Dear Anonymous Member of the Fairer Sex,

It has come to my attention that my gallery of illustration has offended you.  My understanding of this unfortunate situation is, to quote our mutual friend who made me aware of this concern, that you find my work “objectifies women”.  This is rather unfortunate and I hope I can clarify a few things.

First and foremost, I’m deeply saddened and humbly apologise for any offence my work may have brought you.  Please believe when I say that my intent, as an illustrator, has always been to inspire, capture, uplift and celebrate my viewers.  As this hasn’t been a complaint you have personally addressed with me, I can only speculate as to the exact nature of this woe but I feel as if I can understand where you’re coming from.

If I’m correct in my understanding of the situation, you find my work objectifying of women in my consistent use of women as my subject matter and my stylistically exaggerated portrayal of the female figure.  And, now that you mention it(?), I guess I do have quite a bit of that in my gallery.  However, upon some internal reflection on my relationship with the opposite sex (generally speaking) and discussing this concern with my closest female friends, I’d like to express my side of the story.

When I first heard this, I was actually taken aback by such a “ludicrous notion”.  And then it became less ludicrous and more hurtful.  And then it just became what it is: a pretty one-sided notion.  Also, it’s an ironic one too, considering I specifically remember being totally BERATED by a classmate in high school for drawing “too many [superhero] dudes all the time”.  So I decided to really think about why my first response to solving many of the communication problems I’m given, illustratively, with female figures.

Primary response: Because you guys (gals) are so much fun to draw.  It’s not a psychosexual thing or whatever.  Considering the conventions of the style I’ve developed (and you can see it for yourself), it’s literally just more interesting to draw dynamic curves than angular forms.  And women have them in spades!  If you take a look at my piece, Intergalactic Float, this girl is just curves upon curves upon curves; in her hair, eyes, lips, busom, hips, legs and apparel.  I can’t explain why, but my craft (my job, thank you very much) is far more enjoyable to me when I can swoosh my wrist around the page.  This also accounts for why I never draw skinny girls.  I firmly believe that a healthy girl is far more attractive than a stick figure.  Curvy chicks are my jam.

Now, drawing female figures is fun on more than a technical level too.  Part of the appeal is simply that I’m a guy.  I’ve never been a woman, nor do I have any plans to become one, but I have spent my entire life surrounded by them (and fantastic ones, for the most part, too).  Every girl I’ve drawn since I was about 17 or 18 (and perhaps even some before then too) has been based on the real-life women in my life.  I love the all women in my life to some degree; from my mother, sisters and relatives, to the girls I’ve secretly admired, to my closest she-bros.  I honestly spend hours raiding old photographs and Facebook pictures of my lady-bros to find reference material.  So when you see me draw a beautiful woman, it’s because I’m privileged to be friends with so many gorgeous dames with phenomenal eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles, etc.

Furthermore, every girl I draw houses physical elements of these amazing people in my life, but I can’t express their awesome personalities with a pen and paper.  For that, when I create a new character, I get to dream up a whole backstory and context for them.  It’s the same as a writer describing a figure in their story, except in reverse.  It’s super mushy, I know, but I live to create and when you already live the life of Joe Everyman (and I know I’m not an accurate representation of every guy on Earth, but every guy feels like he is from time-to-time), you find joy in what you do elsewhere.

Finally, as an illustrator, I’m blessed to make my living in the same craft as masters such as Jules Chéret (the father of women’s liberation) and Charles Dana Gibson (whose illustrations sparked trends upon trends in women’s fashion and one of the judges of the first Miss America pageant).  LITERALLY all they drew was women (and typography for posters, in Chéret’s case) but these gentlemen were the spawning point of things we take for granted like the modern poster, certain trends in dressmaking, a woman’s ability to go out and have a good time without a man, women wanting to celebrate their curvaceous figures and more.

I’ll boldly state that modern feminism has pretty much barreled out of control and it’s lack of discernable grounding in society is probably what led to your feelings of objectification from my work, and I understand that it’s bound to happen.  Being blindsided by people’s biased reactions is, in fact, an occupational hazard.  However, contrarily, I can also boldly state that my works are not the product of a deranged malfunction in my threshold for a woman’s sexuality but, rather, a celebration of it and my contribution to a longstanding tradition of “the female muse”.

I hope this clears things up for you and I hope we’re totally still friends.  You don’t have to address this with me in person if you don’t want to but I’d be totally down to chat more about it if you felt so inclined :)

Cheers,

P