and sky or clouds traditionally represent the immortal soul, with blue signifying heaven or angels. With this association in mind Emsley's representation of Middleton could imply an intellectual portrait of the abstract Kate, a personal, insightful endeavor which stands in direct opposition to the constant flow of tabloid commentary on Middleton's body, appearance, clothes and adherence to royal manners. To further bolster this interpretation of the artist's intent, there is the exclusion of anything below Middleton's shoulders and also the dark background which hints at Emsley's Middleton existing in some abstract intellectual void, a darkness which also implies a hushed calm.

However, I believe that if this is the artist's intent he as failed. The emphasis is still too much on Middleton's face. For example the straightforward evenly-lit mugshot position echoes typical magazine shots of models which allow for the visual dissection of facial features, each fully rendered to be consumed and judged by the viewer. This representative convention in fact serves as an invitation to judge, as in an advertisement for mascara or a list of top 10 most beautiful women. As an example of this sort of representation of women, this portrait fails to offer up Middleton's features in their best light.

That would not be a problem if Emsley had somehow prevented the portrait from being read this way, but he didn't. He should have known the enormous emphasis on Middleton's prettiness, but it appears he did not anticipate either that this portrait would fall short of the public's expectations of prettiness, or that it would be read as an exposition of prettiness. Were there movement, it would have counteracted this "map of the ideal female face" aspect, but movement is conspicuously absent from both subject and composition. Even the movement provided by the dynamic directional lighting in the Mandela and Simpson portraits has been discarded in favor of diffuse straight-on studio lighting, a move that confuses me given Emsley's dilemma of Middleton lacking wrinkles and imperfections. I think the real issue might be that because she is the Duchess Emsley was afraid to paint her wrinkles and imperfections; I think he should have gone farther in that direction, incorporating side lighting and highlighting her irregularities but he instead stopped short and stifled his expression thinking the soft-lens approach would be more flattering.

Given the statue-like stillness, the artist could have exploited the authority, stoniness, strength or unassailable nature of the statue, yet the straight-on or very-slightly-above position of the viewer makes Middleton the undeniable subject of the downward or level gaze. Though she smirks and holds her lips closed tightly as though sealing her thoughts inside herself, she is ultimately submitting to scrutiny-- a reality that is already evident in any paparazzi photo of Middleton and which this portrait fails to transcend.


Follow-up: Ha! Of course:

[Image: Middleton's portrait on left, the same portrait on the right but with the face of the famous recent botched or "restored" Jesus fresco, also commonly known as "Beast Jesus"]

Finally, a pen for ladies!

Bic has released a new pen for women: Bic Cristal For Her Ball Pens.

I'll let that sink in for a second.

The Amazon reviews for this product are the funniest thing I've read in a while. Really, check it out! HappyPlace has curated some of the best, and this may be my favorite:

"I bought this pen (in error evidently) to write my reports of each day's tree felling activities in my job as a lumberjack. It is no good. It slips from between my calloused, gnarly fingers like a gossamer thread gently descending to earth between two giant redwood trunks."

While the suggested retail is $5.99, you can purchase them at Amazon for an amazing $3.68. [Image: a package Bic Cristal For Her pens in an array of pastel colors. The ordinary yellow Bic packaging fades to lavender with flowers and a glowing effect around the pens. "For Her" and "Sleek Design" are written in splashy lavender cursive.]

Dove takes over "reality:" we are all above average now.

[Video: a black & white Dove soap commercial from the 1950s. A young blond-ish white model with an updo, full makeup and bare shoulders demonstrates in a velvety voice why Dove is better than ordinary soap as the camera lingers on her flawless complexion.]

According to Coco & Crème, Dove-- the moisturizer and knockoff salon shampoo juggernaut-- has conducted a groundbreaking beauty quiz Body Confidence Census of 2012, and concluded that women don't feel as beautiful as they "should." Coco & Crème explains:

When most women were asked to describe their looks and their body, the most common answer was simply 'average.' “Only 2 percent of women are saying, ‘I’m beautiful’ and only 1 in 10 are saying, ‘I feel attractive,’ a Dove spokesperson said. “That’s just not where we want to be.”

Ok, am I going crazy? Because the majority of women identifying as "average," seems like the only logical possibility here. Because that's how averages work. Most people are average. Average means "most people." When you offer people the choice of, "average" along with "beautiful," the clear implication is that "beautiful" means you think you're objectively above average in the looks department. And 1 in 10 women being above average-- "attractive"-- and 2 out of 100 being way above average-- "beautiful"-- seems about right to me. How many of us look anything like Megan Fox or Halle Berry? 2% actually sounds generous to me, considering the vast number of women who are older, fatter, zittier, lumpier, stockier, ganglier, and/or wrinklier than those two. And who set the bar for beauty so high in the first place? Dove, and other companies like them.


[Video: a 1993 Dove bodywash ad. It's lit in blue, giving it a sexy night-time Boyz II Men music video look. "Moonlight Sonata"-sounding piano music plays while a purring female voice describes the product. A tall, thin, young, conventionally hot white naked model demonstrates the product in her slow-motion shower.]

