The Words That Hurt Us

For my project, I decided to make 10 digital portraits of female comedians and classmates, paired with oppressive insults they have received personally. This idea is centered in the concept of linguistic reclamation, or taking back hateful words as an act of defiance and self-love. The portraits I have created for this project are meant to be that act, solidified.

(I am including all 10 portraits below, hopefully this doesn't ruin the quality of them, but if it does and you would like to be sent a better quality version, just let me know!)

Elana

Kelsey 

 Aneyla

 Daisy

 Hannah Gadsby

 Holly

 Kennedy

 Phoebe Robinson

 Tina Fey

Vivienne

The portraits were completed before the writing portion of my project, partially because my mini-essay dealt mostly with the visual details of the portraits. Starting out, I first collected pictures of the volunteers from our class and of the famous comedians, some of which I had chosen because of specific quotes using oppressive language from their blog posts. The only stipulations for the pictures of our classmates were that it had to be a picture of themselves that they liked a lot, for one reason or another. By doing this, I have support for my argument of pairing an oppressive insult with a portrait that represents confidence and self-assurance. After making the digital portraits, I began on the writing and research portion of my project, where I found a few interesting sources about the history and/or present day usage of linguistic reclamation. For example, we have been using the word “queer” in this course to refer to members of the LGBT+ community in a generalized yet respectful manner, there has even been a blog discussion on non-LGBT+ people using this word specifically, but for a very long time, this word was used to oppress gay people. This is my overall goal with this project, to take the words used by others to oppress women and turn them around, pair them with a confident face, and let the world know that those words no longer have the power over women that they once did.

I believe this is important for many reasons, but to say it in the broadest sense, I believe this project is important for the same reasons that refraining from self-deprecating humor is important. The tools that our historically patriarchal society has used to oppress women and gay people have become normalized, even traditional. By doing the things that Hannah Gadsby talks about in Nanette, by not giving in to the internalized-misogyny/homophobia-is-funny ideology, we are able to gain back the power that has been withheld from us.

I learned a few things throughout the span of creating this project. First of all, I should admit, I initially wanted to do this project because I had just gotten an iPad and Apple Pencil to make digital art and I wanted to see what I could do. I am thankful I did, though, because I learned a lot about creating digital art in the process, and I was able to personalize each of the portraits so that the words could have certain effects that would emphasize their oppression and negativity. I also learned a lot about my classmates, which was really wonderful and made my performance on the project even more important to me. I don’t think I was surprised by much aside from my classmates’ willingness to participate in the project, as well as their positive reactions when I showed them their portraits in the draft stages.

I would have to say that my favorite part of this project was the actual creation of the art, and how involved my classmates were in that process. Dr. Hanrahan was always very supportive as well, when I met with her to show her my progress, and this involvement by both Dr. Hanrahan and my classmates motivated me to make these portraits as perfect as I could. I am happy to be able to create several artworks that you all can understand, and hopefully appreciate, alongside me!