Case of Spades

17th May 2012

Link reblogged from Escher Girls with 260 notes

The Emmers: Christopher Hart’s Drawing Cutting-Edge Anatomy: As long as her hips are wide and her stomach is flat. →

eschergirls:

iamdrawberry:

I came across the following image from Escher Girls, linked in the content source and a very worthwhile page to follow. The image is from Christopher Hart’s ‘Drawing Cuttin-Edge Anatomy’.

Allow me to highlight the key points of interest in the ‘instructions’;

Allow me to highlight the key points of interest in the ‘instructions’;

A large rib-cage is important in creating an attractive character, But you should omit the rib muscles. Trash ‘em. When a woman looks so defined you can see her rib muscles she doesn’t look strong, she looks starved.

Don’t give her super-defined abs, unless you’re purposefully trying to gross someone out.

While it could be argued the whole thing is one terrible paragraph of bullshit-and rightly so, I would like to focus on these two key points. They are the points in which the artist specifically calls a woman ugly, they are the points where he takes the female form in one of it’s many incarnations and discards it as unworthy-as too hideous to even consider putting into artwork. 

Remember, this man is teaching other’s what to draw-he’s teaching them what is ‘attractive’ and what is ‘ugly’. This is an artist who is presenting to other men that women who have defined rib muscles are starved, are anorexic looking, are unattractive and not worthy of emulating in art form. This is an artist who is presenting to women that their bodies are wrong, that their bodies are ugly and imperfect. 

He is telling men that women with defined abs, with tight stomachs, are hideous. He directly speaks to them that one of the many expanding forms of the woman’s body is ‘gross‘-don’t even bother trying to draw that slop! He is directly speaking to women that her defined body is unsavory. That what she was naturally born with or work so hard to achieve is flat out disgusting. He is telling women that their bodies are unworthy of emulation into an artistic medium. 

This is completely, utterly, and unequivocally, unacceptable. 

Having a preference for the form one draws in not a crime, finding beauty in the particular shape of the body is not wrong.What is wrong is to tell an audience that your opinion is not only correct-but the only way to follow. What is wrong is to look at one of the many ever-changing forms of the female body and point to it with disdain and deem it unworthy. What is wrong, above all else, is to twist the female form into your own pleasures and transform women into inanimate pieces of meat made solely for the purpose of fitting into your desires. 

This is not an instruction on bettering ones craft, it is the desecration of a woman’s body. It’s an insult to art, it is an insult to male artists who appreciate and feature multiple shapes and characteristics of the woman’s body, it is an insult to every woman that walks into his field of vision. 

It’s shameful, pure and simple.

Excellent commentary!  And you’re very right, his platform is as a teacher, so this isn’t even a covert thing where we’re saying the media is conveying a certain message about beauty standards, this is overt.  He’s saying very clearly that certain body types shouldn’t be portrayed because they’re, in his opinion, ugly.  It’s both shameful and shaming. 

Source: eschergirls