Webspinna Battle Artist Statement

For this assignment, Neil Reed and I decided to battle as masculinity and femininity, with Neil being femininity and I as masculinity. For me, there were many things that influenced our decision to take on these personas. I am currently taking a Sociology of Gender class, so I have been studying gender all semester, and gender issues have been an interest of mine for several years now. Particularly frustrating to me are gender stereotypes, and the expectations that exist for the different genders in our society. My studies in this class, as well as several outside sources, such as the documentary Miss Representation are what influenced me as we came up with these personas. When we decided to take on the opposite persona, it was very interesting for me, as I had never tried to be explicitly masculine before. As I went about preparing for this assignment, I tried to think about the gender expectations for men, and how those expectations and stereotypes are different from the expectations for women. I thought about the societal pressure that I feel as a woman, and the societal pressure that I could potentially feel as a man. I thought about the things that I would be expected to be as a man, and the way that society would expect me to act. For the night of the event, I did not wear any makeup, I went to DI and got a man’s collared shirt, and I borrowed a bow tie from Tree, and I pulled my hair back tight.

Although I knew this implicitly coming into the assignment, there was a plethora of media based on gender stereotypes. I had no trouble at all finding songs about what it means to be a man. These songs, and the other media that I found were very explicit in their discussion of gender norms. Men are strong, muscular, tough, manly men. Women are delicate, emotional, they need to be beautiful, and they need men. I had no trouble finding media that perpetuated these norms. When looking for media, I also tried to find media that was not explicitly talking about men, but implicitly makes us think about men. An example of this was the theme song from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is an iconic western song, that for me exemplified the expectations of being manly.

It was a very interesting and fun thing to be able to perform in front of our class. I am usually averse to live performances, but this one turned out to be very enjoyable. I was very influenced in this performance by the things that we discussed in class about glitch art, and the way that it is created. I thought that our performance took a lot from that reading, as we strived to take differing discussions of gender stereotypes, and make a statement about gender equality. Our performance strived to move from the most stereotypical sounds of gender, to less stereotypical, and the dance at the end was meant to say that we are all equal, and that there should not be a dominant gender. I think that the mix and dance aspect of our performance made it so tat it could not have come across the same way if we had not all been in that room making art together. In my opinion, the community aspect of this experience was essential to the meaning of this piece. Overall, this has been one of my favorite assignments so far, and I greatly enjoyed making art together as a class.