[HOE] Cover art - Men & Women

["Ashley Smith" <ratqueen13@hotmail.com>]

>"Poetic" <poetic@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
>i noticed no one complained about the scantily clad muscular males depicted
>on covers e.g. rascals varmints and critters..just as much male flesh shown
>there
>
>just stirring the pot,
>Marshal Of Oz

>Allan Seyberth wrote:
>You don't like classical Greek sculpture? It is amusing in an irritating 
>sort of way that there are complaints about the Urban Renewal cover, yet 
>the cover of the main rulebook has elicited no response at all.


Poetic-Marshall of Oz and Allan bring up a good observation.  Why does the 
depiction of a naked woman generate such discussion while a picture of a 
naked man goes without comment?

Interestingly, I think Poetic answers his own question:

>And later Poetic wrote:
>No one complains because the male body is acceptable while the female >form 
>is not?

Bingo.  I run the risk of sounding like a bitter radical womyn spouting 
about the evils of Western Civilization and the Patriarchy (sounds like a 
band name, huh?), but I think this is an interesting idea.

Throughout most of the artistic, literary and theological products of Europe 
and America, women have represented sex (I can't comment on the rest of the 
world -  not my field).  Eve, Bathsheba, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Lucy from 
the novel Dracula, etc. I don't really want to go on.  All of these 
characters are centered around sexuality and their seduction or ablility to 
tempt men has been their focus.  You don't see this with men characters 
until the 20th century - Faulkner and the photographs of Mapplethorpe come 
to mind.  The correlation of men and sex is a relatively new idea.  It's 
generally been the domain of women.

Allan mentions the classical Greek sculptures.  The Greeks held that the 
male form was the perfect creation.  It represented power, grace and beauty, 
but not sex.  Renaissance art was a resurgence of the Greek ideals and 
subsequent art periods drew upon this era.  I think some of those ideas are 
still present.

So I think that when we view a picture of a naked woman, we associate it 
with an entire different set of ideas than we attribute to the naked man.  
Which means that the cover of UR is associated with sex, while the cover of 
the main rulebook goes unnoticed.  Sex is more interesting, after all.

I'm not saying that men think women are just about sex or even deliberately 
equate women with sex.  Please don't think that.  I don't think this 
division is a good thing.  I'm not even certain that it's much of a bad 
thing in certain contexts.  Someone just made an observation that I've 
encountered elsewhere and I thought I'd share my thoughts.

Nuts - these topics on men and women can be really touchy.  I hope I don't 
come off sounding like it's men versus women, a duel to the death.  
(Especially since I think I'm the only woman on this list.)  I don't feel 
that way.  I did once, but then I grew up and realized the world wasn't as 
against me as much I thought.  I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.  One 
chromosome and a few different physiological characteristics don't change 
the fact that we're both human and we're not that different from each other.

Ashley

"It takes thousands of nuts to hold a car together.
But only one behind the wheel to scatter it across the highway."

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