15 January 2010
Asian women
I found this video through a blog on how this artist seems very off from what cartoon drawing is about. To his defense, "How to draw..." instructionals for beginners are often quite bad and misleading.
I'm more concerned with the problem of his essentalist idea of what constitutes as an "Asian women". He seems to use the word "beautiful" as a descriptor for the physical traits. There is an uncomfortable awkwardness to his presentation of how he draws the figure and even the finished product is rather odd. If he had a similar presentation on how to draw "Black Women" it wouldn't be difficult to call him out as a racists, but for some reason it's socially acceptable for "Asian women"
I guess I'm extra sensitive on the issue of beauty and particular on Asian beauty is from a presentation I saw last night by Dr. Daniel Hamermesh. His argument was that from just looking at an input/output model, it seems that better looking people tend to get paid more, and are more valuable to their employers. What I found somewhat lacking was there was a very positivist and ethnocentric idea of what beauty was and there were little measures taken to take that into account. Obviously beauty is not a static thing nor is it commonly agreed upon in different groups. During the Victorian age, plump pale women were the height of beauty being indicators of being wealthy enough to stay indoors and eat, while tan skinny women were probably "gypsies" or "farm workers". So class is a huge predetermination for beauty and class defines what is beautiful.
What about the beautiful Asian women from poor third world countries that Western men go gaga for? They aren't rich why are they seen as beautiful. Again, as the saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and the beholder are wealthy westerners justifying their taste and unaware of the fact their taste becomes an indicator of how wealthy they are. They are wealthy enough to spend time to travel to "exotic" lands and pursue "exotic" women. In the world we live in now, there is no greater indicator of wealth than showing how "globalized" one's taste is.
In the end we are not talking about beauty of perfect tube shaped women which flatter kimono, or long slender necks, or tiny delicate feet. They are not marks of beauty admired by those with power, only the tastes of those in power matter, and they are privileged in society.
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Having been in several different basic drawing classes, one of the first points that gets introduced is proportion and how cartoons require even more skill in some respects than realistic drawing. This artist not only portrays a very simplistic view of asian women, but does not even discuss proportion or how the "asian" face might reflect unique proportions or details than say a caucasian,or black, or even native american face. At the very least a discussion on this level would lend credence to his instruction.
It is remarkable how all he "instructs" the audience about is the eyes as if this were the only significant part of the drawing.
I agree that artist exemplifies an extraordinarily simplistic perspective, and what is sad is that this concept of beauty finds widest expression (through various forms of media) in the "eye" of the rich but even more particularly american rich.
Beauty is really not a cardboard cutout of one item, but rather myriad combinations of values that fall under this umbrella term. It is in the details that we begin to see beauty. Even for just the "eye of the beholder," beauty can take an infinite number of forms. Beauty may be in a face, in an action, in a smell, or in a gesture. It is sad that commercialism and wealthy globalist culture attempts to dull our senses and set simplistic caricatures of beauty in place of the real thing.
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