Dear Feminist Auntie,
I get upset every time I read an art magazine. Some of them are full of naked women. Old art, new art. It doesn't matter. Mostly the articles are about men doing men's things that men who want to get women write. Or that men who want to be liked by other men write. I guess this is called advertising?
Women write some of the articles about how great men are. What is that?
Aunt Agony, how can I overcome my anxiety and enjoy reading about art by men more?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Canadian art magazine gender stats (A random check of Sept 17, 2009 websites for the most recent issue)
These art journals represent women artists and writers only half as often as men:
BORDER CROSSINGS magazine, Winnipeg
Authors (female 12, male 24)
Subjects (female 11, male 20)
CANADIAN ART magazine, Toronto
Authors (female 3, male 7)
Subjects (female 6, male 17)
GALLERIES WEST magazine, Calgary
Authors (female 22, male 4) (some of the women wrote several articles)
Subjects (female 12, male 21)
This art journal could represent women artists more equitably by getting women to write about them:
FUSE magazine, Toronto
Authors (female 5, male 5)
Subjects (female 2, male 5)
This art journal seems to be equity savvy:
FILLIP magazine, Vancouver
Authors (female 6, male 7)
Subjects (female 5, male 4)
Gentle Reader,
May we respectfully inquire as to whether you are from Mars? Assuming the very best of them, only extra-terrestrials could feel this discrimination so keenly. We earth-bound women live with an infinite variety of pernicious methods that keep us from achieving, or even of aspiring to, orbit. In short, we let it be. This is just one of the many amusing ways we can appreciate fine art's pornographic context.
Perhaps all the souls from Planet Female just given up. Perhaps, if we are very very Excellent Dutiful Women, surely some day someone will laud our merits in an art rag? Ah, the fateful question: What comprises dutiful? Is it in baring one's breasts for the men who make art and for the men who write about it? Is it befriending other women who do this so some of their gold dust sprinkles our foreheads? Perhaps, on further cogitating, it is the ruling gender that might enjoy a long overdue rocket launch to the outer reaches of the Milky Way
Post a Comment