One of the things that I haven’t really understood about feminist art is exactly how female artists’ presentation of themselves as women does anything to go beyond the fact that they are women, which is what they seem to be attempting in the first place, but I may be being too general and I don’t mean to define feminist art in anyway. I can only think of it in terms of how I would go about making art that drew attention to myself as a woman, rather than as simply an artist. (I think another reason as to why I dislike photos of myself is because I look at them from a culturally conditioned perspective and therefore recognize myself first as a woman. If I had a better knowledge of life and feminist art I can see how female artists present themselves in photographs for this very reason though.) I consider myself to have feminist ideas I suppose in that I don’t feel any different intellectually from any man I’ve ever met, and in that I don’t generally see myself in opposition to men or necessarily as being defined as a woman. I feel as if I go about my life interacting with men and women in a similar way, I haven’t noticed that I treat either differently. This may be a result from the fact that I grew up sort of tomboy-ish in that I never felt interested in what I wore or how I acted, and I played equally with boys and girls. It wasn’t until middle school where I felt I was forced into considering myself as a woman and what that definition implied. I definitely still dress myself and act in a certain way based on how I molded myself to fit in to the ideal of a woman that my friends instilled in me in middle school, but I still feel like I have an underlying sense of approaching people, whether man or woman, in the same manner that I did as a child. So, in a way, that idea of not explicitly defining myself as a woman, and therefore separate, seems to me like what the idea of feminism should be. It feels more to me like man and woman are just two different kinds of human beings and not polar opposites. I’ve even felt that I’ve connected humanly more with some men than with women, maybe because I haven’t been thinking of myself first and foremost as a woman. (I’ve realized recently too that I identify more with male main characters in film and that this is reflected in my recent work where I’ve centered narratives around a male character as opposed to female. But this may be because I’m representing what I’ve been given in the media and learned of film so it’s too much to get into right now.)

            Judith Butler seems to get at an idea somewhat similar to how I feel with feminism. I agree with her when she says, “There is, in my view, nothing about femaleness that is waiting to be expressed; there is, on the other hand, a good deal about the diverse experiences of women that is being expressed and still needs to be expressed” (164). When I see self-portrait photographs by women that draw attention to themselves within the frame foremost as women, I see an expression of their femaleness. I honestly don’t know though if I just haven’t reached a level of intelligence and understanding in order to interpret this sort of feminist art in the way it is intended by the artists.

            In Wark’s article, as she is discussing Martha Wilson’s photo Painted Lady , she writes, “Wilson’s stylized exaggerations can also be seen as key strategies for gaining visibility as an artist without becoming objectified as a woman” (149). I couldn’t find a picture of this photo online unfortunately, but through the description by Wark I am assuming that Wilson is wearing a substantial and exaggerated amount of makeup. At the same time that she is calling attention to the performativity of femaleness, she is separating it from herself as a woman; with its exaggeration, she is providing a distance between the role she plays as woman, and her simply being a woman. The idea that the makeup further blurs her actual sex doesn’t objectify her as a woman before that of her as an artist.  Wark’s take on this particular photograph of Wilson’s seems to be along the lines of what Butler felt feminist art should be. If women continue to present themselves only as society’s idea of women and as separate from men, they in turn help to create the very identity they wish to dispel. Wilson gets beyond this in her photograph by not presenting herself as a woman but as someone performing her gender.

            Adrian Piper’s The Mythic Being work seems more along the lines of her attempting to objectify herself as a man, but in doing so, objectifies herself as a woman. With the fact that she is calling attention to herself as performing a man, she is equally calling attention to herself as being female, which may be what she intended. This work then doesn’t seem to go beyond that cycle of feminism that Butler wants women artists to pull themselves out of. This goes back to another point Butler was making when she discusses the difference between performing theatrically and performing conspicuously. Piper presented this specific work with the framework that is audience knew she was a woman playing the role of a man. It’s therefore more like theatre in that people know it’s just an act, hence distinguishing it from her reality as woman. This draws a distinction between the performance and life, as Butler was saying, but it does in the sense that it draws attention specifically to life; to Piper as female. This is in contrast to the Wilson photograph in that her femaleness was made more ambiguous by her theatrical exaggeration. I think Piper could achieve the same role as representing herself as an artist before a woman if she were to be more like the transvestite on the bus, making her womanhood still existent but leaving room for ambiguation.

            I was trying to think of an example wherein a man performing a woman was able to represent femaleness, and I thought immediately of a photo I saw yesterday of my friend in his Halloween costume. He dressed up in a leopard print dress and long, blond wig, as well as wearing a large amount of makeup. I was surprised at how different he looked in this getup, but still could see him, and his masculinity, underneath it. I clicked through the various photos of him dancing at a party on Facebook and when I came to one in particular, I was shocked by how well he seemed to embody female performativity; particularly with his posture. It made me think back to how Piper’s performance was essentially her performing as a man, and how I might easily see this performance as a woman, by my friend, as a woman performing a woman. Is there a connection then between my friend and Wilson’s Painted Lady photo? I think there is but, I’m really not sure what it entails.