that male as the norm thing feminism is always complaining about...

[ratcreature]

So I was wasting my time on the internet idly browsing for photo references and came across these two sites from the same company which offers paid access for photo references, which I am not interested in, but the thing is they have one site with photographs of men in various poses called human-anatomy-for-artist.com and one with photographs of women called female-anatomy-for-artist.com. And it's not that the first one covers both men and women as I first thought and they just have an extra one for women, at least from their free samples and the content overview it's really only men. WTF?!? It's like feminism illustrated or something. I'm vacillating between amused and aggravated. >.<

Comments

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the wonderful world of "You're not human."

[ratcreature]

I find this example for that kind of thing so great because usually (at least these days) it's just kind of implied that "(default) human = male" with loopholes to weasel out of it when you point it out, but here they illustrate it so nicely that you can't miss it, and it really doesn't get more glaringly obvious.

[brownbetty]

If you have a choice, go for amused. It's better for your health.

Wow, though. That's really nice. I mean, usually you have to dig around a bit to come up with examples.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, it's really illustrates the default human = male equation of patriarchy in such a blatant way that's like parody, only sadly it's probably not. I think it's an outgrowth of how many drawing books, especially some classic ones are organized. In art books to learn proportions and such you mostly get an "ideal human" with the "ideal" example proportions that are aesthetically pleasing, and that ideal human is white and male, and then you get a section explaining peculiarities you have to take into account if you draw women, but you get example images of women often just in that section, whereas the pictures of walking, running, jumping, bending... humans are inevitably male and white, and anything that's different in other kinds of humans is pointed out as a variation from an ideally proportioned, white man.

you want annoying?

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

I've been fighting with this problem for a long time, and I finally got a better computer that can handle modern software, and so I figured I'd look for some of those 3D programs so I could use them for that. And first I checked out a shareware one with a free trial - Cloudstars (http://www.cloudstars.com/) - which was too limited but would have been helpful - except that all the women are in sex poses. Not just sex*y*, but lying down, even with legs apart, kneeling with open mouths, etc etc etc. And they weren't advertising this as for medical artists illustrating OBGYN or dental exams!

Meanwhile, the men are all in "strong" action poses.

I found this as well with the samples of another program which was far too expensive and limited for what I wanted, but very telling, which I discuss here (http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/269472.html) and here (http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/269808.html).

And then I got the free download of Poser 5, thinking to use it to do some "Regendering" as well as my original quest of setting up charas in scenes for sketching - and lo and behold, there's a whole library of preset poses in the defaults. With separate sets for "male" and "female" actions. Including different "male" vs "female" ways to sit on the sofa, talk on the phone, shake hands in a business meeting - let alone superhero/swordfight/action scene. The "female" ones are girly, contained, passive (the fistfight poses are almost all her getting beat up, reeling back instead of laying a left hook, the female swordfighter is frozen in lordosis T&A pose where the male figure is actually, you know, swinging, etc ) and sultry, and you can really see it when you take the male figure and apply the female poses - all the sudden you get musclebound, but hipshot guys standing or reclining languidly in strangely twisting poses or weirdly infantile, childlike cringes...

I'm going to use Poser for some of the regendering comics/cover art experiments, as soon as I get some free time to play with it (hollow laughter.) Also for advertising- it's everywhere, the amount of always-female skin and infantilization camouflaged under the shrug "sex sells", so that your eyes just skip over it and edit it out. But once you start noticing it, it's like dirt - you can't not see it.

Re: you want annoying?

[ratcreature]

I'm not surprised at all. I mean the sites selling photos advertise them as references for 3D also. But you know, the dental and obgyn exam line... that's just... they could at least be honest and sell it as sex poses if they can't come up with better lies. *headdesk*