10th Grade Humanities
POETRY PROJECT
Project on Globalization
'60s Art Project
Artist Statement
My art piece is mixed media, a collage with which I utilized paint and also artist markers to create a clean effect with the text at the top. I chose to create an art piece demonstrating the sexism in the 60s because I felt that too much of that sexism still lingers in our society today. The media still presents women in a derogatory, provocative way, especially in ads, movies, and tv. What is dangerous about sexism is sometimes it is subtle, so viewers let it pass and do not recognize it as sexism. When I decided to make my art piece about sexism in the 60s and the movement that responded to it, I wanted to show how normal people in that environment eventually recognized sexism and rejected it. I used ads from the 60s that either targeted husbands or wives. They advertised mainly food, appliances, clothing, and beauty products. I also used pictures that fought for women’s rights were pictures of protests against sexism in the 60s. The ads depicted women “in their place” depending on men, waiting on men, letting men direct their lives and use women’s sexuality for their own personal gain. For example, I used an ad for men’s shoes, that shows a woman lying on the ground, gazing at the shoes. It portrays the woman as vapid and more of an object than a person, because, according to the ad, the shoes will “Keep her where she belongs,”. Another ad said, “Show her it’s a man’s world,” with picture of a woman on her knees serving her husband breakfast in bed. Another woman in an ad for coffee said, “Hey! I just got a promotion...I’ll bet you it was my coffee!”. A different ad for skin cream read, “A wife can blame herself if she loses love by getting middle-age skin!”. All of these ads clearly display the overt sexism prevalent in the 60s. On the other hand, I also used black and white pictures of people in the 60s protesting sexism. One picture said, “Welcome to the Miss America Cattle Auction,”. This is an image taken at the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, which protesters stormed on September 7, fighting against the way that women were paraded around. The black and white of these images contrasted with the color of all of the sexist ads, which symbolized how everyday people perpetuated sexism, but when they saw things more clearly in black and white they finally understood the truth that sexism is wrong, their ability to see unobstructed by excuses and unrecognized prejudices. In addition, I wrote a quote at the top of the piece: “Each suburban wife struggles with it alone as she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, lay beside her husband at night...She was afraid to ask even of herself...Is this all?”. I chose this quote to demonstrate the struggle to see the issue clearly and create the feeling that women repressed themselves and their emotions. It was pulled from a book written in 1963 by Betty Friedan, an American activist, feminist, and writer, called The Feminine Mystique.