In fact, those sorts of companies intentionally endorse body types that are extremely rare as the only beautiful people. And then they are shocked, shocked! to find-- in their own manipulative study-- that the vast majority of women who don't have that rare type don't identify as "beautiful." I guess we'll just have to buy a bunch of Dove beauty products to catch up. "That's just not where we want to be," says Dove. I call bullshit: that is exactly where they want to be.

Older (early nineties?) Dove print ad. [image: top half is a blonde blue-eyed white model's face who looks a little like Kathy Ireland smiling slyly, wearing makeup and lit softly. Lines are super-imposed over her face breaking it up into sections that are numbered. Below, text reads, "Touch these 4 spots. If even one is dry, it's time for Dove." Smaller text underneath is unreadable, then there's a picture of Dove soap.]

[image: 1960s print ad featuring a sequence of four pictures of a white blond-ish model in makeup with a towel on her head in a bright pink bathroom smiling as she lathers half her face with Dove and the other half with ordinary soap, then pouting as she touches the rinsed ordinary side and exclaiming with delight as she touches the Dove side, then a picture of Dove soap. Text reads, "Lend us half your face and we will prove Dove doesn't dry your skin the way soap can."

A 1960s print ad featuring a smiling white model with brown hair and full makeup, manicure and up-do lathering up her naked shoulders, neck, face and hands with Dove suds and gazing lustily at the bar of Dove she holds, as if about to deliver a kiss. Text underneath reads, "Soap dries your skin but / Dove creams your skin while you wash" followed by smaller text and a picture of Dove soap]

[image: a still from a black & white 1950s TV ad showing a smiling blonde white model with full make-up, manicure and polished hair caressing her face with the words, "Dove Creams" superimposed.]

[image: a 1960s Dove print ad featuring a classic white model with brown hair and full make-up "washing" her face with Dove. Below a sequence of photos shows her rinsing off the soap and being shocked and delighted to reveal smoother skin, then pictures of Dove soap.]

Here are some more recent Dove ads that promote an impossible beauty standard, even as Dove claims to champion "real beauty:"

[image: over a solid baby-blue background, text reads, "Dove hair therapy: Dove Hair Rehab, [illegible] with Marie Claire." Pictures of Dove shampoos next to a thin young white model with thick shiny straight brown hair blowing in a magical wind, smiling with surprise at her own gorgeousness.]

[image: black & white photo of a naked thin young tan white brunette model throwing her head back, smiling contentedly and clutching her hands to her heart. She's covered in suds in the shape of an off-the-shoulder fur coat that mimics an old-time Hollywood diva in her bed-chamber. Illegible text and pictures of Dove bodywash across the bottom.]

Dove is doing a "real beauty" ad campaign now, having scrubbed themselves of their dirty beauty industry past and leaving a softer more touchable corporation, hence the "Body Confidence Census of 2012." Dove has done various "Look, I'm a model but I'll give you the straight-talk, girlfriend" and "Women across America-- such as these middle-class white women-- love Dove: here they are in their natural habitats using their words" ad campaigns since the 1950s in addition to the campaigns featured above. But their most recent campaign is a send-up of stupid beauty industry messages that they previously participated in, much like the 7-Up (or Sprite?) commercials in the 1990s that mocked typical soft-drink ads. But beauty cannot be funny. Ever. Because beauty is equal to self-esteem. It is our very being. It is very very important. (For women, anyway.) Here's a sample of the new campaign:

[image: a grinning young white woman in a black tube top who is maybe a size 16 is pictured striking an exaggeratedly glam confident pose. Next to her text reads, "What do you think?" then underneath, next to empty check-mark boxes, "oversized?" and "outstanding?"]

[image: a gigantic cropped close-up of a little girl who is a red-head with freckles, staring into the camera with a level gaze. Overlayed text reads, "Hates her freckles."]

[Image: bottom half of image features 6 women of different races in white underwear standing in a line on a white background lit with studio lighting. They are grinning the slightly embarrassed grins of girls caught being silly and imitating models. They range from about size 6 to size 14. Large text reads, "Real women have real curves" followed by smaller illegible text]

[image: a redheaded young white woman covered in freckles with bare shoulders stares slightly down at the camera with a smirking yet vulnerable expression. Next to her face are two empty check-boxes with the options, "flawed?" and "flawless?"

[image: same deal as above, but features a flat-chested young thin black woman with a short afro and the options read, "half empty?" "half full?"]

[image: in front of a cappuccino-grey background a chubby black woman in her 60s sits with her shoulder to the camera and her knees pulled into her chest, turning to smile shyly at the camera. She is completely naked, revealing stomach rolls. She's lit with soft studio lighting and her hair blowing. Text is overlayed reading, "beauty has no age limit / pro-age: Dove."]

[image: a little girl of South-East Asian ethnicity is shown in cropped close-up like the red-headed kid above, with level gaze. Overlayed text reads, "wishes she were blonde."]

These are great ads. And I hate them. With the exceptions of the ads featuring the kids, which are excellent aside from the inescapable problem that they are plugging Dove, these ads are patronizing and insidious. But this post is long enough already, so if you want to know why I think that just hit me up in the comments. Back to the "Census."

