Don't you feel eyes moving over your body?

April 11, 2016 11:03 AM

“The concept of male entitlement is represented by male arms and hands performing a variety of actions that are overwhelming intrusive on her body and her life. In each situation she maintains a blank expression, a visual choice that demonstrates how conditioned we as women have become to accept this atmosphere as excusable and even normal.” -- Boundaries, from photographer Allaire Bartel.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering (19 comments total)

Her follow-up is interesting in its discussion of race and some of the background of the models.
posted by amanda at 11:25 AM on April 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah, the "Aftermath" followup is great
posted by timdiggerm at 12:05 PM on April 11, 2016

Wow, yes, the follow-up is great, but so sad she had to write that.
The photos are so striking.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2016

Wow, thank you for linking the follow-up, amanda--I had the same "wait what" reaction on race grounds that it looks like a lot of people did, especially in respect to the yoga studio photo.

The photo series paints the picture of a “day in the life” of one woman, and since only one woman is shown in the series, her skin tone cannot change from photo to photo. Additionally, while Erin is pale, she is mixed race (African-American/Caucasian) and in her words upon reading some of these comments: “Wow, sorry I don’t look black enough for you” and “I can’t help how pale I came out compared to my brother and sister.” Sure, she “reads” white, but please remember that there are real people with real histories behind this project. Additionally, what if the one woman in the project had been a race other than Caucasian? Would it be seen as a commentary on sexism or as more of a commentary on women of that particular race?

I'm sort of conflicted about this, because while that context definitely exists... well, there's no way for us as humans to pick it up from the information presented in the photos by the parts of the models presented to us. The models are completely divorced from context, and in light of that it's really not unreasonable to read Erin as white. We don't have any other cues about her racial identity except those presented in the image itself.

Even though the artist didn't intend to invoke the history of racial tensions in the USA, especially the history of fears about black men raping white women used as an excuse to severely persecute black men... and even though the models she used were a mixed-race (but very white-looking) woman and a (dark-skinned) Indian man... well, to me, the image divorced of those context cues is somewhat problematic anyway. It's not enough to not intend to invoke that history in your art; you have to actually not invoke it or at least defuse it in some way if you do invoke it. I found her explanation about why race isn't a factor in these photos to be more than a little defensive and not entirely convincing.
posted by sciatrix at 12:55 PM on April 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

Some of the criticism could have been diffused with more photos, but I guess if the worst criticism is "There should have been more," then you have a successful project.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:03 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was actually quite put off by the follow-up. I think she has some good points, especially about the fact that these are real people--and her friends, not professionals. But her points were undercut by her defensive stance and complaints about people trying to "push an agenda."

There was very little self-reflection in it. It was all about how she didn't do anything wrong, and the tone was very superior, let me show you just how wrong you are. My model isn't even white! Don't you feel bad for making assumptions?

I'm not saying she should automatically agree with all criticism, but I would have found it much more compelling if she had considered it more even-handedly. Her defense of the work is all about the background--who the models are, what the process is--but that's not what the viewer sees. We don't have access to that, and there are legitimate questions to ask about how, in the absence of that information, the viewer can or should interpret the images, and how the images fit into a larger cultural pattern.

For example, we don't know that one of the models had to quit, and while that model has some very interesting things to say about the project, it doesn't actually change the final project itself.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:06 PM on April 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I was also very disappointed in the followup. This part

Additionally, what if the one woman in the project had been a race other than Caucasian? Would it be seen as a commentary on sexism or as more of a commentary on women of that particular race?

calls out our tendency to read white people as ethnically neutral and then... defends it? I mean, you can go that route if you want, but it doesn't do anything to alleviate the concerns of people who are attuned enough to racial concerns to be calling you out on this sort of thing. (Also, the woman in the project is a race other than Caucasian, you just got through saying that in the previous sentence. You can't use that as a defense and ALSO use "We had to use a white person because otherwise we wouldn't benefit from the appearance of neutrality.")

Racial discrimination is a very serious issue, but trying to pull an issue into every situation you can without fully researching/understanding the situation cheapens the discussion and ultimately appears as though you are promoting your own agenda.

Yuck.

On preview, yeah, it's the defensiveness that's a turnoff. I think the bit about how they had to scramble to find hand models is explanation enough, coupled with the stuff about it being a personal project that she didn't mean to go viral. The rest makes it painfully obvious that she hasn't thought about it in a broader racial context and doesn't want to.

That said, I saw this a while back (in fact I could have sworn it was here, but I guess not?) and thought it was really striking and powerful, particularly the breakfast one and the bar one. I think the former speaks for itself but I don't know why the bar one jumps out at me... maybe because sitting at a bar like that (even sans random creepy hands) makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:15 PM on April 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

"calls out our tendency to read white people as ethnically neutral and then... defends it? I mean, you can go that route if you want, but it doesn't do anything to alleviate the concerns of people who are attuned enough to racial concerns to be calling you out on this sort of thing. (Also, the woman in the project is a race other than Caucasian, you just got through saying that in the previous sentence. You can't use that as a defense and ALSO use "We had to use a white person because otherwise we wouldn't benefit from the appearance of neutrality.")"

