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.

Moff's Law

I'm a little late for this but I ran across this fantastic 2009 rant and had to share.

Moff's Law: The tendency of art or film criticism/analysis to draw commenters who whine, "jeeeez, it's just a movie/picture/joke. Don't think so hard. Just enjoy it, gosh." [Image: Wayne from The Wonder Years makes a "wtf" face.]

My Superpower.

Jill at In Bed With Married Women wrote this about me, and it is so deeply apt:

I am quite certain that today you have discovered your Superpower. Too bad it's thinking of spot-on names for obscure and unloved contraceptive devices. We don't all get to have X-ray vision.

Just thought I'd brag about that. You know, in case any future employers Google my name and find nothing but un-condemning professional tidbits.

Portrait 4-14-12

Another portrait for a client so I'm only showing a detail [Image: cropped close-up of ayoung white boy's face, smiling. Realistic black & white charcoal.]

Portrait 4-13-12

Just a detail of the portrait since it's for a client. Drawn from life. [image: close-up crop of young white man's face, smiling, wearing a cap, like the military kind with a bill that old-timey Russian poets and coffee house kids wear. Not exactly a newsboy cap but similar. Also less ridiculous and more stylish than I make it sound. black & white charcoal, realistic.]

Portrait 4-12-12

Just a portion of the portrait since it's for a client. She sat (extreeeemely patiently) while I drew this. [image: cropped close-up of a white teen girl's face smiling slightly. Realistic black & white charcoal.]

Portrait, April something. 11th?

Self portrait in bathroom mirror before getting ready for bed. I look psycho on this, or as an artist I guess I should say, "tortured." Really though I look this way in most of my self portraits because I'm glancing up from my drawing pad at the mirror. The direct overhead lighting isn't helping things either. Still I think the drawing goes well with the video below. [Image: head and neck of a white woman with head tilted down looking directly up at viewer. Contour line drawing in blue and orange marker, somewhat unrealistic.]

Video: black & white close-up film of a cat, an obvious spoof of French 1960s existentialist cinema. A man narrates the cat's "thoughts" in French while subtitles appear. Melancholy piano music plays.
[cat sits in window]
Well... I'm still here.
I have grown my fluffy coat for the winter... like a Tsar's robe it requires... [owner snips fur around the cat's butt] a delicate maintenance.
I'm free to go. [Looks out window] Yet I remain.
The fifteen hours a day I sleep have no effect... I wake to the same tedium.
Immortalized on the wall [looks at vintage poster of the Chat Noir]. Forgotten on the floor.
When my caretakers step here [sits on a bathroom scale] they feel irate... yet I feel nothing.
They leave tasty snacks just out of reach. [Eyes two birds and a mouse in a cage]. They taunt me mercilessly. I alone feel this torment.
[Another cat, white, wiggles.] The white idiot writhes on his chair, begging for cheeseburgers.
I'm surrounded by morons.
[looks at "beware of cat" sign.] "Pay attention to the cat." Not that they ever do.
Still I have learned the few things.
The whipped cream in the bathroom is not whipped cream. [Tastes and rejects a blob of shaving cream] We cannot escape ourselves. [Gazes at self in mirror] And sometimes the cat door... [runs for the cat door but bonks into it when it fails to open] is closed.
un film de Will Braden.

Portrait 4-10-12

Another portrait for a client, so I'm only posting a portion of it. [image: detail of the side of a white man's face who wears glasses and is smiling. Realistic black & white charcoal.]

Portrait, 4-9-12

Since it's for a client I'm only showing a portion of the portrait. [Image: the face and neck of a white woman with thick pale hair and glasses drawn in realistic charcoal.]

Portrait, April 7

Since this was for a client I'm only posting part of the portrait. This woman sat for me at the first Farmer's Market of the year (hooray! I love drawing from life!). [Image: shoulders up to forehead of a white woman with long blond hair wearing earrings and a bunched up draped neck scarf. Drawn in black & white charcoal, realistic with sketchier lines for the scarf.]

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.

Hunger Games

[!!!!!!!V E R Y    M I L D    S P O I L E R   A L E R T!!!!!!!!] 

I saw Hunger Games with my friend who is involved in both Twilight and HG fandom. So when he invited me I guess I was expecting another Twilight. I knew next to nothing about the books except that middle-schoolers liked them a lot and it took place in an imaginary world and somehow involved gladiator-children. I don't like horror movies (mostly), I don't like sci-fi or fantasy genres (unless Harrison Ford, Andre the Giant or Stanley Kubrick is involved) and I'd like to see nothing less than children fighting each other to the death. Basically I wasn't expecting much.

