Wednesday, June 06, 2007

DO NOT WANT

Could someone who knows art please tell me whether the below image is a famous painting or something? Be kind, please, and recall that I am an idiot, and not just artistically.



So Brownfemipower was asking about books on adult attention deficit disorder the other day, and that reminded me that I have, figuratively speaking, many rivers to cross if I'm ever going to finish Women with Attention Deficit Disorder, because I've only just started it and it's a long one.

I picked the book up again tonight, but then I did not really feel like soldiering on, so I just started flipping pages, eventually landing on the beginning of the section of the book titled, "Emergence." The above serves as the accompanying illustration for "Emergence."

And, well--this just wasn't the sort of emergence I was looking for, you know? I like dicks and all, but that doesn't mean I want one emerging from my chin, growing up towards my hairline and threatening to fwap me on the bridge of the nose every time I lean my pretty head back. And I have enough trouble keeping my boobs aligned as it is; I don't need to encourage the emergence of the left one every time I have a seat, either.

I don't know about me and this book, y'all. I just don't know.

But it did get my attention, I'll give it that.

9 comments:

Lesley Plum said...

I'm not sure of the name of that work, but I can tell you that it's a Picasso. Which, by no means, strips it of any misogynistic undertones. But it's Picasso.

Anonymous said...

The image is based on Picasso's "The Dream."

ilyka said...

Malibu Stacy for the win.

Still do not want.

Unknown said...

hee hee. this is so funny. I got that same book, and i'm trying to make it through it too-

did you see the very last picture of the book? the comparison between the picasso and the mona lisa?

that one kinda irked me. i see where she's going with it, but it still irritated me.

Anonymous said...

A (male) friend of mine once went to see a collection of Picassos, and (tellingly) told me afterward, "How can you look at his work and not think about violence against women!"

Magniloquence said...

It totally took me until right now to figure out where on earth you saw a penis in that image. I just saw a face. And I saw this when it popped up in my aggregator last night.

Heh. I had that problem with the old woman/young woman optical illusion too. I couldn't see the young woman for years. I'm not so good at decentering visually, I think.

ilyka said...

that one kinda irked me. i see where she's going with it, but it still irritated me.

Just looked that up and ugh, DO NOT WANT either:

"The calm, serene look of Mona Lisa is a beautiful, organized, stable kind of figure. But it's certainly different from this exciting, vibrant picture of Picasso's multifaceted image of a woman, who represents the woman with AD/HD, a diamond in the rough."

Okay, ladies: You'll never be beautiful or stable, but at least you'll be multifaceted! And EXCITING and VIBRANT.

Why didn't she just go all out and call the Picasso exotic? Really, Sari, don't hold back.

Magniloquence said...

*shudders* Does it have any of that hunter/farmer ADD nonsense in it? (this take isn't so bad.. but most of them are just awful)

You get little charts and things that are supposed to make you feel better... "you're a hunter in a farmer's world!" "It's a gift, not a problem!"

Which, on the one hand, is occasionally a useful reframing. Most of the traits aren't maladaptive by themselves - extra energy, different thought patterns, etc. That's certainly true, and we shouldn't pathologize them to the extent that we do.

But... it's disingenuous to go from there to "it's a gift!" Many of the traits, especially when strongly expressed, are maladaptive in the world we live in currently and do cause problems. More importantly, even for the things that can be integrated into daily life or ameliorated by accomodations, many of those things are either poorly recieved by the public at large or infeasible to implement without radical restructuring.

I dunno. That was one of the things that bothered me when I went to my Adult ADD support group. People talked about the theory and it was like.. "hey, that's a cool way of thinking! Wait, no... that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Come back!"

I actually have the same problem with the period debates. Yes, overmedicalization of natural processes is bad and alienating and oppressive and whatnot. No, that doesn't mean that we should all wander around just letting things take their course if and when they are harmful to our functioning. It seems like you only ever get people in one camp or another. "It's evil and we should regulate it away!" "No, it's wonderful and natural and we should never ever do anything about it!"

*sighs*

Anonymous said...

Good Vibrations uses a similar image for their logo.