What is Freedom if you are Female?

After Dana Pedersen (1) came and spoke to our class I had to really look at what freedom means. Our freedom is only as good as our individual options and the choices we make based on those options.

As far as we, as females (white or black) have come, there is still quite a distance to travel. Women can vote. We can own property. We can have a good job.

But we still aren't men. We don't get paid as much for the same position. We continue being viewed as sex objects and are identified as such daily in advertising and across the board in the entertainment industry. We are raising up our daughters in a society where Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilara are role models as they roll around a floor half naked.

As our options increase (and they do daily) with education and people like Dana Pedersen to remind us not to be blinded by all the glitz, we need to stand as individuals in our homes, in our jobs, in our churches, and in our communities. We need to be involved in politics locally and globally.

We have a voice... our small voice gets louder when a second voice chimes in and becomes a choir to be reckoned with as each individual joins. Continue the fight, ladies! Educate yourselves and your children and then let your voice be heard!

(1) Dana Pedersen - Speech Instructor at West Georgia Technical College (http://www.linkedin.com/in/danamp)

Letter from the Queen of Drama

I'm not angry or even upset. I'm sad. I feel like that Mellencamp song when he said that life goes on even after the thrill of it has gone.

All the good and wonderful is a memory for me, except to live vicariously through others. Love and passion passed... There was a time you wanted to be with me the thought of time without me there -- within your reach to stroke my hair or touch my hand left you empty -- Maybe not, but you did used to make me feel that way.

Now when you are lonely you look elsewhere
Your beautiful words assigned to other, unknown faces or names from your long past.

I feel used... like a comfortable but dirty sneaker that's kept in the back of the closet and brought out not because you want to bring it out but because it's there and you need tennies for a moment.

I want to feel alive and vibrant.
I want to shine and see my reflection in eyes of love looking back at me.

I feel like my only worth these days is in what I can do to take care of others' mundane needs...I could be replaced by a robot.

I realize there's nothing you can do... I keep trying to figure out what it was that Dee had or did to hold the key to your heart so tightly in her grasp all these years.. Jeanne in some sick form of condolence reminds me often that it's not my fault that you will never get past your love for her and just aren't capable of loving me. I'm really not sure how that's supposed to make me feel better...

I'm also not sure how to let go of my love for you. Sometimes it feels so intense I'm surprised that I don't just spontaneously combust.. I've been in love before, but I never gave everything I am to anyone before or since you came into my life. It feels symbiotic... Like an addiction that is just going to feel like I'm dying as I come down, but ultimately I'll be whole when it's said and done...

I can take solace and find beauty in this tragic heroine that I've become. It's an amazing romance with a breathtaking end... Unrequited love and all that... Perfect really --
For a drama queen like me

Finding My Inner David

I dreamed last night
Not my normal dream
Though it started the same

Light dancing through the trees
Flora and fauna dressed in spring’s best
And there I stand in the flickering spot light
Moving to the cadence of the cicadas
An inviting breeze lifts the hem of my skirt
The gauze only slightly lighter than my spirit

But change is in the air
It hangs heavy leaving the sour salt on my tongue
The breeze turns into a wind that no longer suggests,
But pushes me in a direction that I do not want to go

There is a bridge...
I know I must cross…
I am no longer prodded but at the same time I realize
There are no options…
I can no longer stay here…
Digging my heels in like a mule
Would only prolong the pain that comes with growth

So I move…
I take a moment to glance at my reflection in the water below
I know that those are my eyes staring back at me,
But the rest is unrecognizable
As if I had commissioned Picasso for my portrait
It seems in constant flux and changes with every shift of the wind

I see no one else
And yet know that I am not alone

The first few steps are tentative,
But I am finding strength and power
As I place my left foot in front of my right
And then again

Morning breaks
I can see a light just beyond the hill
That stands firm like Goliath in front of me

I bend to find a smooth flat stone…

Our Virgin of the Guadalupe

She can be found just about anywhere and in about any form!

Chalice

Women, throughout history have been compared to a chalice. There have been sexual ties to a woman being a receiving vessel or spiritual connotations, as in the holy grail.

Here is my take on my being a cup...

I am a chalice...
More
.... For I shall not stagnate as water in closed chambers
I shall move
As a stream
That denies the world's gravitational powers
And flows
To eminent ground

Rubberband

God, perhaps in nervous state, has picked up a high-strung habit.
He takes created life and plays
Unconscious He could snap it
And here I am
A rubberband
My life too far extended
I could bounce back
But maybe not
And if I break
Can I be mended?

Susan G Komen's Race For The Cure

This is a logo I created to help promote Susan G. Komen's Bicycle "Race for the Cure" for breast cancer!

It's Pat - Saturday Night Live

Chaz Bono on Dancing with the Stars

There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding ABC's decision to include Chaz Bono as a contestant on the popular show, "Dancing With the Stars." It seems the biggest issue is that the network, time slot, and demographic is aimed at the nuclear family. The fact that Chaz (previously known as Chastity Bono, famous and adorable daughter of Sonny and Cher) is a transgender and considers himself a man concerns many because they feel it might encourage impressionable youth to make the same decision and change their current sex.