The posters for Hunger Games. I loved how the advertising was so in sync with the film, not working against the idea like that stupid topless Dragon Tattoo poster. The characters are presented just as the kids are presented to the wealthy crowds in the movie: as fighters with a score rather than people. [Image: a collection of 8 similar posters, each with a black background featuring a character's head and shoulders in profile, lit from the side so you only see a sliver of them, like a waning moon. In the black space where their ear would be is the movie logo. Each faces left with the exception of the main character.]

OMG y'all, it was AWESOME. It's a Hollywood movie, to be sure. It's got all that good stuff like action, romance, classic hero plot and production value that makes a movie... easy and dazzling, I guess. But it was unabashedly political too-- and not in a remotely hidden or apologetic way. I left the movie feeling revolted with consumer culture, angry with the rich/poor divide, with a visceral aversion to luxury goods and lifestyles that has lingered, so far, two days after leaving the theater. It is the perfect time for this movie, with Occupy Wall Street, the rising popularity of the derogatory term, "the 1%," the recent spotlight on poverty and labor abuses in the production of luxury Apple products, and rioting from London to Egypt.

An official event where tributes (kids age 12-18) are chosen to participate in the Hunger Games. They're being shown a patriotic film while they wait to see who among them will be sentenced to battle for their life and probably die. The glamorous hostess is so breathlessly pleased, her attitude reminded me of the headmistress at my old school whenever we had groundbreaking type ceremonies honoring a wealthy donor. Only this woman is surrounded by the collective dread of children yet is completely unaffected, coming off as clueless and cruelly indifferent. The attitudes of the rich regarding the poor were so. well. done. [Image: view from about 50 feet above and behind the audience showing the stage flanked by guards and a humongous monitor to the right, with a big grey deco building as backdrop and a red official flag hanging above the stage while the audience stands. It looks like Walker Evans' Appalachian poor showed up in their Sunday best to a Nazi rally.]

It addressed so clearly and simply so many things: how marginalized people instinctively understand that when those in charge say citizens, peace, freedom, our country, they are implicitly excluded, and that their exclusion simply does not occur to the dominant class (what people in social justice call being aware of "privilege." It doesn't mean being a spoiled brat, it refers to the advantages one has because of belonging to any dominant class [white, male, straight, rich, able-bodied, etc] even though one never asked for those advantages and one is usually completely unaware that they have those advantages at all. For example, having access to a computer. Or walking through a parking lot without the thought occurring to take precautions against rape. Or Hollywood always catering to your demographic. It's one of the most difficult social justice issues to explain, point out and accept, and Hunger Games did it effortlessly.) Husband remarked that when we left the theater the movie made real life seem more real.

Stanley Tucci as talk show personality Caesar Flickerman who hosts the pre-Hunger Games fanfare, sort of a cross between Regis Philbin and Oprah. Here he is in a fake ad for Smile Away toothpaste. If you think you're never seen this actor you're wrong. He's been in everything and is so amazing you don't even know it's him. The film used his character's TV show (or whatever it is in the future) to explore the way celebrity and glamor is used to distract, oppress and tell lies. It's a simulacrum in full sail (only MORE SO!!) and something that makes this movie much more modern and relatable than, say, 1984 or other classic socio-political dystopian sci-fi. [Image: a glamorous slick advertisement featuring the head and shoulders of a white man with blue pompadour in a frilly cravat and suit smiling a cheesy bright-white smile in front of a sparkling blue background that suggests flashbulbs or stage lights. Beside his head text reads, DAZZLING! DAZZLING! DAZZLING! and underneath is the photo of a toothbrush with the words Smile Away: Caesar Flickerman. There's more text but it's too small to read.]

*Can't wait to see what other ppl write about re: Hunger Games and racism, sexism, etc.

Edited a week later to add: Other people have, of course, written awesome stuff about Hunger Games. Here's some of what I couldn't wait to read about: s.e. smith's take at TigerBeatDown and Arturo R. García at Racialicious. 
I'm a little surprised that these writers who highlighted race and disability--and many other bloggers-- ignored the military implications of the movie. Sacrificing our teenagers to keep the entrenched hierarchies secure and treating war like entertainment we can all rally behind seems an obvious parallel. It made me think back to the Liz Miller piece I wrote and my ultimate conclusion about her Picturesque Evacuation Ploy installation (if you can make it that far into the post). Maybe everyone's just sick of writing about war?

