The Image as an Act of Violence
If we cannot immediately identify the answers , looking at how the NRA is currently using the same representation of women to sell more firearms should bring this more into focus . As
Shannon Watts , founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense says , “ I ’ m convinced that there are absolutely no women on the NRA ’ s marketing team … They simultaneously objectify and degrade women and yet also want them to be customers . Those two things don ’ t go together .”
Feminized gun culture is becoming a worldwide phenomenon where stylized personas are inherited , repackaged , and disseminated through media by young women — from the ‘ la ganchas ,’ the Mexican drug war cartels , to the ‘
girl gangs ’ in the U . S ., to the women rebel fighters in past West African civil wars . Real life femme fatales are creating personas of themselves using dress , sexuality , and
mystique on social media to enhance their status on the front lines of very dangerous situations , just to survive .
According to the documentary series
Tales of the Gun , female gun ownership has decreased since the 1800s . But in that time , gun violence against women has spiked significantly . And now we have more of these women appearing on the real front lines on both sides of the law . Is life imitating media and art ?
Meza-DesPlas ’ personal experience with
domestic gun violence with an ex-boyfriend provides additional impetus to the focus of her work . While living in New York in the 1990s , she shared an apartment with her boyfriend who was often physically abusive . “ We had a couple of instances where he had a gun out … in that case it was not for my protection . He pointed it at me .” Fortunately , he never fired the gun , but being threatened by one was frightening for the artist . “ In a way , it was more psychologically impactful than actually being hit ,” she says . It is remarkable that with such strong sources to pull from , her paintings are not literal but rather layered investigative questions , free of blame or prescriptive solutions .
Like Francisco Goya ’ s
The Disasters of War series of drawings , from which Meza-DesPlas also drew inspiration , the circumstances of each these women in her paintings are unknown and placeless . We are conditioned to recognize these women by their body types , but not as femme fatale characters . Hollywood typically presents them as mothers , aunts , sisters , teachers , matrons , but not unclothed , and certainly not as sex symbols . We also know they represent many of us far more accurately than Farrah , Angelina , or Uma do .
Meza-DesPlas incorporates the fluidity of watercolor , and most notably , human hair from her own head , which adds a sketched dimension of corporeality that as she notes , plays on both the crowning beauty of a woman and the repulsive association of discarded hair . It is hard to project preconceptions onto her work , so therefore they provoke discomfort , disgust , and prompt new questions about what has become a normalized view of women .
28 OF NOTE