(I am continuing to research this and will also update as this continues to be in the news)

Women In and Of Modern Art

Up until the 19^th century, for the most part, women were depicted in art as images of beauty.  Ancient representations of women in artistic form gave us ideal and abstracted visualizations of fertility and motherhood.  The Renaissance repeated themes of religious iconography.  With the dawn of Modernity and the age of Industrialization came changes that affected the daily life of men, but maybe even more so for women.  Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”  Either way, transformation was evident in life and art as the 1800s became the 1900s.    

 Photography was a huge catalyst in the changing views of art itself.  Many artists wanted “to achieve a special kind of optical veracity.”[1] Some artists feared that the rise of photography would take away a big part of their revenue.  They felt that portrait painting would not be as much in demand and wanted to move away from realism to differentiate their work from a photograph.   A great example of this is in “Grand Odalisque”, painted in 1814 by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres.  Although much of this piece is photo-realistic, the woman herself is idealized with her elongated back and limbs that are obviously not in proportion to the rest of her body.  

Edgar Degas’ images of ballerinas are heavily influenced by photography with his interesting angles and perspectives.  He cuts into the images much like a photograph would be cropped.  He captures a moment.  The dancer may be bent over with her back to the viewer, retying her slipper or adjusting her costume.  But Degas’ work is not realistic.  His paintings are emotional and impressionistic.  You can see the brushstrokes.  There is an obvious lack of detail in their faces.

There are a few examples of women artists prior to the mid 1800s, but not many.  Industrialization allowed for something that up until this time was almost unheard of, free time.  It created a middle class.  Many women found that they actually had time on their hands and pursued the arts themselves.  For the first time, women were depicting women in art.  Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot showed us their impression of women at work and play.  Suzanne Valadon painted her version of Grand Odalisque, “Blue Room” in 1923.  Valadon kept the pose and the Oriental fabric, but this woman’s body is facing her audience.  She is fully clothed.  She is not idealized, in fact, is overweight, smoking a cigarette, and reading books (not your stereo-typical, dumb blonde).  Paintings of and by women during the Impressionistic movement are about emotion, color, and light. 

Around the turn of the century another movement is taking shape.  Marcel Duchamp, also influenced by photography, is one of many artists studying the human body in motion.  He painted his first version of “Nude Descending a Staircase” in 1911.   Gone are the soft curves, light, and even the color that we typically associate with woman.  This nude looks more like a machine.  The lines are geometric, angular, and sharp.  Duchamp did not consider himself part of the Cubist movement, but its influence can definitely be seen in his work. 

Many modern artists seem to be fascinated by prostitutes; it may have just been that many of them were available as models at the turn of the 20^th century.  Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” was considered shocking for its time.  The focal point of our attention isn’t nude, she is naked.  Her brazen stare makes the viewer feel embarrassed to have happened upon this intimate scene.  Manet likes that reaction and recreates it in his reclining prostitute, “Olympia”.   “Pink Nude” was the fauvist version painted by Matisse.

What Manet and Matisse presented with what could be called a sense of humor, other artists took more seriously.  Pablo Picasso’s renditions of prostitutes aren’t as flattering as others we have seen.  Considered a co-founder of the Cubist movement, Picasso paints hideous distortions of the female body.  One almost gets a sense of disdain when looking at “Les Damoiselles d’Avignon” or “Three Women”.  But Picasso does not hate women.  His work was to be an allegory about the dangers of sex.  Earlier sketch book versions of Les Damoiselles d’Avignon had the “five female nudes appear with two clothed male figures.  Picasso later identified the clothed figure entering from the left and pulling back a curtain as a medical student and the clothed figure seated at the centre as a sailor”[2].  This was a social statement about sexually transmitted diseases.  Spectators beware.  

One of the biggest influences at the onset of the 20^th century was World War I.  Art created by men and women represented the chaos, destruction, and despair of the times.  Surrealism was begat from the ashes of Dadaism which was a movement directly associated with the war.  Despite many celebrated female artists associated with Surrealism, the movement as a whole took a less than positive perspective when it came to women.  Female artists, like Meret Oppenheim, used the movement to portray a new found sexual freedom, as in her piece called “Object (Fur Breakfast)”.  But male artists were using it as a terrain to project “their erotic desires and psychic fears"[3].

.  Women are not always pretty and not always monsters.  On a daily basis, we probably find ourselves somewhere in between.  But in art, we have come full circle.  Women are equally represented in music, dance, literature, sculpture, and painting.  We are portrayed by ourselves and our male counterparts, not only as mythological and beautiful creatures, but as we truly are, real women.

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[1] H.H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield, History of Modern Art:  Sixth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., Publishing as Prentiss Hall, 2010 ) 17.

[2] Christopher Green, Picasso’s Les Damoiselles d’Avignon (London:  Cambridge University Press, 2001) 5.

[3] History of Modern Art, 339.

Do It Like a Dude!