Portrait March 20

This portrait is for a client so I'm only posting a detail. [Image: realistic black & white charcoal drawing of a dog showing only its eyes and pointed, perky ears].

Not A Gallery: #OccupyMuseums

For those unfamiliar with my other posts pointing out alternatives to the gallery system and generally griping about the art market, this guy will fill you in. His granddaughter recently found his lecture notes in a suitcase and published them, and Murdock Pemberton's complaints from the 1920s sound depressingly contemporary.

Because of the art market capitalism on display last week in NY, the Occupy Museums people decided to protest the New York Armory Show by inviting all NY artists to show up outside the Armory and exchange artwork with other artists, the Armory visitors and the public. They requested that artists eschew profit in order to trade or give away artworks. They posted a few videos of the embarrassing public nuisance event on their site [note to Trumpet Guy: you are not helping!]. I do enjoy an equitable artistic trade but it's often not worth the social risk, in terms of rejecting an offer of my own piece for a, frankly, far inferior piece of someone else's. Also bartering is still treating art as a physical commodity. Why not simply exhibit the work?

Mierle Laderman Ukeles performs "maintenance art" at a museum, 1973. [Image: black & white photo of a young white woman cleaning a glass case with a cloth.]

GAH.... I really want to be excited about #OccupyMuseums but they need to get their shit together and provide, or at least propose, some real alternatives to the for-profit gallery system. I mean really, they want me-- a broke artist-- to produce art at my own expense (time and money, no matter how you slice it), then show up on a cold street-corner and hawk it to strangers who don't appear to want it anyway? I can do basically the same thing at a gallery, plus indoor heating and personal safety.

I think the thing that really irks me about the #OccupyMuseums people is that they don't pay their respects to the decades of art activists, cooperative galleries, critics, scholars and communities that have already been exploring this issue, the institutional critiques of feminist performance artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles or curatorial artists such as Fred Wilson (Mining the Museum, 1992). No acknowledgement or building upon what has already been tried and suggested in terms of critiquing the gallery system. No only that but no critical, art historical recognition of art movements such as conceptual art that re-interpreted art as something other than a physical object to be traded or sold, or media such as video and computer-based or web-based art that are poised to operate completely outside the market of physical art objects. In fact the contemporary art world is bursting with artists, cooperatives, organizations and even gangs seeking to subvert, critique, re-invent, or obliterate the world of galleries, museums and the art market.

Detail of Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum (1992), showing "Metalwork: 1723--1880." [Image: photograph of a display of an ornate silver tea service with a pair of iron slave handcuffs.]

So after many of the greatest talents of the contemporary art world have devoted entire careers to the issue, why is #OccupyMuseums trying to reinvent the wheel? Because they are ignoring and dismissing the work already done, or because they never bothered to look into it in the first place before swooping in to rescue us all? Additionally, as Murdock Pemberton pointed out a century ago, artists tend to act individually while bristling at collective action, which makes the Occupy movement a particularly bad fit for the role of art intervention.

I would love to see #OccupyMuseums join with artists, connect the financial critiques of OWS with institutional critique, use their networks to educate and excite ordinary people and protesters about what artists are already doing today in this realm.

Nude Debate

I received my invitation to the 2012 Re-Nude show benefiting Planned Parenthood, which will be Wednesday, March 21 6:00pm -10:30pm at REDUX. I wrote about it last year here, here and here, and I can't wait!

[Image: flier for Re/Nude event. Reads, "Re/Nude: Celebrate the Body / Support Charleston Planned Parenthood." To the right and underneath the text are the silhouettes of a thin woman with longer hair showing outlines of her head, upper arms, hips and calves, in purple/pink. Resting in front of her shins is a reclining thin male silhouette showing outlines of his feet and legs, torso, arms and head, in coral pink/orange.]

Around the time I received my invite I read this post by Twisty Faster. To sum up, a young Egyptian woman named Aliaa Magda Elmahdy posted nude photos of herself on her blog as a big old Fuck You to the Salafis, who are a strict fundamentalist Islamic party that seems to have come out on top following the Arab Spring. Her actions, and the considerable risk she's taking, have sparked attention and controversy a few months ago in Egypt, the Western media and feminist blogs internationally. To support Elmahdy a group of Canadian feminists assembled a nude calendar featuring a "nude revolutionary" each month with the proceeds benefiting something-or-other related to Elmahdy's cause.