It's an argumentum ad absurdum — the woman is a race other than Caucasian, but the project is not being read as a statement grounded in her non-Caucasian racial identity.

"Even though the artist didn't intend to invoke the history of racial tensions in the USA, especially the history of fears about black men raping white women used as an excuse to severely persecute black men... and even though the models she used were a mixed-race (but very white-looking) woman and a (dark-skinned) Indian man... well, to me, the image divorced of those context cues is somewhat problematic anyway. It's not enough to not intend to invoke that history in your art; you have to actually not invoke it or at least defuse it in some way if you do invoke it. I found her explanation about why race isn't a factor in these photos to be more than a little defensive and not entirely convincing."

But that's one shot out of five. Arguing that this one shot, because of historical narratives, makes the project problematic is fairly weak, unless "problematic" is itself also a weak term (which it can be, e.g. Ewoks argument). And, contra sunset in snow country, reasserting the normative bias of reading light-skinned people as white in order to reaffirm the argument of it being "problematic" is itself "problematic."

While an artist has some responsibility to recognize what an audience is likely to bring to a piece, the audience also has a responsibility to examine their reactions, especially if more context comes to light. A lot of the comments here seem to simply double-down on their initial reading, and seem irked that the artist would be "defensive" about what she feels is an unfair misconstruing. But again, the "problematic" image is one out of five. Concentrating on that to the exclusion of the other work seems, at best, to be acknowledging that the message of the other pieces in the series is so clear that there's no real room for comment on it.
posted by klangklangston at 1:58 PM on April 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't know why the bar one jumps out at me... maybe because sitting at a bar like that (even sans random creepy hands) makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.

That image stood out to me too, for that reason and because the hands are less readily visible than in the other images; it takes a split second more to register them and it's startling. I think it's the strongest in the series (also triggering as fuck; I'm not surprised that one of the models dropped out of the project).
posted by thetortoise at 3:01 PM on April 11, 2016

Yes those hands at the bar are probably the creepiest, even if less obviously threatening than the ones in the kitchen scene, that makes me feel the hands on my throat just looking at it, brr.
They’re all so unsettling in different ways - like the yoga pose, my mind first registered the arms and hands as the hands of the yoga teacher helping her in position, before realising what the upper hand is doing. It’s still sort of creepy-yoga-teacher to me, taking advantage to let his hands wander while he’s supposedly helping you stretch your body in the correct pose. Yuck. It’s so vivid. And the blank face and use of colours and lights is so effective. I am not sure I feel triggered (yeah ok a bit but not in an awful way), I sure can’t get the pictures out of my mind. I’ve never seen anything convey the idea as effectively as this.

Incidentally I didn’t even pay attention to the darker skin colour of the creepy-yoga-teacher arms and hands other than to notice how they almost seem to slide out of the brick wall background and how that sort of made a bit it less instant for me to notice what they were doing and how it all fits in the composition and makes it all stick in my mind. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind until reading it here that that photo could be read as implying stereotypes about race. Even now, it doesn’t really stand out from that point of view in the series of photos, unless I make an effort to read that stereotype into it, but it feels out of place to even try and do that because the story of the photos is so obviously another one.

I don’t know, it’s just weird to me to imagine reading anything else into it other than creepy-yoga-teacher, coming after creepy office colleague, creepy breakfast man (is it a boyfriend? husband? a lover? a flatmate?) and creepy street arse-fondler lurking in the shadows.

It doesn’t matter whose hands they are, they are male hands and arms creeping out of corners in a way that’s between realistic and surreal, almost violent and almost comic at the same time, unsettling and comforting - the comfort of seeing something so uncomfortable made so recognizable, she captured that ickiness and strangeness of being groped so perfectly, that feeling of disconnect with your body when a hand that is not supposed to be there lands on it. That blank face, perfect.
posted by bitteschoen at 4:23 PM on April 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

The rest makes it painfully obvious that she hasn't thought about it in a broader racial context and doesn't want to.

I think that's probably a fair reading of her defensiveness. It's hard to tackle sexism, domination, power plays, race, historic subjugation, our reading of skin color, our perceptions of beauty and sexuality all in one piece. Looking through her photos, another thing that jumped out at me was the attractiveness of the model. Attractive is another "neutral." If she had used someone with less conventional beauty, it would have seemed more political, a different statement. This model is neutral – attractive but not unapproachably so, white but with some other features which may or may not read on a spectrum of ethnicity, neither too young (pedo) or too old (ick). She is as neutral as she can be in a white dominant, typical Western culture context.

I actually thought the kitchen one was the least effective because hands on throat are not ambiguous. Her expression is also a little too blank. For me, it would be more effective if she had a more casual, slightly canted stance and almost looked like she was listening to someone in the other room do the morning chit-chat thing. This one feels a little forced and a little too on-the-nose. But, I think as a whole grouping they say something and make me think.
posted by amanda at 4:58 PM on April 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

What's great about the bar one and the yoga one is that these are contexts where we might say, "Hey, you're a woman in this space/doing this activity, what do you expect?" but when we see what it is like we can acknowledge that this is creepy and isn't right and is very uncomfortable. In an office, well, we know that is absolutely over the line. Get strangled while making eggs? Way over the line. But those other scenarios? You can just hear the crowd murmuring about "grey areas."
posted by amanda at 5:06 PM on April 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

Subtle as a sack of hammers.
posted by jpe at 5:12 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Did it need to be subtle, jpe?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:24 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

jpe: "Subtle as a sack of hammers."