Why does it follow that being average in the looks department is devastating to a woman's self esteem? I mean, I'm not stupid, I know why-- Patriarchy, our society, our consumer culture-- but this assumption is continuously unquestioned. Why do we constantly link self esteem in women with feeling beautiful, in the sense of being objectively attractive? Why is it not okay to state the truth about one's looks? Why is it unfathomable that a woman could feel unattractive (or average) and also feel perfectly fine about herself? After all, plenty of women who do feel attractive have terrible self esteem. What if it were ok for a woman to simply be average in appearance (as most, in fact, are)? What if it were normal to portray unattractive or average looking women living it up? What if unattractive or average looking women were considered viable movie stars at the same rate that beautiful women are currently? What if the "real women" frolicking in their panties in the new Dove ads weren't advertising beauty products but instead advertising a fun new water-park, or a social club for exhibitionists, or an athletic event, something where "real women" can live it up and feel great that is unrelated to improving their looks?

Lots of women are objectively un-pretty. Period. I didn't say they are worthless or unloved or helpless or involuntarily celibate or grappling with their own emotional agony. I said they are not pretty. So if self esteem is linked to feeling pretty, and those women know perfectly well they aren't pretty, what then? Could it be that being average looking, or even ugly, is not the end of the world? If women weren't taught in a million little way that they are synonymous with their looks, would it be so devastating to feel unattractive? Is it possible that our positions on the beauty-versus-self-esteem continuum is not the problem, that the problem is, in fact, the constant conflation of self-worth and beauty for women? In other words, the problem isn't that we're playing the game and failing to win, it's that we're playing the game at all.

To be clear, I don't fault women who play the game self-beautification (including myself). It has simply never occurred to many women that there's any other option, for one. And if they have considered the other option, it looks so bleak: fuzzy legs, hair that isn't flowing or exhibiting "multi-dimensional color," un-sexyness, surrendering to the same old body you were born with, practical shoes, less attention from men, less attention from other women, constantly getting judged as a clueless woman who simply doesn't understand beauty, a walking "before" picture with no after, giving up the intoxicating fantasy that there's a wonderful new life awaiting the prettier version of you. That's no fun. Our entire culture portrays the un-winnable game of beauty as a worthwhile past-time-- the only worthwhile past-time. In the sense of being un-winnable, you may win some "battles," i.e. feel good sometimes through self-beautification, but you are guaranteed to lose the "war." But when self-esteem through self-beautification is portrayed as the only game in town, I certainly see why women try to play it, and I admit that for lots of people that's the best decision to make about how to live in our reality. I also have no problem with the original article I linked to, which takes the "census" at face value. My beef is with the game itself and the industry behind it.

And where is the concern that men don't feel attractive enough? If it's so damn important to feel beautiful, why is there no ad featuring a little boy staring plaintively into the camera with the words, "hates his unibrow," and the understated logo of TweezerMan in the bottom corner? No one would look at such an ad and think, "That little boy is in for a world of heartbreak!" or "Wow, TweezerMan really understands mens' struggles." They'd probably say, "so what?" and laugh, because the boy in the picture will grow into a man who is valued by society as more than the sum of his facial hairs. His beauty just isn't that big a deal. People are concerned about men, though. The media has been overflowing with concern that men aren't getting paid enough, that they're getting left behind in the "man-cession," that they're suffering high rates of heart disease, that they're not graduating from college at the same rate as women, that they are plagued by violence. No one has clutched their pearls and cried out, "Most men say they feel "average looking!" Oh, no! Only 2% identify as 'hawt!' That is not where we want to be! Think of the children!"

I promise this is related to portraiture but I don't know how to tie it in in any pithy, or even logical, way. But this is something I really do think about every time a woman sits for a portrait. I know what she's expecting-- an understated homage to her beauty that may, as an afterthought, reflect her personality-- and these issues are something I grapple with. The farther I get down this rabbit hole of resenting the beauty industry, the more difficult it is to depict, let alone identify, what the woman probably values as her pretty assets, because I'm getting more out of touch with the commonly agreed upon standards of beauty. I want to depict character, what makes the person interesting, and that usually conflicts with a pretty, feminine portrait that the customer very likely wants. The customer is always right, she's the one who has to live with the portrait, and I don't want to make her feel bad. I'm feeling a little stuck. What do you think about all this?

ETA: I originally included notes about Dove chocolate in this post, but it's actually a different company. Unilever owns Dove soap; Mars owns Dove chocolate. Even though the logos are virtually identical and feature pitchers of cream pouring themselves into a finished product. My bad.

The Last Psychiatrist on "Hunger Games:" feminist or not?

[Hunger Games movie SPOILERS!]

After I wrote about Hunger Games blogstress Ariel (who totally knows I love to spew opinions) asked me what I thought of The Last Psychiatrist's take on Hunger Games. TLP makes the case that while HG is (apparently) being hailed as a great feminist movie it is in fact anti-feminist in that the plot happens to the female protagonist rather than her taking actions (i.e. kills) and making decisions (i.e. kills), which takes away her agency. TLP likens HG to Cinderella in the sense that it is a fairy tale in which a passive girl is chosen as princess. Mentioning the recent outrage on feminist and anti-racist sites that many hardcore HG fans had reacted negatively when black actors were cast as Thrush and Rue, TLP calls this issue a sideshow meant to distract from the larger problem of Katniss' lack of agency. In closing:

That's why The Hunger Games is such a diabolical head fake.  [...]  It has managed to convince everyone that a passive character whose main strength is that she thinks a lot of thoughts and feels a lot of feelings, but who ultimately lets every decision be made by someone else-- that is a female hero, a winner. [...] in order to allow you to like an anti-feminist story, it is necessary to brand it as a vampire story or a female Running Man.   Regardless of how you phrase it, the purpose is to get you to like this kind of a story. It wants you to think this is the next step in female protagonists.  But it's a trick: nothing has changed since the royal ball. 