Twisty compares and contrasts the contexts of Egyptian and Canadian female nudity and questions the efficacy of a feminist nude calendar within the Patriarchy. To those unfamiliar with Twisty's blog she advocates a hard-line radical feminist rejection of Patriarchy-- that is, the system of dominance, objectification and hierarchy embedded in every element of our global society: misogyny, racism, classism, and so on. (Spoiler: she finds the Canadian nude revolutionaries ineffective at challenging Patriarchy).

Drawing of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy by The Corpse Debutante.

So when I go see the artistic representations of nudity at Re-Nude this March they will be on display in the context of the Patriarchy.  I will be viewing them as a feminist and an individual person but I will also be taking into account the context of the Patriarchy. And here is where I'm torn.

Being realistic about the limitations of empowerment through nudity in a Patriarchy, refusing to gloss over capitulation to the Patriarchy, refusing to pretend a nude portrayal of a woman exists outside our tradition of oppression, pornification and objectification, is a feminist act. However valuing my own experience and POV as a woman, learning to think outside the confines of Patriarchy, and really listening to other women is also profoundly feminist. In the context of nude art created with at least some input from women and shown in a gallery for the general public, I am stuck. Ambivalent. 

Not-A-Gallery, Continued...

A while back I wrote some posts that named several alternatives to galleries as a result of my frustration with the limited parameters of the traditional art market. At Bad At Sports, a down-to-Earth hipsto-blog about art, Nicholas O'Brien wrote about online galleries and what they are like, who they show and why, and how the spaces could be used. The comments are worth reading (!) at this google+ thread.

Portrait, Jan. 26

Yo Yo Guy. I saw this man in the park messing with a yo yo. He's a red-head so the amazing hair and mustache you see were bright pale orange. I considered asking him if I could draw his portrait but as usual I was chicken-shit, so I sat a few benches down and he immediately prepared to leave. I got a good look at him before he scooter-ed off and this is him, to the best of my recollection, finished with his yo-yo-ing business and pausing to squint into the sunset before revving the scooter engine. [Image: head and neck of a white man with curly hair and large handlebar mustache wearing glasses and squinting into the distance, lit from the side. He's drawn in black & white charcoal, realistic.]

The Female Voice

 Flavia Dzodan at TigerBeatDown posted an essay about Lana Del Ray and how she embodies the phase in most girls' lives when they yearn to be that pretty cool girl. Dzodan argues that despite criticism Del Ray has garnered from male music writers about her gender performance, there is nothing anti-feminist about expressing those feelings. I enjoyed the post as I always enjoy Dzodan's writing but I'm not wild about the trend of young feminist bloggers who go pour over pop music videos to extract potentially feminist "messages" for analysis. I'm all for analyzing pop culture but bloggers seem afraid to admit that when big producers pluck a youth from obscurity and spend thousands on a video of her writhing angrily in a couture onesie mouthing sexy lyrics to a song produced by men, there is no feminist message. "But her onesie has punk spikes on it! Her hair is in a faux-hawk! But now it's pin-up retro! She was just writhing around on a cross! What does it mean?" Nothing. It means some rich guy said to some other rich guy, "this will make us money." The feminist analysis could be better spent on how the public receives the video, on changing trends, industry shakeups, who gets ignored and why, that sort of thing.

But I digress.

What Flavia's post made me think is that people all have the same complaint about new pop singers on the scene: "She can't even sing." I seem to be squarely in the minority (as always) in enjoying unusual or raw female voices like Bjork, Missy Eliot, and Kim Deal while unable to appreciate Celine Dion, whose voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I don't usually hear this complaint about male singers, particularly with rock and hip-hop (Kanye West? can't sing. Jack White? can't sing. Not like American Idols, anyway. But I've never heard any complaints.). By the time the full weight of The Industry instructs the public to like a certain singer, they will like her. But the public isn't comfortable with that awkward in-between time when the rookie singer herself is saying, "like me." But that's not my main point either:

A male singer's voice symbolizes his expression, his intentions, his words. A woman's voice symbolizes her appearance. That's why a woman's voice must fit in the narrow box of pretty-sounding performance. She must be "a natural." She must preserve The Voice as she ages and not sound gravelly. The Voice must have a showy feminine range and look good naked sound perfect in a live acoustic performance. If she can't belt it out with the voluptuous strength of Christina Aguilera she may opt to emulate a pre-adolescent voice like Britney Spears (kinky!) or a lithe slender whisper like... well, Brandy is the most recent one to come to mind.

