The Oppression of Graphic Design
From a letter in today’s Emerald, “Poster exemplifies need for respect for women“:
As I walked across campus today, I noticed that the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is celebrating its new remodel and expansion with (among other things) a large billboard of a piece of artwork by Agustin Bejarano. The painting, called La Coqueta VII (Mujer Embarazada), depicts a side view of a heavily pregnant woman sitting on a stool. [Picture of the painting]
It’s a beautiful picture, which has also been featured on the cover of the most recent edition of the Eugene Weekly. And if I hadn’t seen it on the cover of the Weekly, I never would have noticed that the JSMA’s billboard crops out the woman’s stomach entirely. It’s as if it has been cut off – the billboard ends at the woman’s breasts.
To some, this may not seem like an issue. To me, it is a crystallization of how our culture views women, pregnancy and reproduction in general. In a society that has embraced abstinence-only education, that often views pregnancy and childbirth with embarrassment and disgust, and that frequently deconstructs images of women into individual body parts in movies, magazines and advertisements, it should really come as no surprise that the JSMA has censored the image of a woman blooming with life, fertility and power.
Projecting much? I mean, really, which is more likely: “I think this picture is more aesthetically pleasing cropped like this,” or “This woman is too full of ‘life, fertility and power,’ so I will crop her big pregger-belly out.”