That these "adolescent girl" stories-- Twilight and THG-- have women who are essentially lead by men, circumstance, and fate-- whose main executive decision is "do I love this guy or that guy"-- is a window on our culture worth discussing.  [...]  That Jezebel is distracted by the racial angle here strikes me as an unconsciously deliberate avoidance of the larger issue.  Oh, the audience is racist, that's the problem.

This is the kind of criticism that steps back and dispassionately surveys a phenomenon-- my favorite kind. But the big glaring problem with this post is that TLP didn't step back far enough. Again, I saw the movie but didn't read the books; but since TLP's post is mostly about the movie, which stands on its own, I'm going to respond, focusing on how the movie portrayed things.

Many HG fans have already beat me to it in TLP's comment section pointing out that Katniss did in fact make kills: cutting down the wasp's nest while her would-be killers slept below, shooting Rue's killer through the heart, and shooting Cato (depicted as a mercy killing) as he is devoured by mutant dogs. TLP waves these kills aside as not pro-active, as well as waving aside her decisions-- volunteering for the games, suicide berries, affecting love for Peeta so they can both win-- as not really hers to make since the god-like author and Hunger Games officials whisk away consequences for the last two.

I actually accept TLP's argument waving aside these kills-- the movie did portray them as non-proactive which is status quo dramatic female protagonist behavior (see my criticism of the American Dragon Tatoo's plot twist [SPOILER] where Lisbeth pulls out a gun to shoot the baddie in the end but-- whoopsie-- the car bursts into flame on its own. Such killing-but-not-really tactics remind me of boobs with the nipples blurred out: they are now somehow different and acceptable cause they're not technically explicit... but we still get to see boobs, or as per the analogy, violent revenge). But pro-active killing is MURDER. Is that what TLP would prefer? Would that make the movie more feminist? A major goal of feminism is that we're able to lead our lives apart from the see-saw of coercive domestic / institutional violence and our reactions to it.

Another major goal of feminism is to treat women not as pseudo-children or pawns in the game of Men, but as a vast assortment of autonomous people whose decisions to each live as she sees fit are unremarkable to the rest of society. But unfortunately every decision a woman makes in the public eye is seen as an invitation for scrutiny-- a much higher level of scrutiny than for (white) men. From tabloids to cliques, from churches to offices, women are subjected to a special public opinion poll-- should she have done/said/worn that? Would you have done it differently? What did she do wrong? How could you improve her? How does her behavior serve others? Not only is this directed at women from men, but also from other women-- known as "internalized misogyny." It can be a problem even among groups of Feminists. Leaving aside legitimate complaints of failures to include marginalized groups of women from within the movement, feminists tend to hold each other and their allies to an extremely high level of expectation of perfection. Even while Rush Limbaugh and other outsiders call women who use contraception "sluts," special ire is reserved for those within the movement. But because there are as many ways of being a woman as there are women and thus many ways of interpreting and advancing feminism, each feminist (or ally) tends to have his or her own idea of what other feminists should be doing. So the goal posts are always changing, the flame wars are raging and women are picked apart-- just like in the rest of society. Considering that people and their ideas are flawed this is bad news for celebrating feminist icons, organizing, blogging, and legislating. This isn't intended as a take-down of feminism, which has been pretty damn effective in its time, but rather a critique of how internalized misogyny can play out within the movement. And therein lies the problem with the post: TLP didn't step back far enough to consider this.

Rather, the possibility of imperfect feminist activity seems to raise a flag and pique TLP's inner critic; they have done it wrong. HG has depicted a teenaged girl surviving, something that has clearly rung true for thousands of teens who actually don't have that much agency, a tactic employed by centuries of oppressed wives, prostitutes, daughters, workers, slaves and moms. But to TLP that is the wrong way to do womanhood. HG has chosen to examine oppression, coercion and lack of agency, to present a girl as a complicated character who sometimes fails, -- but for TLP it is not feminist unless we see a perfect woman in a choice-y utopia. HG offers Katniss a chance to use traditionally feminine skills-- networking, empathy, childcare, physical endurance and beautification-- while remaining mainly androgynous, to subvert an arena valuing brute strength, competition and violence, and bring it to a grinding halt (as opposed to using her feminine wiles and skills to achieve dominance or approval within the Patriarchy *cough-LegallyBlonde-Evita-GentlemenPreferBlondes-cough*). Despite the starkly coercive nature of the rules of the Hunger Games rendering both the decisions to kill and to flee as void of agency, TLP would have preferred Katniss succeed on masculine terms of the arena-- on TLP's terms.

Consider the reactions if the film weren't associated with women. Harry Potter similarly "lacks agency" by being acted upon and saved, constantly.  Likewise conscientious objectors have been depicted historically as having made that decision, with draft-dodging being a choice. The Shining was about a man lacking agency (being sort of possessed). Good Will Hunting featured a guy buoyed by fate and outside pressure, his only decision being to fall in love. No one asked, "What is Will teaching boys?" Because "girls" en masse are the ones in danger of being narrowly pigeon-holed by negative media messages. And because of this they must be shown only a narrowly prescriptive version of themselves on-screen. Wait, huh?

