Tag: digital

You can get a really warped idea of what women are like from magazines. No one I know is anything like the type of woman that magazines – men’s or women’s -expect women to be or aspire to. I don’t know why that is or what that means.

There are lots of artists (from Artemisia Gentileschi to Sarah Lucas) who have made a point of messing around with the way women are popularly presented and perceived. I’m not sure I have much to contribute to that conversation but here are some drawings I made mostly based on photoshoots from fashion magazines. I’ve mixed feelings about these sorts of images. On the one hand, they’re just beautiful illusions, meant to be enjoyed and disposed of. On the other, women are not.

Like most of my generation, I’m tired of these stupid battles for equality (of gender, race, culture, sexuality) and feel like they should have been won years ago, so I’m seriously losing patience with anything that might be holding us back. Like these tiresome, vapid, slick, ubiquitous images that dehumanise and objectify women for no good reason. (You don’t have to make anyone feel inadequate just to sell clothes. People need clothes.)

Then again, I don’t know which is actually worse, the hyper-sexualised, etiolated, airbrushed girls in the glossies, or the sour, harrowed-looking creatures that inhabit those trashy “True Life” rags with headlines like “Psychic Goldfish Cured My Cancer” or “I Married a Wall”. It’s a pity there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. Where are all the real girls? 

Pencil sketches + colour added in Photoshop.