#female bather

[huariqueje]

Fish Pocket - Josep Moncada , 2020.

Catalan, b. 1967 -

Oil on canvas, 110 x 110 cm.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Francesco Hayez (Italian, 1791-1882) Baigneuse, Detail, 1844 Galerie nationale d'art moderne et contemporain, Rome

[egoschwank]

al things considered — when i post my masterpiece #1224

first posted in facebook october 14, 2023

reggie burrows hodges -- "bathers and the cleansed: pearl" (2021)

"i start with a black ground [as a way] of dealing with blackness’s totality. i'm painting an environment in which the figures emerge from negative space" … reggie burrows hodges

"using matte-black paint to render the backgrounds of his canvases, as well as the bodies and faces of his figures, this black american painter makes ingenious use of so-called negative space as both a metaphor for hegemonic white culture and an expression of memory’s blur" … johanna fateman

"in the new body of work 'bathers and the cleansed', hodges revisits the art-historical trope of a female bather and presents her in various states of activity, from a moment of respite to exiting the bathtub. while the expressive marks and layered colors appear soft, even sensual, hodges’s paintings honor the characters—washing away centuries of culturally imposed eroticism on the black female body. by doing so, the painter imbues his bathers with a quiet agency as they occupy and reclaim their histories within the domestic sphere" … portland museum of art

"figures created by hodges are made sharper, and more haunting, not because we see those things in their eyes, we see it in their bodies, their postures, the endless desire for humans not to be alone, and to connect. to that hodges adds all that wonderful blackness" … hilton als

"i wanna see it painted, painted black black as night, black as coal i wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky i wanna see it painted, painted, painted painted black, yeah" … mick jagger

"i see a white tub and i want it painted black" … al janik

[nupaintings]

[the-cricket-chirps]

Henri Manguin, Baigneuse (Woman Bather) 1906

[theaskew]

Rebecca Campbell (American b. 1971, lives and works in Los Angeles), Hollywood is a Sign, 2023. Oil on canvas, 60 x 120 in.

[deceased-lungs]

Men are so fucking lewd. Like how is sex at the absolute forefront of your mind?

[femsolid]

"You could see the signs of female aging as diseased, especially if you had a vested interest in making women too see them your way.

Or you could see that if a woman is healthy she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of “serious lesions,” or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion, and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. When gray and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret or you could call it silver or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. She has looked around in her life, and it shows. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.

Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.

If you could make a million dollars a year—the average income of cosmetic surgeons in the United States—by doing so, then female fat can easily enough be called a disease. Or it can be seen for what it is: normal, since even the thinnest healthy women have more fat than men. When you see the way women’s curves swell at the hips and again at the thighs, you could claim that that is an abnormal deformity. Or you could tell the truth: 75 percent of women are shaped like that, and soft, rounded hips and thighs and bellies were perceived as desirable and sensual without question until women got the vote. Women’s flesh, you could acknowledge, is textured, rippled, dense, and complicated; and the way fat is laid down on female muscle, on the hips and thighs that cradle and deliver children and open for sex, is one of the most provocative qualities of the female body. Or you could turn this too into an operable condition.

Whatever is deeply, essentially female—the life in a woman’s expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin—is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power. At least a third of a woman’s life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable conditions—so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an “ideal” be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characterisic does not exist on the woman’s body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?"

- The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

[nupaintings]

[psikonauti]

Alfred Grévin (French,1827-1892)

Male and Female Bathers with Umbrella

Watercolor and gouache over graphite on heavy wove paper

[theaskew]

Amalia Angulo (Cuban b. 1980), Woman Sun Bathing, 2024. Oil on canvas, 18 × 24 × 1/2 in. | 45.7 × 61 × 1.3 cm.

[coochiequeens]

An intact white male went to a Korean spa and wanted access to the space for nude women, was denied, found another spa that was trans inclusive and is still suing the first spa.

A man who identifies as transgender has filed a legal complaint against a New Jersey sauna over “discrimination” on the basis of gender identity. 

Alexandra “Allie” Goebert was denied access to the women’s section of King Spa & Sauna in Palisades Park on the basis of his sex, a move he claims was a violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD).

Goebert, who is a US Army Veteran and law school graduate, filed the complaint to the state’s Department of Law and Public Safety on October 7, 2022 over the incident, which he states occurred last year on August 14. Goebert also is the owner of White Crow Martial Arts, located in Watertown, New York, where he teaches the Korean combat sport of taekwondo.

King Spa & Sauna is a facility inspired by the Korean jimjilbang, a sex-segregated public bathhouse intended for rejuvenation and health benefits. Bathing areas are sex-segregated as they are intended to be used nude. The spa’s website makes specific note of this custom.

“If you are K-spa newbie and uncomfortable being nude, you could skip the bath house. Change to the Spa uniform in the locker room and go straight to the saunas. For bath house users, you must be fully nude,” it advises.

According to the complaint, Goebert was issued a “male token” when he arrived at King Spa & Sauna, “which did not align with [his] gender identity.” Additionally, Goebert alleges that he was asked whether he had undergone genital surgery by a staff member who stated, “Have you changed your front?” to which he replied, “No.”

In accordance with the facility’s policy, Goebert was told he was prohibited from entering the women’s section, where female patrons made use of the hot tubs and wet saunas, because “those areas required nudity.”