While these criticisms of HG could have broadened the discussion if they'd come from a place of respect toward other women and feminists, TLP's critique is not an empathetic one for the feminists at Jezebel, the young HG fans or, tellingly, women in general:

That's the system, it wants you to participate in your own marginalization so you don't dare unplug.  It's exhausting being a chick.  I mean girl--  woman.  Jesus. (5)

Though this is an example of the feminist agency problem, you should note carefully that the "society" that forces this false choice on women is actually other women, not men, and it starts with the overly invested way mothers reproach their daughters to "dress like a lady."   Certainly the original energy for this madness comes from men, from "the patriarchy", but if every man was executed tonight nothing would change tomorrow.  It's on autopilot.  Case in point: this story of a girl robbed of agency was written by a woman.

 or

Of course, if this racism was attached to a Transformers movie you can be sure that Jezebel would pronounce all of the Transformers audience racist.  But in this case, it's only some of the audience who are racist, because progressive Jezebel likes The Hunger Games, and they're not racist.  How can they be?  They're post-feminists, i.e.  the racism for Jezebel is merely an opportunity to criticize the bridge trolls who live in Central Time, just in time for the elections.

[...] What's interesting is how Jezebel seized on the racial controversy, but completely avoided the one bludgeoning them in the face for two hours: this is a book for females, written by a female, with femalist themes, gigantically popular among females, yet is more sexist than a rap video.*

The "feminist/antifeminist" either/or trap is a tricky one when critiquing movies or fiction. What is a feminist movie, anyway? If the filmmakers break silence to present women facing realistic difficulties this can be immensely valuable to many women. But for others the film is antifeminist because it punishes the female characters for their actions. Or a film could present a female character as a fully realized character who is interesting because of her own struggles rather than her relevance to men. But such a flawed character is often critiqued as a poor role model. And a perfect role model is often critiqued as a flat stereotype. Or a character could be a kick-ass superhero-- but she'd be thoughtlessly written as a "man with boobs." (This last category is supposedly about positive "kick-ass" role models for girls but I don't see how aspiring to prosecutable violence and impossible superhuman abilities is any more realistic than aspiring to be a princess. Fun, yes. Useful, no.) A film could manage to walk the line perfectly-- but it features only straight white people.

Sure, when people claim some absurd thing is feminist because it's "empowering," you've gotta raise your eyebrows and raise your voice. When feminism is co-opted by the status quo it's galling. Feminism allows people to make choices but not all choices are feminist, it's true. However TLP's view of what is feminist is so narrow that it crosses the line into authoritarian.

*I find it pretty short sighted of TLP to imply that the racism is a minor disingenuous distraction to the real problem of the movie not catering to TLP's idea of feminism. Both issues seem to be on the same level of slap-in-the-face-but-not-the-end-of-the-world, so why would the racism not be a real issue for feminists of color? Or every feminist? It's not like women of color don't care about racism until it can be used to throw wrenches into the works of mainstream feminism.

A Month Without Mirrors

I absolutely loved this essay on The Beheld by beauty blogger Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, who recently went a month without looking at her own reflection.

Not only is she starkly honest about the experience of the mirror and about what femininity feels like, Whitefield-Madrano is also incredibly perceptive to how socialization, psychology and abstract philosophy play out in everyday life. Even if you don't give a crap about makeup or the beauty industry, read the essay if you're interested in human consciousness, "The Gaze" in psychology and feminist theory, or portraiture.

[Image: a screenshot from Disney's Snow White showing the evil Queen's reflection in her magic mirror].

Moving Toward the Ugly

I loved this post up at Leaving Evidence. The author asks, what happens if we stop chasing beauty and start embracing our own ugliness as "magnificent?"

Commenter "naa" writes:

I was surrounded by a community of femmes of color, reclaiming and celebrating beauty as a thing of liberation, and yet there wasn’t space to ask what happens when we can’t live up to our own ideals? Or who we’re leaving out?
Moving towards the ugly feels like a real risk: a risk to be real, a risk to lose the privilege/power of beauty, and a risk to be valued for ONLY what we are- glorious and many-layered freaks.

Go check it out!

Should Female Nudes Be Prettier? (Ha!)

I very much enjoyed this post (scroll down till you see the headline, "Female Nudes Should Be Prettier") on Echidne of the Snakes. Yes, this really exists, or it did as of 2003: a league of "gentlemen" is advocating the production and inclusion of more "pretty" female nudes to counter all the "ugly" ones in modern & contemporary art.

A poster for feminist activist group The Guerrilla Girls, showing Ingres' famous reclining nude, but with her head replaced by a the group's signature gorilla mask. Text reads, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female."

I've sometimes heard-- from female artists, no less!-- that female nudes are more rewarding to draw because women are "made of shapes." Yeeeaaahhh.... Or that "no one" wants to look at nude men (I guess women and gay/bi men are "no one?") I would point out to these people that if women throughout history were not enjoying nude men and making active use of their shapes, there would be no babies.