Portrait, Jan. 24

Husband driving at night. This was drawn in the dark in a moving vehicle. [Image: pen drawing, mostly contour, of the head ad shoulders of a man driving in profile on the left half of the page; on the right side is the steering wheel and dash board.]

Portrait, Jan. 23

My friend's cat, Jazz. Drawn while he was 'hunting.' [image: black & white pen drawing of the head and shoulders of a crouching cat sniffing a toy mouse. Somewhat realistic, thin dense lines.]

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. I don't intend for this blog to become a diary of my daily feelings-- thank God-- but I'm feeling kind of down lately. Nothing bad happened, I just feel like something bad happened. Anyway, there's a backlog of daily portraits to post-- even though, not even halfway through the first month, I failed at my daily portrait resolution for 2012, I still did them most days and am working on making up those I missed. I'm drinking plenty of water and leaving the house at least once per day (the backyard counts right?), so I should be better and back blogging again soon.

Portrait, Jan. 22

Jean Dujardin as OSS 117, drawn while watching OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. I'm a little disappointed with this one. [Image: black & white charcoal drawing of man showing his thighs upward, wearing a 1960's suit and tie and smoking. He has one hand in his pocket and turns to look back over his shoulder with one eyebrow raised. It is as cheesy as it sounds.]

It's a pretty fun movie. I remarked that the actor moves like a silent film comedian; turns out he just starred in a different film, The Artist, as a silent film actor. I wanted to see it in theaters but... this is Charleston. I'll just have to wait and Netflix it. Here's a clip from OSS 117.

Portrait, Jan. 21 Fran Lebowitz

Fran Lebowitz, by Ciana Pullen. Charcoal, 2012. You may reproduce this but only for noncommercial purposes and you must include easily visible accreditation (i.e. "Ciana Pullen") and a link to this blog. [Image: black & white charcoal drawing of middle aged white woman with short brown hair in a shoulder length bob wearing a winter scarf. She's viewed from the side and turns her head to look sidelong at the viewer. She looks inquisitive yet unimpressed.]

Look at these awesome photos of writer Fran Lebowitz:

Photo of Fran Lebowitz. I couldn't find the photographer or publisher, so let me know if you know who took this.

Fran Lebowitz for BBC2 "Building Sights." Couldn't find the photographer for this either, though it might be a film still.

Fran Lebowitz, photographed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, 1996.

Fran Lebowitz, by Jonathan Twingley. [Image: caricature of Lebowitz in black & white pen with a blue jacket. The proportions of her mouth are really exaggerated.]

The last is an illustration by Jonathan Twingley. I'll be checking his site daily now, as he as lots of awesome stuff up.

Holy crap.

This might be the dumbest link I have EVER posted. It also might be my favorite.

Just one example of what awaits you at the link. [Image: Claude Monet's "Haystack," a painting of a haystack in an empty field. Underneath the painting is shown again but a Photoshop artist has replaced the haystack with an orange cat licking its own butt in precisely the same shape as a haystack.]

Portrait, Jan. 20

Husband Watching Walking Dead. [Image: black & white charcoal drawing of head & shoulders of white man nearly in profile. He's lit from the front and slightly below, looking tense.]

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].

Portrait, Jan. 19

Portrait of my cat sitting under an arrangement of white Asian chrysanthemums and baby's breath in a spaghetti sauce jar. She hears my husband in the kitchen and suspects he might be doling out soft food but is not so sure that she's willing to give up her warm spot. She also cannot quite see over her own fat belly into the kitchen. She eventually got up and investigated, making this an extremely quick sketch. [Image: black & white pen sketch of a cat curled up under a flower arrangement, looking at something to the right out of frame. She sits partially behind a glass jar  full of flowers that are very quickly sketched.]

A photo of Kitty after she returned, disappointed, to her warm spot, sitting next to the drawing.

Portrait, Jan. 18

Tuppence, from Agatha Christie's Tommy & Tuppence. I'm actually pretty proud of this one. Caricatures are way harder than realistic portraits, IMO. I pressed "play" preparing to draw twenty or so cartoons till one looked passable, but shockingly I was happy with the first try. Of course, as soon as I realized I liked the face I overworked it. The other thing that made me happy is that her entire head and upper body fit comfortably on the page. I have a major problem with fitting everything I want onto the page, even if the page is five feet tall. I have to constantly remind myself, "keep it small." I have a drawer full of figure drawings where the head is cut off by the top of the page because I didn't leave room. Lessons learned: 1. When you've got a good cartoon line, leave it alone! Opposite of painting, where if you fall in love with something you've made, you must destroy it and re-work it. 2. Booze is an excellent preparation for loose drawing. [Image: black & white pen drawing of a white woman in a flowery dress, net lace gloves and a Sunday hat looking demure with her hands clasped and neck craned. The lines are quickly drawn and simple. Not very realistic.]

