Fashionladyface

You know her when you see her.

The fashion-inspired, heavily-stylized female face. The default subject matter and the lowest common denominator of content. If she’s poorly-rendered (and most of the time she is), her nose is as long as toboggan run; sometimes her nostrils are just little black spheres hanging above pointy lips, and, of course, ridiculously large eyes set so far apart you could drive a truck between them. It’s the ground-zero of a complete lack of creativity. There are deeply-rooted, art historical paradigms about woman as the first creative “object.” And yes, I am thinking about Venus of Willendorf’s boobs.

But fashionladyface doesn’t care about any of that. She’s often drawn by someone who wants to be her. And I’m not talking about fashion design. Fashion design is an art and craft all its own. I’m talking about art-school painting class art to stick up on the wall for everyone to talk about. The anything-goes kind of cultural production, or at least a context that encourages it.

She is to art, what spam is to meat.

That’s my knee-jerk response to fashionladyface. But what if it’s my student’s work?  How do I promote creativity exercises and provide actionable feedback on a fashionladyface drawing without humiliating and shredding someone’s self-esteem? Not that fashionladyface can’t make you rich. We don’t need another Patrick Nagel.

I’m going to keep the Spam analogy, but…soften it? Spam is made of various of pieces of meat, presumably pork. Let’s call those pieces of pork “idealized female beauty + eroticism + the Male Gaze + fashion + the entire panoply of commodities that comprise the cosmetic industry.” This cultural pork is visually and cognitively processed by you, by me, by the student, and by everyone within its sphere of influence.

Now what? An experiment: what if you add something completely unexpected to that can of Spam? I mean really unexpected, like a ghost pepper, a whole strawberry, a handful of M&Ms. That would certainly change things. Now that can of Spam is unique in its image, its feel, its taste, and in our entire understanding of what a can of Spam is supposed to be.

I think it’s important to emphasize that this can of Spam should stay away from being beautiful or delicious. In fact, why not throw in a railroad spike? Make it not only inedible, but dangerous. This is how fashionladyface goes from ubiquitous invisibility to something that commands attention and response. So, I have to ask my student, and anyone else stuck in fashionladyface mode, what are you putting in your can of Spam? How far are you going to go? A hard-boiled egg? A band-aid? Broken glass?