Critique

"OMG you are such... a good... drawler."
"Omg no, are you kidding me? Yours is so... much... better than mine."
"What? No! Seriously, yours looks really real."
"What-EVER. Mine looks like crap."
"No, MINE looks like crap."
"Mine looks like vomit."


That was my high school art class. At my all-girl's school, that was basically the only way to take and receive a compliment about your art. Trust me: nothing makes me more uncomfortable than these sorts of exchanges, so eventually I simply tried saying, "Thanks!" Wow, the looks I got. It's like I'd grabbed the complimenter by her collar, shaken her and screamed, "THAT'S RIGHT BITCH! TAKE THAT!!!!!!!!"

So I stuck to the script-- even when the other person's was not always so much better than mine. Or I came off as obligingly fake-modest, even when I was frustrated that mine really looked like crap. Or when I just wanted to be left the hell alone so I could draw. This was in the South, by the way-- there is no "being left alone," or opting out of the compliment competition. There is also no being straightforward and no rocking the boat.


Imagine, then, when my teacher decided to hold a critique. Get in a group, put the drawing up on the bulletin board, go around and say one good thing about it and make one "constructive criticism." No one vocalized anything, there was certainly no formalized plan; but there was an innate understanding, unanimous agreement. The first drawing went up on the board; it belonged to one of the bow-heads (if you're unfamiliar with this classic clique, they are not the Mean Girls, the uber-popular elite; they're not the nerds, either. They are well-liked, reasonably book-smart, well-adjusted, often religious, and they play team sports and volunteer with underprivileged kids after school. Typically wear pastel colored clothes and ponytails with ribbons tied in a bow around them.) The teacher could have selected an unpopular girl's piece and maybe someone would have come up with a criticism. Or maybe a popular mean queen's piece; people might have been ready to bring her down a notch. But she didn't.

"Bow-heads" volunteering in a team. My friend also named this clique, "Pastel People." I know it seems like I'm making fun of them but they were pretty cool-- I just couldn't relate to them at the time.

The first girl called upon started with the good: "It's really... pretty."
"Ok, good! It's pretty! Ok. So do you have any constructive criticism?"
Long silence. Finally,
"I can't."
"Oh, come on, you can think of something!"
"No I can't."
"It's perfect?"
Sigh. Eye roll. "I can't think of anything." The teacher takes a deep breath.
"Ok, let's go to someone else. Katie? Something good?"
"I agree it's pretty."
"Pretty how?"
"Like... I don't know."
"Come on."
"It's got like... nice colors."
"Ok! Nice colors! Yes! And what is your constructive criticism?"
Stony silence.
"Katie?"
Silence.
"Katie. Something."
Stonier silence.
"Anything."
"I can't."
"Katie--"
"I can't."

At this point I should mention that, while the drawing was fine-- I vaguely recall it being a landscape-- there was clearly room for improvement. We were high schoolers, not pros.


"Ok. Ladies. We are talking about constructive criticism here. Not a personal attack. Somebody needs to come up with one item of constructive criticism before this class is over." She surveyed the room and landed on another Katie, a teacher's pet.


Katie, like many sixteen-year-old Southern girls, aimed to please (and appease). She must have been genuinely torn between teacherly noncompliance and saying something bad about another girl. I probably would have been, too, as I was a goody-two-shoes, but thankfully she hadn't called on me.


Katie was silent. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for help from the other girls. Everyone looked down.


"Katie!"

Publicity shot for the movie, "Mean Girls." [Image: the three main popular girls. The one on the right smiles at the camera, one stands slightly behind the middle girl making a smirking face, and the middle girl glances sideways at the smirking girl she cannot see, looking extremely uncomfortable.]

Katie took a deep breath and maintained her silence. She was the weak link but her decision to remain silent set the tone. By this point no one would speak, good or bad. There was literally nothing the teacher could do. She was powerless in the face of social pressure. She could have failed us all, but it was understood: you cannot say outright negative things about other girls in public to their faces.



Ten to fifteen minutes later the bell rang. The classroom was vacated in under thirty seconds.


Writing about art criticism reminded me of this incident. I've also been thinking recently about hosting a group critique, inviting some artists I like, since critiques were a favorite part of art school for me and I miss them like crazy. But then there is the memory of that one critique from high school (the teacher never tried to make us do this again). What if it devolves into girl-compliments and critique-fear? It would be absolute hell. But I'm still thinking about it....

Forever Cute

[Image: Zooey Deschanel dressed in pale pink in the sunshine holding up a heart necklace]

Sorry this is so long, but I have a lot to say:

I enjoyed this thoughtful post from What Tami Said: Who is the black Zooey Deschanel? No one really tries to identify a black Zooey, though, because what she is really asking is, can a black woman pull off a cutesy, innocent/sexy, intellectual yet vapid little-girl aesthetic? Does society give black women room to define themselves in this way? As Tami pointed out in another post, a white woman streaking her hair pink is seen as whimsical while a black woman doing that is seen as "ghetto." Both posts and comment threads I highly recommend reading.

[Image: Nicki Minaj, also in a pink dress, making cute face, and with pink hair, literally impersonating a child's toy.]

