My question therefore is, 'Are there images of women out there where strength stands alone, without her being sexualized or masculianized?' I have found, yet not surprised, that rarely do we see strong women not sexualized. If they are not sexualized, they are then often very masculine looking. I believe this is because a strong woman alone may be threatening to society, a free-wheeling soul that lacks eye candy appeal....? too dangerous...But I will have to think further on this before I can speak to it further.
One interesting phenomenon I recently noticed that illustrates this need to sexualize women is found in the upsurge of plus-sized models. We all celebrate plus-sized models as if we have finally advanced as women. Yet, if we look closer at the images of these plus-sized models that are being pumped out there is hardly any room to budge in the identity prescribed. Plus-size models are most often depicted heavily sexualized. You will not find a non-sexualized plus-size model out there anywhere, I dare you to try to find one....why is that? It's like her strength alone is not allowed to stand solo. Putting her in a lingeries, stilettos and heavy makeup to me takes away whatever power we women could have drawn from these women in the pages of our magazines.
Surely there are women who fit in between these two far distant extremes of sexuality the masculine. Notice how the images of these supposedly 'strong' women in magazines and on TV are always either sexualized or either made to look totally masculine; the TV commercial could be about mayonnaise for all we know and still, you'd see women swoon and breathe with their lips parted as if they were in some heated love exchange.
As I get older and struggle to define the newly-found strength in my muscular, healthy and curvy body I do not see anyone on TV or magazines that carry the pride I do without the apologetic additions of lipstick and/or macho qualities. I decided to go on a quest and search on Pinterest and try to find these images of women that I would off-the-bat consider 'strong' but without the over-peppering of either sexuality or testosterone. I quickly found that it was very hard to find such images. Below are some of the very few images I did manage to find.
The difficulty of this quest to find these images made me wonder if there even IS such an identity of a stand-alone strong woman in our collective visual library. In the coming weeks I will try to meditate to try to define what a strong woman looks like to me. I believe as an artist and a visual person I need this identity redefined to fit a more genuine truth about strength in women....obviously, this will have to be a new chapter.....inspiration drawn only from me, seeing as there is practically nothing out there defining strong women that isn't cheaply contaminated.
