May
Girlhood
A Study of Patriarchal Expectations on Young Girls
Abstract
Close your legs. Stay still. Behave. Girls should have manners. Smile, be nice, sit like a lady. These commands are said frequently to girls, too often that it shapes their childhood. Unlike boys, little girls can't just be children. They must limit their freedom of being a kid to meet the expectations of the patriarch. They are often sexualized and objectified by older men and are meant to mature themselves early in order to appeal to society. Meanwhile, boys can "be boys". They have freedom to just be. This exhibition will explore girlhood and the effects of our society's patriarchy in growing up and coming of age as a woman.
Thérèse Dreaming - Balthus
Balthus neighbor, Therese Blanchard, was an eleven-year-old when she met the painter in 1936, who "captivated" Balthus attention. She was the model for several of his paintings, some even more explicit than "Thérèse Dreaming". The intention was, according to Balthus, to explore girlhood and adolescence, as seen by the model's relaxing position and lack of care for "decor". Although it is a great painting, it becomes unclear whether the painter's intentions were strictly to show Therese's freedom or if it was tainted by his sexualization of the girl since this is not his only painting of the kid and there are many others were she also appears nude. (Widewalls). The petition by Merril became very popular and had more than ten thousand signatures, impelling a response from the MET. The Museum stated that they wouldn't take the painting down, and that “Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation. Visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present" (Libbey).
The fact that Thérèse is viewed to be in a sexualized position even though she is simply resting is enough to understand that girls cannot simply exist and be free in our society. Because she has her legs open, because you can see her underwear, because she is "improper". Balthus might think he was portraying a free girl, but Thérèse will always be confined to society's expectations of femininity. On the other hand, if the painter is in fact sexualizing the kid, it just shows that young girls can't exist without being objectified by older men.
Therese – Maya Hawke
In 2022, the American actress and singer Maya Hawke released the music video for her song "Thérèse"(Fig. 3 and 4) (Maya Hawke, Thérèse Official Music Video). The title of the song alludes back to Balthus painting "Thérèse dreaming" (fig.1).The lyrics are as follow:
I go see Thérèse dreaming
She's stretching out her sore shoulder Leaning back, eyes closed, reaching up She's wishing she was older
Dreaming of an appaloosa
Saddled up, riding out of town
Dreaming of a Shelby cobra Digging her tires in the ground
Bleeding, bringing in a new year's mess Unaware of the stain on her dress
It's tactless, it's a test It's just Thérèse
It's just Thérèse
White kitten in the corner Obscene
It really says it all
Milk matches her underwear Get her down
Take her off the wall
She dreams of Marlon in Austin Their bodies tangled in a net
She thinks of him every so often When she feels like a space cadet
She empathizes with your feelings She's more interested in the ceilings
It's tactless, it's a test It's just Thérèse
It's just Thérèse
It's tactless, it's a test It's just Thérèse
It's just Thérèse
She reminds me of memories Sleeping off the growing pains We were see anemones Spelling out each other's names Whispering inside our red house While the adults were a-sleeping I guess Thérèse is just for me
A quiet I keep on keeping
Thérèse does not belong to you The horses, cars, and cowboys do
It's tactless, it's a test It's just Thérèse
It's just Thérèse (3x)
(Fig 3 and 4) Hawke, Maya. (2022, July 18). Maya Hawke - Thérèse (Official Music Video) [Video]. YouTube. Maya Hawke - Thérèse (Official Music Video
The bold music video shows how femininity is censured and judged as Hawke walks with her hands tied and bare chested, in a line of women presenting the same as her, as flashing lights alluding to the “police” follow the group (Fig 4). The disturbing scene keeps going as Maya sings the chorus. In the same interview, the singer clarifies that she felt connected to Thérèse for being scrutinized by the public at a young age (Dazzed). When Hawke sings “Therese does not belong to you, the hoses, cars and cowboys do” (Maya Hawke) she is taking ownership back of Thérèse as a person, not an object for men to use – as she associates classic masculine things that “belong’ to men. Instead, she keeps Therese for herself, because she feels like she actually understands the girl.