While there understandably wasn't much love given to this trendy eternal-little-girl persona on a post about how this mode of self-expression is unfairly racially exclusive, or examination of why white women might choose this on a blog that isn't about white people, I think digging deeper in this issue is actually very pertinent to Tami's question. I realize many women use cutesy-ness to be transgressive, that there is deeper meaning at work for many lesbians, sex workers, forty-year-old women who've defined themselves differently in the past, and many many more situations. But this is a mega-trend and since 80% of people don't seem to think deeply about anything at all, I'm going to assume 80% of the trend followers haven't thought deeply about this either. And to be as clear as possible, the "cutesy" I'm talking about is what I think of as Etsy, alternative precious weddings, Real Simple Magazine, cupcakes obsessives, DIY tissue paper pom-poms, and yes, Zooey Deschanel's persona. And no, I don't have a problem with people who are into this stuff (or Deschanel). It doesn't make you stupid or shallow. I myself enjoy a stiff drink even more if it's pink and coordinated with a pastel retro tablescape.

Let's say a white girl doesn't like being sexed up like a reality star. She doesn't enjoy the Barbie persona, doesn't enjoy the snap judgements or the way people treat sexed-up women, doesn't enjoy the harassment, doesn't enjoy the objectification. Let's say she doesn't want to focus her life on male attention, either. But she also wants to stay within the acceptable limits of what girls do. She's not about to grow out her pit-hair and spend tedious hours reading up on The Male Gaze. She doesn't want to be one of those Icky Girls. She wants to be a girly-girl, but on her own terms.

Louise Brooks, in a boyish bob, cupid's-bow lipstick and sailor costume. She was extremely young in these photos and a poster-girl for "boyish" figures, i.e. small-breasted and straight-hipped.

Probably the only time a woman in her 20s or 30s remembers feeling free of The Sexiness is early childhood. It's just about the only time in a woman's life where she is deemed "ok" by society. Hopefully it's pre-dieting, pre-making sure you keep your legs together when sitting in a skirt, pre-skeevy-uncles, pre-slut-shaming, pre-prude-shaming. This would not be the first time women rebelled by channeling childhood. Remember the flappers in the '20s who flaunted "boyish" (aka pre-pubescent) figures and loose clothing like a little girl might wear? Louise Brooks? Or the Sixties, when mod and Jackie-O prep styles both made women literally look like dolls (oversized hair, big eyes, clothes that were cut to make limbs look tiny and disjointed, that hide the waist and breasts)? It's a subtle way of saying, "I'm not a sex object. I'm a 'person,' not a 'woman.'"

Jackie O in doll-like dresses. Notice the proportions of head to body because of her bouffant, and the way the clothes slice her into movable parts. Compared with cinched-waisted, pointy bazooka dresses from the '50s these also downplay her breasts and waist.

And then there's the way the current trend (at least as opposed to other trends) centers itself around "female" experience, not performative femininity. For example, tweeting about adorable kittens, as Deschanel did, is basically for a female audience. Sharing childhood experiences is another big element ("Omg remember Thundercats/MyLittlePony/Full House???") and that is also about female community. People like Deschanel seem to be developing a sense of humor that is based around appealing to other women both on the cute level, the "our experiences are worth sharing," level and the girl-friendly gross-out level (I'm using "female" and "girl" as abstract ideas here). The guys in their universe can either get with the program or be relegated to the sidelines.

And it's not just "girly" ideas you can share, but intellectual stuff too. There's a strong current of liberal arts education, contemporary art/film/music awareness, and political awareness that comes rolled into this mega-trend, probably because of the affluence of the mainly white, slightly older participants.

And best of all you're still a good girl. You're still a desirable employee, a good daughter, a cute girlfriend, a good student, a good consumer.

So why is this a new (ish) trend? Why now? I know people in every decade believe women are being hyper-sexualized more than ever before but... I think women today are being hyper-sexualized more than ever before. Women in the workplace has been well-established since the '80s, and since the liberal '90s there has been a growing conservative backlash fetishizing domestic labor at the same time that working is just what women do. That requires delicate balance.

Also women--particularly middle-class women--are experiencing a decade-or-so-long no man's land between adolescence and doing traditional "grown woman" things: getting married, having kids, owning a house, having a Career-with-a-capital-C. Today there's often college, a few shit jobs you have to take where you're not treated like a real person followed by some fluff occupations while you're trying to figure stuff out, some hit-and-miss career moves, dating around and having a few long-term relationships, crazy room-mate situations, basically a time when you want to play around for a while and for the first time in history you can. Or for many, a time when you want to be treated like a grown effing adult but aren't. You graduated and haven't been able to get a job (any job!), or you have a humiliating job, or you have to move back in with your parents. Again, this requires a delicate balance and I think the eternal little-girl trend addresses this for lots of women.

Manet, "Bar at the Folies-Bergere." I think we all know how she feels.

But of course there are major, major problems with this, and I haven't even gotten to the issue Tami brought up yet. First, due to porn and legions of pervs, little-girl-hood isn't as desexualized as most would like it to be. In fact grown women infantilizing themselves is a huge turn-on to a lot of men. Because of the focus on female, not male appreciation I mentioned earlier I think many women can knowingly overlook this. Furthermore since there is a huge hipster-cute-little-schoolboy-aesthetic trend among guys, these women can often find plenty of men who share the childhood mentality instead of being pervy consumers of female sexualized infantalization. But I wouldn't put these guys in the majority. And while little girls may be mostly free of sexual stigma they aren't particularly powerful in society. Giggles and fantasy don't get you very far in a board meeting or an argument. The main problem with this persona: there is NO room for anger, power or raw sexual energy-- I'm talking about MAJOR HUMAN EMOTIONS here.

