never lost, just aimless

stevebuscreaming:

i want my erotic art to be accessible to all genders bc it’s always infuriated me how easy it is for men (and women) to dismiss female driven representations of sexuality (yaoi, fanfiction, boy bands, twilight, etc). 

like think of how many women are perfectly all right with male driven representations of women in a sexual context, how women even idealize and romanticize it (gil elvgren, erich sokol, bettie page, 50s pinups in general) and talk about these things as though they come from a simpler, classier time. really it’s just the same old male sexual fantasies about women from a patriarchal society, except it’s dressed up in some pretty art and stocking garters so maybe we don’t recognize it as the same thing. but it is. it’s not what we’re used to but it’s the same shit we’ve been fed for all our lives. (and i say this as a fan of all those erotic artists)

think of how many women artists, regardless of their sexual preferences, draw pinups of women to relax, and yet there is no male equivalent of that activity? and there are things that probably contribute to this, like:

• female pinup art is so good and tasteful that it creates a space of sexuality women are comfortable with and find appealing, and women artists want to imitate this
• we are so normalized to women depicted in a sexual context and the idea of fluidity of female sexuality that female artists drawing other women has become considered safe and acceptable 
• women are, in general, better at drawing women because they have obviously a much better reference point

but we’ve built a culture where even in female friendly havens such as tumblr we dismiss the importance of female sexuality in the media. regardless of quality these are important parts of our culture. no one can deny how important sex is in our media culture, and if we’re ever going to have female driven creations be taken seriously we need to stop dismissing representations of female sexuality as low art. we need to ask ourselves- how much of our opinions of female driven media are based on taste and how much of them are social conditioning?

and ANYWAY i guess long story short my secret hope and my ultimate goal is i want to make erotic art that can’t be dismissed. i want to make  art that very specifically depicts female sexuality, AND is accessible and tasteful in a way that means anyone can like it, erotic art drawn from a female POV. i want to draw things that make people think, regardless of their sexual preferences, “hey that’s pretty cool. i wanna try doing that.”