I dunno. In some respects I thought it was a very subtle piece. The first three photos are sledgehammers, and they set up an expectation that the bar scene violates. Here's my inner monologue when looking at the first four photos for the first time:

"Okay, right ... hands around the throat in the kitchen, weird grabbing at yoga, creepy hands in the office ... yeah, it's all very gross but kind of heavy handed ... wait, this one is just a woman sitting at the bar this is totally ordinary why is that even a thin- HOLY SHIT THERE ARE TENTACLE HANDS RISING UP FROM THE FLOOR WTF ARGH MAKE IT STOP"

And that's more or less my experience of male privilege right there. It's easy to think that I know what sexism means, and maybe 75% of the time I actually do. The other 25% of the time I'm utterly clueless. Sometimes I'm blind to the situation because I'm complicit: I engage in terrible behaviour without realising it. At other times I'm blind because the awful behaviour is something that I'd never ever consider doing myself and so it never occurs to me that other men do. Either way, I end up very blind to a real problem that women face until someone calls my attention to it.

In the bar scene, the way in which you get set up for the double-take really hammers home how vulnerable women can be in a public setting, something that I genuinely struggle to remember in everyday life. Before seeing the tentacle hands, I parsed the scene as a woman having a pleasant evening hanging out at a bar. Totally innocuous, safe and normal. It didn't occur to me to perceive her as vulnerable - public spaces are safe spaces, in my world. But that's not how a lot of my female friends describe the world, and after seeing the hands that's no longer how I parse the bar scene either. All of a sudden my attention is drawn to the fact that she is alone. My attention is called to how very exposed she is physically in that tiny dress, something that I entirely glossed on my first inspection of the scene. And so on. On second inspection it is a very different situation, and much more terrifying.
posted by langtonsant at 7:19 PM on April 11, 2016 [9 favorites]

If this is supposed to be a feminist expression, if it's supposed to be in part a critique of the male gaze, why does the subject need to be so perfectly made up, even ostensibly in the morning in her bathrobe cooking breakfast?? "Routine daily situations" my ass. No one I know puts on a full face of makeup before eating breakfast at home. I'm really flurking sick of the constant choice to show women in obvious, perfect makeup even when they're in bed about to go to sleep, have just woken up, are crying, etc.

That, combined with the aforementioned discomfort about the racial implications, means that I really just can't appreciate this work. It comes off as hypocritical, lecturing the audience about feminist values without actually embodying those values itself.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 2:23 AM on April 12, 2016

I read the makeup as part of the expectation. Women are expected to be made up all the time, women are expected to just live with the constant intrusions. YMMV.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:21 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sometimes a piece is about gender and nothing else. Intersectionality demands that considerations of gender always include considerations of race, but pieces about race are rarely taken to task for not appropriately conveying the struggles of women.

This is not even remotely true. Intersectionality isn't a rule that someone just made up to be "PC," it's an acknowledgment of the reality that a piece cannot possibly be about gender alone or race alone, even if that's what the artist intends, because even in an attempt to be "neutral" you're still saying something (as we see here). I am always happy to call out people who talk about race without considering feminism, albeit mostly in Asian (and white) contexts because I don't feel it's my place to do it in black communities. (Black women do a fine job of it from what I can see.) But even if it were true, "anti-racists crap on women, so I should get to crap on people of color" is not a productive attitude, particularly if you're a woman of color who gets it from both sides.

I do not think the artist should be castigated. I didn't have a negative reaction to the original photoset, perhaps because of my own privilege, but like I said, I think her explanation about struggling to find models is totally sufficient - it was a personal project, it wasn't meant to be all things to all people. But the writeup goes the extra step of alienating me when I wasn't upset in the first place. It's really too bad that someone who has created such a thought-provoking piece that is able to teach visceral truths about sexism to so many (like langtonsant above - great comment!) seems herself unwilling to learn.

Agree about the makeup, I thought it was another manifestation of patriarchy.

It's funny that no one is responding to the eggs one the way I am. I think what does it for me is her expression. If she were actually choking, yeah, it would be unsubtle and way over the line. But the neutral look on her face makes me think that the hand isn't actually strangling her, it's just maybe squeezing a little, reminding her, "I am here, I control you." To me it's not about literal domestic violence, but just the metaphorical hand of the patriarchy reaching into the frame and subjugating you while you make breakfast in your full makeup. Shivers.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:47 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

The hand on her neck could also be something sexual, or intended as sexual, not strangling, not wanting to hurt her, just, another inappropriate out of bounds sexually charged form of groping. I think you can read it either way - of course, each of us can read different things into the photos.
posted by bitteschoen at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2016