Deep breath. And here's my other point:

I think the media (mostly owned and/or run by white affluent men) uses black people and black stereotypes to be a fantasy outlet for white people who play by the rules. Black "bad-asses"--characters like Samuel L. Jackson's in Pulp Fiction and Shaft, and heavily produced personas like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent--function as fantasy outlets for white men and, somewhat, to white women, to the extent that many white men will, instead of expressing anger or misogyny in their own words, simply imitate black stereotypes. It's a way of saying the ugly shit you want to say but still having it be a joke (and a way to quickly earn my disgust).

Thus black women's stereotypes that get hyped in mainstream media are a directly related to white female fantasy (in addition to the old Women-of-Color-as-Exotic-Sexual-Deviants male fantasy). There's anger, power, raw sexual energy. I've seen many white women who, instead of simply standing up for themselves, imitate the neck-roll, finger-waving image as a way to say "Seriously, get out of my face" but in a cute, joking way. Even many positive-sounding phrases of empowerment used by white women are derived from black women because of the "power" fantasy: "You go, girl!" "Preach it sister!" "Right on!" "Tell it like it is!" etc. Plenty of white women directly imitate black women shown on MTV to express sexuality, too. I once saw an all-white, all-female Southern church group out at a bar being very prim and tittering until some music came on and a few of them ran to the dance floor and started booty-dancing and rolling their hips. They quit after a few minutes, all of them collapsing in laughter. They got to express their sexuality but not get in trouble for it because it's just a joke! A fantasy. Part of why reality shows seek out the same black female knock-down drag-out dramatic situations over and over is that there isn't any other viable female anger/power fantasy on TV. As the white girl cutesy trend has grown the angry black woman stereotype seems to get played in heavier rotation. White people can identify with certain black characters as fantasy, then imitate them to express emotions and attitudes that are forbidden.

I think Tami does a great job explaining why this is extraordinarily unfair to black women, both in this post and her entire blog, so I don't have much to add to that. But I'll point to the positive aspects of cutesy-ness I listed earlier that I didn't think were touched on in the post as a viable tool (however problematic) women use to circumvent societal pressure that is being denied Black women and other women of color. I also hope women who subscribe to the cutesy trend will give it some thought and perhaps develop some way to make it work for a full range of human emotion, including anger. Finally I hope that if any readers have ever thought of stereotypes assigned to Black women as Not Their Problem, that this post has illuminated just one way in which stereotyping Black women is gross and demeaning for all women, part of a system that sucks for everyone.

Portrait of a Lady (or, "Your Hair is Fine, Really")

So: I'm a portrait artist. I like strange, daring or intensely thoughtful portraits and do them when I can, but every Saturday I go to the Farmer's Market and sketch charcoal portraits of people that take about a half-hour each. It's fun. I love people's faces, it's good exercise, it pushes me out of the analytical-painter-rut I sometimes get stuck in. Plus I like tourists.

I draw lots of different kinds of people--and pets-- and I'm surprised by how much more I enjoy drawing them than I anticipated. The dogs are a great exercise in texture. Kids say beautifully contemplative stuff after sitting still for thirty minutes. Couples are so sweet to draw (usually) and the confident, curious adult who simply wants a portrait is always interesting.

I thought I already had strong views on feminine beauty and its place in the patriarchy (hell yeah I'm a feminist!) but again I have been surprised by what I've learned.

First, I have only drawn five women, ever, who did not say something apologetic, worried and peppered with nervous laughter about their hair as they sat down. Only one girl under 18-ish ever mentioned her hair, and she was an elementary-school-aged kid whom her mother had dressed as a beauty queen. Yeesh. Personally I try to emphasize messy hair because it breathes a bit of life into a portrait. It keeps people from looking... embalmed. And for the record: their hair always looks fine in real life. Always.

And then there are the modest ladies.

The husband/boyfriend will see the Portraits sign, light up and say "Honey! You should get a portrait! C'mon, you're gorgeous!" But Honey has to act embarrased, argue, be persuaded, and pretend to be reluctant. Usually I can tell she is secretly delighted but has to put on the act of modesty anyway. It's not like there's any socially acceptable way for a woman to say "You're right, I am gorgeous. Let's get this shit framed!"

In fact, the only way that many women can be persuaded to get a portrait is to include a mom or child, and make it a "me & mom moment." To simply have a portrait of oneself would be vain. I suppose they figure it's only a short leap from having a framed photo of yourself, to filling your bedroom with "boudoir photos," to starring in Sunset Boulevard. It's sad because many single and married men will stop by alone who are completely unencumbered with painful self-awareness, declare the awesomeness of portraiture, and sit happily for a portrait simply because they're curious.

I guess the Man Version of 'Aww shucks,' is, "Ha! You don't wanna draw me, sweetheart! I'm so ugly your pencil would break!" Followed by hearty laughter. But no shame. I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "But ugly people make the best portraits!"

So this got me thinking about female beauty in a new way. I'm going to do a few posts here exploring that. I promise, though, no nonsense about women's beauty being God's gift to man or carelessly conflating "sexy" with "beautiful." Ugh.