carrum-blog

[carrum-blog]

my dreams

[carrum-blog]

I__

[carrum-blog]

quotes on forced self-objectification and autosexuality of women

In her book Femininity and Domination, Sandra Bartky uses Marx’s theory of alienation to explain the objectification that results from women’s preoccupation with their appearance. A feature of Marx’s theory of alienation is the fragmentation of the human person, this ‘splintering of human nature into a number of misbegotten parts’. For Marx, labour is the most distinctively human activity, and the product of labour is the exteriorisation of the worker’s being. Under capitalism, however, workers are alienated from the products of their labour, and consequently their person is fragmented (Bartky 1990, 128–9).

Bartky believes that women in patriarchal societies also undergo a kind of fragmentation ‘by being too closely identified with [their body]… [their] entire being is identified with the body, a thing which… has been regarded as less inherently human than the mind or personality’ (Bartky 1990, 130). All the focus is placed on a woman’s body, in a way that her mind or personality are not adequately acknowledged. A woman’s person, then, is fragmented. Bartky believes that through this fragmentation a woman is objectified, since her body is separated from her person and is thought as representing the woman (Bartky 1990, 130).

Bartky explains that, typically, objectification involves two persons, one who objectifies and one who is objectified. (This is also the idea of objectification put forward by Kant as well as by MacKinnon and Dworkin.) However, as Bartky points out, objectifier and objectified can be one and the same person. Women in patriarchal societies feel constantly watched by men, much like the prisoners of the Panopticon (model prison proposed by Bentham), and they feel the need to look sensually pleasing to men (Bartky 1990, 65). According to Bartky: ‘In the regime of institutionalised heterosexuality woman must make herself ‘object and prey’ for the man. … Woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal Other’ (Bartky 1990, 73). This leads women to objectify their own persons. Bartky argues that the woman ‘[takes] toward her own person the attitude of the man. She will then take erotic satisfaction in her physical self, revelling in her body as a beautiful object to be gazed at and decorated’. Such an attitude is called ‘narcissism’, which is defined by Bartky as the infatuation with one’s bodily being (Bartky 1990, 131–2).

In being infatuated with their bodily beings, Bartky argues that women learn to see and treat themselves as objects to be gazed at and decorated, they learn to see themselves as though from the outside. Narcissism, as Simone de Beauvoir also points out, ‘consists in the setting up of the ego as a double “stranger”’ (Beauvoir 1961, 375). The adolescent girl ‘becomes an object and she sees herself as an object; she discovers this new aspect of her being with surprise: it seems to her that she has been doubled; instead of coinciding exactly with herself, she now begins to exist outside’ (Beauvoir 1961, 316) (For more on Simone de Beauvoir, see the entry ‘Simone de Beauvoir’.) However, this ‘stranger’ who inhabits women’s consciousness, Bartky writes, is hardly a stranger; it is, rather, the woman’s own self (Bartky 1993, 134).

[emphases mine]

Quoted from Feminist Perspectives on Objectification, referencing Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression by Sandra Lee Bartky.

[carrum-blog]

[carrum-blog]

Lucy Kim Your Nose Is My Nose (1) 2014 Oil paint, various plastics, spray paint on wood panel 20 x 16 inches

[carrum-blog]

Lucy Kim Your Nose Is My Nose (2) 2014 Oil paint, various plastics, spray paint on wood panel 20 x 16 inches

[carrum-blog]

Some days I am calm

Some days I am patient

Some days I am the bridge

between pain and understanding.

But right now I have no patience

as you confidently carry your privilege

spewing hateful words that you do not understand.

And I am not in the mood to be your bridge.

Let the long, cold, dangerous swim begin.

You are on your own - oh confident one

trudging unknown waters

unassisted for the first time.

[carrum-blog]

I was sitting in a church attic. 

Drawing by Chadwick Dillingham

Carolyn

graphite on paper

[carrum-blog]

! 

On Uncanney Valley, its first album since 2001, The Dismemberment Plan sounds loose and liberated — like a band with its legacy secured, happy just to be there. It’s a fitting way for the hard-to-define, intermittently funky D.C. rock group to make a comeback.

Stream Uncanney Valley now from NPR’s First Listen. 

[carrum-blog]

Happy Monday indeed

Skydiving cat

[carrum-blog]

Natural/Industrial Commission

Oil on Canvas

18 x 24"

[carrum-blog]

Kissing Commission, Oil on Canvas, 2011

Found this commission while sorting through art files... I don't think I posted it because it was a rushed christmas job. 

[carrum-blog]

patterns of shoe placement carelessness absence of feet

I get into spurts of neglecting this project, but I'm getting back into taking care of it. Check it out if you feel so inclined.

[carrum-blog]

Chickens to provide eggs, a sturdy coop, and a goat to provide milk. A little can change a lot in the lives of twenty-five girls.

You guys! My dear friend Haley is trying to raise money to create a more sustainable food program for the Beloved Daughters of Maasai - a group of amazing girls she worked with in Kenya. There are only a few hours left so please join me in helping to feed these ladies!

...only $300 shy of of her goal & 4 hours to go. Every little bit counts! :)

[carrum-blog]

Green

Oil & Acrylic on Canvas

5 x 3'

[carrum-blog]

[carrum-blog]

Theo Ellsworth