Good Bye

This is the last post I'm making on this blog. I won't be using it anymore.
The issues I've covered on this blog still exist. They're still prevalent. I know I can't do much to change your minds now about them but if you have the time please look more into these topics and try to follow them in the news. I'm certain they'll be prevalent for years and years because they're issues that most people don't want to deal with, or say they care about when they don't.

bye

Progress Post 2

Another progress post on my project! I just finished the print I will selling at the Symposium next week, All the proceeds for it will be going to the Girl Scouts of America because they help young girls form themselves into successful members of society. Here's the print:

The print will be 5 dollars and I can take debit/credit cards! (thank you phone credit card reader). That sounds like a plug because it is but I really want to help out the girl scouts! I'm also working on the display which will include tv shows that have good messages about women/good female characters!

Women in Media project progress

This project has been really interesting! It's strange to see how few positive female characters there are in the mainstream media. Especially in the news, I never realized how sexualized women in the news were until I started this project. I think something important though is how many of the articles I read demonized the stereotypical "strong women" trope in media. An example of this would be any of the characters from sucker punch. While it's obvious they're physically strong, they're all WAY sexualized and don't have much to them other than being a "strong female character". (Kate Beaton does a good job of summing up everything wrong with strong female characters). The biggest problem is that this is what producers and writers think of when they think of a "strong female character" when really when people ask for that they really just want better written women. Instead of a two dimensional character, people want women who are more than an idealized version of women. More realistic women are really important because they prove that women are super important and not just for men.

Recently Brown paper has been put up in order to cover all forms of visual art in the school. This is a result of funding being cut to the art program, and the elimination of an essential class in the cycle of art class. This happens at a lot of schools, however Deerfield is one where there is enough money to not be cutting arts classes. Especially after an $89 million dollar referendum was passed in the last year. 

Art 1 is a class that is essential in the art class process, the normal process being Art 1-->Drawing and Painting-->AP Art. Art 1 teaches techniques that are essential for the next several years of art. Intro to Art is the class taking place of Art 1. I'm not saying Intro is a horrible, awful class, but it doesn't give the same kind of preparation for the next steps of the art class process as Art 1. Intro is also a semester long course, which is one reason why it can't give that preparation. 

Art isn't valued at Deerfield. We have great art programs right now that do amazing work for kids and open doors. The major student body however doesn't really think of Art as that important from my experience. It's something that's "cool if you can do it" but it isn't valued. Many students have never been to R hall (the hall where most fine arts classes are. 

I don't want this to be taken as "I hate sports", I don't, I think they can be very good for people and can create great experiences. Art does the same. So, I don't see why one gets so much more over the other. There are more kids in sports, but 1)fine arts is a required course 2)it does the same thing for some kids that sports does for others. In our community/area we should have enough money to be able to fund the Fine Art programs, so why don't we?

More things about Art

Art is everywhere. Everything you use and wear is art, a lot of foods are art. But I feel like most people take horrible advantage of artists and what they do. A lot of companies out there today don't pay artists who work for them. A lot of people expect artists to work "just for exposure" because it's good enough to just "get your work out there". Here's a twitter account that collects tidbits about this from craigslist and other websites people look for artists on.  It's really horrible to see these kinds of things, but what's terrible is that our culture tells artists that's okay. We're told that to work for exposure is great because "art is so useless" and that there's no other way to get your art out there. If you tell people they should make art for free just to get themselves out there, other people think that's okay. And when they do pay artists, it can be SEVERELY underpriced. Most graphic artists (illustrators/animators) take commissions in high school/college and continue to take them even if they get a stable job. I've personally lowered my prices on my art before because I just wanted work, I wanted exposure. It goes back to what I said earlier, society and culture tells artists they should work just to get out there. I don't know why but it seems like for the past 30 or 40 years we've perpetuated a stereotype that artists need to just work up to being famous in the sense that their name is said in every household, or that your art will be worth something when you're dead. I guess to end this I just want to say, if you ever have to hire an artist in the future, pay them. Don't continue on this standard of "for exposure"ing/underpaying your artists.

I think one of the things bugging me the most lately has to deal with, big shock, issues of being Queer in our society! Just a quick little thing however, since I am a queer person, I can call myself queer! I can say the queer community, i can say i have queer friends. Personally however, I don't think queer as a label should be used by people who are heterosexual/cisgendered. Sorry, but the word has a history of being used derogatorily towards people who are queer. Also realize that there are parts of the community who don't use queer to identify or don't like to use it as a term, I personally use it because it's an easy term. NOW to the point I wanted to talk about!

Allies. Here at DHS our GSA (known here as SAGA) has done a lot of work with ally week and trying to promote being an ally for the Queer community. I'm really not...okay with this? Allies do matter, but they aren't the people who get to make all the decisions and have all the rights to speak for queer people. I really don't like the "we need straight people to help us because there's more of them" mentality that happens often in the queer community regarding allies. 

Sexual Assault

Reading all of these articles is just crushing, it's absolutely disgusting. The fact that all these stupid guys get away with raping someone is just deplorable. I say this because I'm addressing the fact that women are raped mostly by heterosexual men, I will not be talking about the rape of men because while it is an issue, it's not the more prevalent issue. I think the biggest problem I have with this whole subject is that people can attack the victim. That they would call her a slut or a bitch or claim she had to have been asking for it. The fact no one tells these boys that they can't rape women, they can't hurt women, and that women are told to watch their clothing, carry pepper spray, know self defense, not get drunk etc. is HORRIBLE. Why aren't we telling boys these things? It's no one's fault but theirs. It's time to cut men down (for clarification I'm not saying make them feel bad about themselves, I'm saying not teaching men that they are better than others), there are so many problems in our society including sexual assault rooted in men feeling the right to things. It starts early when we teach children that they have to fit into a gender role, and consequently teach girls that they equate to less than what boys do. Example: a boy and girl are playing together, imagine they're playing with a doll house. The boy would most likely be stopped and told that he should do something "for boys" like...well anything but do something "for girls". However flip it around, the girl is more likely going to be told it's okay if she's doing something considered "for boys". That's a problem!! We shouldn't be telling kids they're wrong for that!! Our society puts such a high price on being manly and masculine which leads to this horrible notion that boys can do a lot more than girls. "Boys will be boys" is probably one of the worst sayings I've heard and when little boys hear it over time they feel like they're invincible. A lot of rape cases wouldn't happen if we just stopped telling boys they're invincible, that their actions are excusable because they're boys, and started teaching them they should never resort to raping women for their own enjoyment.