(*Note* - This article is based on a journal I recently wrote, and in this form I have expanded the content to make it into a proper news article. It is very much an opinion piece, but it seeks to inform, challenge, and inspire thought and contemplation in its readers.)



Sometimes, when I'm bored and I've got nothing better to do than waste my time on the internets, I’ll casually scroll through the pages upon pages of "most popular deviations submitted in the last -insert time frame here-"....with no other real objective except to pass the time and make fun of the wealth of silly things I often see.

Inevitably, if I spend enough time doing this, I quit, not so much out of boredom (though that's part of it), but, silliest of sillies, because I find my self-esteem considerably lowered....why you ask? Well, I’ll tell you: if you scan through the many, many pages of most popular deviations, you will find a significant portion of these pieces to be of nude, semi-nude, and/or generally sexualized females.

Now there is nothing wrong with any of that in and of itself. However though, I feel that many of these images are not art so much as a soft variety of quasi-porn (because their main purpose, and perhaps only purpose, is to arouse)...

I suppose this is as good a time as any to insert a definition of what pornography actually is.

According to the Random House dictionary, porn is “obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit”. And the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language states that porn is “sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.”

(And I’m not knocking porn....porn has it's place [though I don't feel like it belongs on an art site], and I certainly dig a lot of erotica out there...I even used to be a fan of Suicide Girls, even considered becoming one myself, but this was before the site got shifty, smarmy, and redundant and when my body-image was a little less, um, deflated....but I digress...)

I should also mention that sex and sexuality in art are some of my favorite things, and certainly sometimes arousal is part of this, but more importantly, it is FAR MORE than about simple arousal, as porn is. One of my deviantart friends, , said that art of a sexual nature can “ provoke thoughts about our dreams, fears, desires, and place in the world"...yes! Well done art that deals with sex exposes the soul of the subject or act in question, not just the naughty bits. I feel that any kind of work on this site that looks at sexuality in a thoughtful or artistic or critical or celebratory, etc. way is certainly appropriate content for an art site, because, of course, this work is actually ART.

Now deviantart has a very clear article in their help section about what they deem pornographic, it can be found here: [link]

Now, to give credit where credit is due, it seems that deviantart has done a good job making sure none of what is outlined in their terms as “ pornographic” is shown on the site. However, I would argue that much of what they DO allow on this site is still pornographic in nature, though perhaps of a far more “soft” variety. I guess the problem I have with a lot of the images I find of sexualized females on this site is that they seem to exist ONLY or PRIMARILY to arouse and have little or no artistic merit (my opinion at least).

I’m not a censorship fan or anything, but I think the owners of the site have the right to determine what they deem fit to put on their own site, and if it's an ART site, you'd think they'd want to limit the work posted to ART right? We've also got to remember that deviantart is a corporation (now anyway) and the main aim is therefore to make money, and they would lose a lot of it I'm sure if they one day decided to remove/ban anything that smacks of simple pornography. But this might be a hard line to draw sometimes too. Certainly actual ART that is sexual in whatever regard shouldn't be shunned, but how do you determine what is and what isn't? It may seem obvious to someone like me, but the line can be blurry sometimes, especially for people in a position to try to please everyone.

Certainly there are those of you who disagree, and that is fine, however, because many of these types of images have affected me and others negatively, I feel that this is an issue that is important to discuss, to, if nothing else, get people to think.



Now, three things happen when I see these sorts of images:


1.) I inevitably compare myself...

This can't be helped, women, and men as well (though traditionally in this culture it has been mostly women), are taught to view themselves as others would view them. To quote from John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" (a fabulous read by the by) a woman "has to survey everything she is...because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated by another."

Though being a happy-to-admit-it feminist myself who is totally aware of the construct in place here and its actual absurdity (thus leading to the hopeful, though somewhat naive, thought that things shouldn't be this way and I should ignore them and they will go away, at least for me), I still, I STILL, compare myself and find myself lacking....unforgivably lacking...

Troublesome indeed.

Another deviantart friend of mine, , who is consequently a model, had much to say with regards to this particular concern. In her words, “I get so frustrated, that the most brilliant and creative of concepts are always handed to the model who is a little bit thinner, a little bit taller, that model with the same chiseled features as all the rest of them ... then I get to comparing myself, knowing I'm never going to look as they do and if I wasn't so determined to succeed, would probably despair of ever getting anywhere in this industry….”

With respect to the models who appear in many of the images in question, she comments that, “I see so many hopefuls, so many girls willing to take their clothes off because they think it will in some way further their chances ... when for the most part, they're stripping for less than mildly talented photographers or guys with cameras who are doing nothing but hindering these girls portfolios and chances of being taken seriously, whilst taking advantage of their hopes and goals”.

I think it is important that I also mention that modeling IS an art-form in and of itself that takes an actual ability and skill, though not just simply a pretty face or body! Definitely there are certain models who have a way of posing, a way of making certain facial or bodily expressions, or a way of 'speaking' to the camera that makes them active members of the process of creating the image, and not simply “ props”.



2.) My feminist-antennae start a-tingling and a-twitching....

Not only because of the fact that deviantart seems to be in some ways a veritable breeding ground for pornography; not only because of the objectified and idealized women presented; not only because I have nothing better to do than complain; but largely because HARDLY ANYONE SEEMS TO GIVE A FLYING CHEESE PLATTER about what seems to be obvious to me...the most I ever see of people dissenting in any way to these kinds of images are, for example, people commenting on the "unhealthful" appearance of a very thin model (which is just disrespectful to the model, who is a person and shouldn't be judged like a commodity, even if the image portrays her as no more than a prop...), or lauding the use of a larger model (lauding a large model certainly isn't a bad thing, but in contrast many thin models are often berated for a thinness they may or may not be able to help).

I have found some people who do care though, one of them again being , who told me that, like myself, he too “despair[s] at the empty headed 'get your tits out for the boys' generation of women who know nothing of their history or the dangers of sexualizing oneself. I would suspect that of 100 girls who are doing it now - 30 will live to deeply regret it in the future…”. He goes on to pose this question: “Did Louise Bourgeois suffer and doggedly pursue her soul rending art in order that a bunch of middle class goth girls in first year fine art could become sex dolls?”.

I should also say that there is quite a lot of nude and/or erotic art on deviantart that actually IS art, and is not just porn or objectified women, wherein women subjects in the pieces play a more active role or symbolize something beyond mere arousal or act as something more than a simple prop.



3.) And I berate myself for falling into the trap of comparing myself to things, which are in fact, only images (and not necessarily reflections of reality).

Another deviantart friend, , commented that “I suppose it’s just up to us women to try and improve our feeling about our own bodies and not let it affect us so much.” Definitely one of the first steps in dealing with the situation at hand is to be informed about it, to try to improve one’s own feelings about his or her body and self-worth. Unfortunately I've not known many women who seem to be truly aware of the functioning and realities behind the situation, and take it for granted that they MUST look a certain way, and thereby MUST always compare themselves...


To end on a positive note, I would like now to showcase a variety of photography that I’ve found on deviantart that presents nude and/or sexualized women in a postive, active, artistic fashion. Consider in these images how the nude body is actually used; consider the variety of body types and ages of the models; consider the expression, both of the face and body, of the models; consider the underlying concepts; consider the other elements at play. I feel that in these works, much, much more is going on than simple arousal.