The singer also released a music video for her song “Blue Hippo” (Maya Hawke, Blue Hippo Official Music Video) in 2022 where she recreates the painting and dresses herself as Thérèse, (Fig. 2 and 3), solidifying her connection to the painting and the character. Hawke’s interpretation of Balthus painting brings another layer to interpreting his art, since it makes the connection that women’s bodies will always get censured by society, weather if you are a child, a teenager or a grown woman. Hawke’s solution to society’s censorship and restriction of women’s bodies is creating free spaces to be ourselves and liberating our bodies (Fig. 5) (MTV).
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen - Edgar Degas
Another quite controversial piece, the “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” is the only sculpture by Degas that he showed to the public. The bronze delicate piece depicts a young ballerina girl of lower class dressed in real clothes. She poises herself in what looks like an uncomfortable position. The model was a student in the Paris Opera Ballet, what they called at the time “petits rats de l'Opera” (little opera rats) because of the way they moved fast on the stage. These girls were usually young, pretty and poor, which most of the times lead to male “protectors”, men who would take advantage of the girls' situation and naiveness. Degas depiction of the girl was meant to show her internal struggles: although she keeps her arms tied to her back, representing her discomfort and difficult position in society, the girl holds her chin high in the air, a depiction of her self-worth (Fig. 6 and 8) (NGA).
The controversy came when Degas put his work on display in 1881. The piece was bound for criticism, since it showed a little girl from the lower class – who was looked upon by high class societies such as artists as being “worthless”. His use of real clothes to dress the sculpture was also a new and renowned artistic method. All these characteristics
brought criticism by the French art critics, but what was frowned upon by mostly male artists at the time was the girls looks. Men claimed she wasn’t “pretty” enough and complained over the “average looks” on the statues face (SB, Sophia). The art critic Elie de Mont expressed: “I don’t ask that art should always be elegant, but I don’t believe that its role is to champion the cause of ugliness.” (NGA, Collection Highlights). The critics were so upset by it to the point where they recommended it to be removed from future gallery exhibitions. Degas retired the statue after the first exhibition, and the piece was only seen by the public in 1920 after his death.
The fact that these art critics were so distressed about a little girl’s appearance shows that there is no place for women – even little girls – in our society unless they subject to men’s ideal of beauty. It shows how problematic, perverted and constricted their ideals of how a woman should exist were. It shows that even with the struggles of being poor, young and taken advantage by older men, little girls still must be beautiful, gracious and conform to what men expect them to look like.
As I Am - Deborah Roberts
The visual fragmentation of her work symbolizes black women's reconstruction of selfhood as the artist cuts sharp edges and merges these images together. She combines
photographs and hand painted details to create her striking mixed media collages. By criticizing these impossible beauty standards, Roberts dives into her own childhood experiences growing up as a black girl. She tells in interview with Jacqui Germain of how, even though her two sisters were different ages as herself, people would act as if they were triplets – disregarding their names and calling all three the same muddled name and merging their identity together. In the same interview, she reveals that by understanding and criticizing these beauty standards she was able to find out what beauty meant to herself, and that without her art she might not have understood what it meant at all (Jansen & Germain).
The artist voices her dismay that as kids, black girls don't have space for naiveness. “When I was drawing these little girls, I wanted to highlight that...[just] because society has set us up like this doesn’t mean that we didn’t want to be children, that we didn’t want to be seen as innocent, that we wanted a childhood to be able to explore.” (Jansen & Germain)
On her Artist Statement, Roberts talks about how when growing up, she couldn't identify with renaissance paintings or fashion magazines – what shaped her early ideals of beauty and race – since those images evoked a power and status that was not afforded to the people she knew. This led the artist to investigate how far these ideals of beauty shaped her own identity and other African Americans. This led to action – through art. Now, Roberts wants to engage critically with Art History and Pop Culture, combating any authority has on the female figure. (Roberts, n.d)
Sources
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