Instead, the complaint states, Goebert was told to use the co-ed areas, which required that guests be clothed. Dissatisfied with being denied entry to the area where women were undressed, Goebert complained. The General Manager then issued him a refund and asked him to leave the premises.

According to the legal claim documents, the general manager of King Spa & Sauna is alleged to have failed “to accommodate Complainant so she could use the facilities in accordance with her gender identity.” As compensation, Goebert “requests whatever relief is provided by the law, including, but not limited to, affirmative relief, and compensatory damages for economic loss, humiliation, mental pain and suffering.”

Goebert took to social media to complain about being denied access to areas where women and girls were undressed. In a Facebook post, Goebert suggested he would instead frequent a different facility, Island Spa & Sauna, as an alternative to King Spa. Goebert claims to have reached out directly to Island Spa in one comment, saying, “I have spoken with them personally and they’re trans-welcoming.”

According to admission policies posted on Island Spa’s website, “All guests, including transgender guests, have the right to access the spa in a manner consistent with their gender identity and gender expression.”

The company further implies that any patrons who object to the presence of a man in a women’s section of the spa may be removed from the premises. “We expect all members, regardless of gender identity, to show respect for others so that all members may have a peaceful and pleasant experience.”

“We have a body-positive and accepting environment; respect your fellow bather and help us to create a safe and welcoming environment for guests of all gender, race and body types. Island Spa & Sauna has the right to remove any guest found to be in violation of these policies,” the website states.

Additionally, rules regarding the bathing area explicitly stipulate that nudity is a requirement: “Bathing suits and clothing are not allowed in the bathing area. Traditional Korean Spas require all guests to be fully nude in our gender separated bathhouses.”

A woman who was a regular patron of Island Spa told Reduxx that she, and several of her acquaintances, would no longer visit the sauna out of fear for their privacy and safety. The woman, who has requested to remain anonymous, pointed out that Asian women in particular were “horrified” to learn of the self-identification policy.

“It fills me with dread knowing this fetishist is going to be there and we wouldn’t know when. I am never going there again. I am absolutely concerned about other women and girls. My circle is mainly Asian women and everyone was horrified to hear about it. We won’t be going there now,” she said.

“Why should a naked man be in there with the women at all? We don’t care about his gender identity. He can always use the co-ed section. Why does he want to be where women and girls are naked? The spa is used by teen girls, too.”

Island Spa’s admission policy allows access to children over the age of 10 on a regular basis, and hosts “family days” once per month which permit entry to children under the age of 10 years old.

Goebert’s Instagram profile reveals that he follows a range of fetish-related accounts. 

Among them are women’s lingerie company Honey Birdette and sex toy retailer Wet For Her. Hashtags followed by Goebert include “lesbian”, “boyinadress”, “menindresses”, and the misspelled “nuedisnormal”, which features photos of naked or nearly-naked women, often in sexualized poses.

On Twitter, Goebert has stated that he has not had any genital surgery, and clarified that he has no intention to do so in the future. 

Goebert’s legal claim comes as “gender identity” policies allowing adult men into areas of undress designated for women and children are coming under national scrutiny. This week, news reports circulated revealing that a trans-identified male is facing multiple indecent exposure charges after repeatedly stripping down in the women’s locker room at a YMCA in Xenia, Ohio, including when minors were present.

In January, a young woman became the target of trans activist vitriol after she took to a city council meeting in Santee, California, to report that she had seen a male in the YMCA locker rooms. 17-year-old Rebecca Phillips teared up as she recounted her experience at the January 11 meeting, stating she had seen “a naked male in the women’s locker room.”

Christynne Lili Wrene Wood, 66, announced publicly that he was the man that Phillips had been referring to in her testimony. Reduxx would later find that Wood had a disturbing social media history that included posting photos of little girls he compared himself to.

In 2021, another Korean spa in the United States became a flashpoint for debates on gender ideology after a trans-identified sex offender had been granted access to the women’s facilities. 

Wi Spa, a jimjilbang-style establishment in Los Angeles, California, was the subject of international attention after a video recorded by a female patron went viral on social media. In the video, the woman confronts spa staff because of a nude male who was exposing himself in front of women and girls in the women’s changing room.

The incident was initially dismissed as a “transphobic” hoax by progressive commentators, but would later be verified by police who issued a warrant for the arrest of Darren Agee Merager, a registered sex offender. Merager was arrested in December of 2022.

[artmialma]

Louis-Joseph Courtat (1847-1909)French

"Baigneuses" -Bathers 1885

French Academic painter Louis-Joseph Courtat displays his mastery of composition and the female form in this entrancing work painted for and exhibited at the 1885 Paris Salon, the foremost exhibition of painters in the Western world.

[fem-lit]

You could see the signs of female aging as diseased, especially if you had a vested interest in making women too see them your way.

Or you could see that if a woman is healthy she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of “serious lesions,” or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion, and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. The skin loosens on her face and throat, giving her features a setting of sensual dignity; her features grow stronger as she does. She has looked around in her life, and it shows. When gray and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret or you could call it silver or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.

Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth

[oldsardens]

Jaques Antoine Vallin - A female bather, in an extensive river landscape

[the-cricket-chirps]

Theo van Rysselberghe, In the Shade of the Pines, 1905

Theo van Rysselberghe, Female Bathers Under the Pines at Cavaliere, 1905

Theo van Rysselberghe, In the Shade of the Pines (study) 1905

Theo van Rysselberghe, Pines and Eucalyptus at Cavelieri, 1905