Hi. My names Tori and I’m from the Uk. I’m 17, and I’ve never really realised that sexism was still relevant until about a year ago when I started getting comments about my body, specifically my “lack of tits” quote from a person in my high school who said that I couldn’t draw nudes because “I have to have tits before I could draw them”. That was when I really started noticing.
I’m a young artist, who’s Inspiration is nude women. I love to do nudes because everyone is unique and a piece of art and I love to recreate the individuality of that person onto canvas and paper, but now that I’ve started branching out into the art world, people (specifically men) have told me that it isn’t right for a lady to be doing nudes. That I should ” stick to drawing kittens and flowers”. Or that my art wasn’t erotic because there was to much “emotion” on my muses face.
Just last week, workmen who were doing power lines next to my college yelled degrading things about my body ” nice Pusey, shame about the tits though” to each other. I was less than a meter away. Another time the same crew shouted at me “hay baby, wanna hang out at my place, I’ll show what it is to be a woman.” I feel horrified and scared. Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real woman because my chest isn’t largely endowed or that men don’t respect me because I’ve not got large breasts or I’m not tall. I feel like they don’t respect me because I’m intelligent, that they see my worth, not how much I can contribute to society but how good a f*** I’d be. Don’t get me wrong, I know not all men are like this, but the male members in my family say just ignore them, don’t take it personally. Your a grown women now, you have to expect it. I just feel like I’m not respected or acknowledged because I’m a woman. Does anyone else feel like this?