Making Any Art Form More Inclusive Will Probably Only Improve It

Amanda Marcotte has a good rant over at Raw Story about how nobody is going to stop game developers from making sexist games. That’s true and I think that’s good–people should be allowed to make sexist games. And games that don’t acknowledge the existence of people of color and LGBT folks. That’s fine. Now, while acknowledging that, it’s important to keep in mind that when you make these sorts of myopic, exclusionary games, you are not guaranteed an audience for them. Aww, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant for a whole ‘nother day and people who don’t understand what censorship is aren’t reading this blog anyway.

For awhile now I’ve had conflicted feelings about my body of work (as an artist). Looking through my gallery, I can’t help but notice that all my models are young, thin, and white. I also manipulate my models quite heavily. It’s an odd sort of manipulation–I’m not making them prettier, I’m making them weirder mostly. I’m playing with proportion, I’m making their heads too big, their waists too small, their shoulders too narrow, their dresses impossibly voluminous. I’m painting their faces to make them look, uh, creepy-glamorous, I guess.  I have every right to use models that are young, thin and white. I have a right to play with proportion the way I do. I have every right to do my weird take on glamor make-up. But if someone wants to offer a critique of my art based on the observations I just made, it will only help it if I listen.

Lately I’ve been pushing myself to change things up a bit, to create the mood I’m after without relying so heavily on my old tropes. I’m exaggerating proportions less. The piece I’m working on now features models slightly younger than I’m used to working with so I’ve decided not to distort their faces or bodies–at all. I simply wasn’t comfortable taking liberties with younger models and was worried about the message I’d send if I’d gone “all in” as I normally do. Do I view this as a limitation? No, not at all. It’s a challenge, and a fun one at that. I’ve already got my workarounds all mapped out, so there will be no magic missing from my canvas in the end. This has got me excited about working with models of color (although they are distressingly hard to find at my hunting grounds) and and of size. Making my art more inclusive is not going to hurt it, it’s going to help it, and it’s going to make me a better artist with more interesting body of work.

To be clear, I have every right to use any sort of model I want and manipulate her how I choose. However, if I make my art exclusionary I will *purposely* be taking money out of my own wallet. Since I’m not a moron, I happily choose diversity. Here’s to challenging myself and giving everybody a choice and acknowledging the existence of a wider range women. This is a good, healthy development that’s going to spur creativity, not stunt it.