Portrait, Jan. 17

Portrait of my husband while he tells a story. [image: ink drawing of a white man's head with is forehead resting on his fist looking downward, viewed from slightly above. The lines are somewhat cartoony, made with a brush pen, but still somewhat realistic.

Welcome to the "Dark Side."

Scheming evil genius Brain (of Pinky & The Brain) spoofs Orson Welles' charismatic but deadly dishonest villain in The Third Man.*

 I asked for researchers to take a frank look at creativity and art a few months ago and it seems some "creativity researchers" have granted my wish. Please go read "The Dark Side of Creativity" by Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD over at Huffington Post.

These researchers found a correlation between creativity and dishonesty, so they designed a few more types of studies that would test the two in different ways and they continued to find the same correlation. I can point out what I think are some flaws in each of their studies but I thought they did a decent job of approaching the problem from a few different angles. Kaufman, reporting on the studies, names Bernie Madoff as an example of a creative and dishonest person. Commenter 'Bibulus' writes, "Newt Gingrich must be some sort of da Vinci," while commenter 'Pogo Bock' quips, "Well, that explains advertisin­g."

Jafar and Iago from Disney's Aladdin. Nearly everyone in the movie was wildly creative-- and dishonest. Except the sultan, a remarkably uncreative thinker who was actively trying to force his daughter into marriage and ignoring the seething masses of his starving subjects while living in a palace, who was portrayed by Disney as an honest man.

It was a relief to read something that doesn't glorify creativity. Usually it's portrayed as magical and fairy-like, an "inner child" of a liberated few, illustrated with multicolored hand-prints and "joyous" abstracted dancing figures. My guess is this happens because the Arts are always pandering for money. This imagery and narrative apparently appeals to the wealthy, so there you have it. Some people really don't get that the arts are worthwhile until you inundate them those sorts of commercials shown on National Public Television with the leaping multiracial children and bounding classical music. Apparently this is what we look like to those outside of the Art World.

But the commenters on HuffPo were not so pleased. Besides the two I quoted above (and with the exception of one or two high-strung religious wackos), most everyone was a writer, graphic designer, or some other creative type who was outraged that this sort of attack on creativity would be funded, studied and reported upon.

Heath Ledger as The Joker. I never really understood the character until Heath Ledger played him. In the cartoon and Jack Nicholson iterations he never did seem very funny, he just did humor-themed things, and he usually just tried to poison people over and over. His special villain-trait seemed to be creativity plus a clown fetish, basically. Heath Ledger's Joker's evocation of the chaotic nihilist nature of the Joke was ingenious.

Creativity, as I see it, is a neutral human trait, not an inherently positive one. You can apply creativity toward dishonesty or toward perfectly honest endeavors. You can also be a very inside-the-box thinker when it comes to both honesty and dishonesty.

This brings me to the definition of "dishonesty." Honesty, in terms of being a moral person, is mostly defined as acting in accordance with the common morals that one's society deems acceptable. But much of the dishonesty practiced by inside-the-box lock-step thinkers (or creative thinkers during uncreative moments) actually passes as "common sense," though not all common sense is dishonest. I believe credit card companies and collections agencies are dishonest, at least the more egregious ways they behave in recent years. Yet U.S. society more or less accepts that they are an ok part of an ok economic system. So one could put in an "honest" day's work as CEO of a credit card company that basically steals people's money.

This would be an example of uncreative dishonesty that would not stand out as dishonesty to many observers because it's not outside-the-box behavior. I think this lock-step uncreative mentality allows this society to get away with collectively telling some whoppers like, "racism and sexism were terrible, but they no longer exist today!" or "poor people just don't understand hard work or they'd be richer," or "abstinence education works" or "we're fighting for freedom-- money has nothing to do with it," or "it's ok to kill people in these circumstances," or everyone's adamant belief that their parents have never had sex, ever. A solid majority of people engage in at least some of these dishonest ideas and practices and do not stand out as particularly dishonest people because they're not creatively dishonest.

*You may have noticed I've illustrated this post using only fictional characters who are creative and dishonest. That's because they were all invented by artists. Even though creative types turned out in droves to whine in the comments about the study casting creativity in a bad light, clearly the "creative evildoer" is beloved by artists.