#if i painted a generic spacesuit pic and decided arbitrarily it was a man and she said 'but it doesnt have to be' thats slightly different

[outerspace-iiinnerspace]

one thing i think about on occasion was when i was in this art class in college and i was making a painting of an astronaut and the grad assistant was going around checking on people and looking at our projects and we were talking about mine and i said something where i referred to the astronaut as a he and she went "or she" and i was like "huh?" and she talked about how the astronaut didn't have to be a man, there are women astronauts too!

and i said yeah, that's true, but this is a painting of a guy, and she said it didn't have to be because one of the things about my subject was that because you can't see the face or tell the body type you could imagine anyone in that space suit, it's universal, and that's actually really powerful and that's why she liked my painting and and i was forced to say yeah but this is a man. its buzz aldrin. and i showed her the photo of buzz aldrin that i was basing the painting on.