Exploitation of the Female Form in Art and Poetry..!

The female form is a pervasive trope in both historical and contemporary visual art.

It is equated to a specific brand of frail, feminine beauty,

and often that beauty is the main focus of the artwork.

To capture that delicate beauty, artists use the isolated female form as a visual tool.

Although the females aren’t necessarily sexualized, they are still objectified.

Their bodies are depicted out of context, disembodied from any personality other

than their stereotypical femininity.

The same phenomenon occurs in poetry.

A quick skim over the most amateur of tumblr poetry unearths a laundry list

of overused body parts: skin, collarbone, rib, fingers.

Who owns these body parts? Is it the calloused skin of a tennis player’s palms?

Is it the sun-damaged skin of a middle-aged Asian woman?

No. In the context of recycled tumblr poetry, ‘skin’ refers to the pale,

unblemished skin of a young white girl. Let’s play this game again. Is the collarbone

from a marathon runner or a ballet dancer? Is it male or female? Is it strong or weak?

Earlier this year I used the word ‘clavicle’ in a poem, to which viperslang responded

with the comment, “finally a poem that employs the word “clavicle” masterfully.

” When I wrote the poem, I was hesitant to use the word because

I knew of its reputation of empty overuse.

But I used it anyway. Why? Because my poem was about dinosaurs

and fossils and LITERAL skeletons.

The clavicle I implied was mineralized and had the dull brown color

of something old that was dug out of the ground.

The clavicle wasn’t pretty or beautiful or gendered. In fact,

the clavicle was not really human—it belonged to an extinct dinosaur.

Does this make my word choice masterful? I don’t know,

but at least I used a word in a relevant context instead

of using it as a vague placeholder to exploit the female

form in a misguided effort to convey beauty.

Why would someone want to convey fragile beauty with the female figure?

One reason is to embody that beauty as their own.

The logic is that the delicateness of an artwork is the same delicateness

of the artist. Another reason involves conquest. In this scenario,

the artist labors to capture the elusive female form as a show of skill.

The artist perceives feminine beauty as a skittish deer,

and the artist dons the role of a hunter.

The first reason is typically executed by females,

and the second by males. Think about it.

Males don’t employ the feminine body to reference themselves.

They use it to reference an idealized female muse.

That muse can be a girlfriend or schoolboy crush or a woman

in a painting. In any case, the male exerts ownership over the muse through portrayal.

Here’s an example (note the possessiveness of the last line).

Here’s a canonical example by Shakespeare (again, look at the last line).

This does not mean that every work of art that uses the female

form has an inherently gendered or sexist agenda.

For example, Andy Warhol used Marilyn Monroe’s image

to criticize consumerism and mass media.

Warhol accomplished the exact same thing with a can of Campbell’s soup.

He exaggerated pop culture’s objectification to the point of absurdity

and used it as satire—Marilyn Monroe’s status as a woman was mostly irrelevant.

The female form can be remixed and overlapped with a variety of contexts

that don’t encourage exploitation, docility, or destructive gender norms.

It’s only problematic when the female form is disembodied

from any independent personality or context and is used to promote the idea

of a fragile female beauty, a beauty that women want to be and men want to own.

The next time you encounter an artist with the female form as a recurring theme

in his/her work, be suspicious.

Critically analyze the function of the feminine form.

What someone calls “celebration of the female body” can be thinly-disguised exploitation.

Then turn the lens on yourself and repeat.