04.30.18

Female Narcissism in Art: Let Me Paint Me

I drew my first self-portrait in the eighth grade for a state-wide art competition. After days of brainstorming, I finally decided to play with light and distortion and had my mother photograph me with half my face behind a clear plastic shower curtain. The drawn rendition was complete after one blissful, passionate weekend of charcoal-covered hands, furious scribbling and smudging. I’d never been prouder of anything, and on Monday I rushed to show the art teacher my masterpiece. “Oh,” was her reaction. “Well, it’s beautiful… but it looks like you’re naked.” My face immediately flushed, and my eyes plummeted from her raised eyebrows to the floor. “I… I was just out of the shower,” I tried to explain. “I was in my towel. I wasn’t really naked, I promise.” Alas, I was informed that I’d “just have to add in some tank top straps, sweetie.” My eyes stinging, I carefully slid my pornographic drawing back into its portfolio. That afternoon, I took it home and added two thick black straps onto my drawn shoulders, vandalizing my prized piece. They looked wrong, disproportionate and distracting, and I felt so ashamed. I had created something “inappropriate,” but didn’t understand why. The drawing cut off before my armpits, but apparently the bare shoulders of a 14-year-old are unacceptable when she, herself, frames them in an art piece.

In high school, I further explored self-portraiture in conversation with the pressures of the media to be physically beautiful. Constantly, I was teased for using myself as the subject. “You just love yourself, don’t you?” friends and teachers would joke. “I’m my own best model,” I’d shrug. “Do you realize how sexual this is?” some fellow art kids giggled in response to a painting I’d made about anorexia, which depicted myself in my underwear, drawing measurements around my waist. “I didn’t intend for it to be sexual,” I’d retort, to which they’d respond, “She’s got some serious, pent-up sexual frustration then!” This last remark wasn’t necessarily untrue, but it frustrated me to no end. I didn’t want to be defined as “sexual,” but I also didn’t comprehend why it was such a bad thing. Am I secretly a sexual monster? I worried. Later, I discovered that yes, most humans are in fact sexual and I am no different. Yet, being a sexual femme person in this world is only acceptable behind closed doors, and outwardly owning one’s own female sexuality comes with a major price. 

For instance, any time a female artist consistently uses herself as subject, in a sexual context or not, she is immediately labeled a narcissist. Self-obsessed. Egocentric. When a man depicts himself, however, he is self-exploratory. Introspective. Reflective. I’d like to ask why Van Gogh’s hundreds of self-portraits have never been considered narcissistic. One might point out that he was mentally ill. He committed suicide, of all things. His paintings are beautiful and evocative, and that’s what matters. Have some goddamn respect. Do not fret – I love Van Gogh’s work wholeheartedly and agree with such statements, but if you compare his situation to that of Francesca Woodman’s, an American artist who created an entire breadth of photographic work but is mainly known for her nude self-portraits, it’s startling how she is widely critiqued for being “excessively narcissistic”[1] despite how incredibly groundbreaking her work is. To many, her suicide at the age of 22 does not warrant sympathy but rather speaks to her egocentrism. People are fascinated by the spectacle of her death and her self-exploration, yet they chastise her with the label of “narcissist.” 

Since no naked female body can exist in a work without reason, there is then the debate of whether Woodman’s work is or is not feminist. Her parents assert that her photographs are simply meant to be Modernist and oftentimes humorous, whereas others pinpoint feminist elements, such as “the way she shields herself from the male gaze, presenting her nude body as a sort of animal carcass,” or how “she possibly alludes to the confines of the home, crouching behind a fireplace, hiding behind crumbling wallpaper, eating curtains.”[2] Perhaps people feel they must save Woodman’s work from the oh-so-evil label of “narcissist,” and the only way to do so is by pinpointing another intention behind her interest in the nude female body. If she’s not narcissistic, then she must be feminist. But why can’t one be both? Curator of photography, Corey Keller states, “She’s not interested in images of women in general, for example, and even when the subject of the photograph is not herself physically, one always has the sense it is about her psychically.”[3] Keller speaks of Woodman’s self-intrigue in a positive light, but I’d go further to argue that in its unintentionality, Woodman’s work was purely feminist because she treated her naked body as an organic subject, rather than a sexual entity. Art can be feminist without being about feminism, as one can be narcissistic and also a feminist. 

The word “narcissist” itself is intriguing. I find it darkly comical that its connotations are extremely negative and essentially sinful, when its definition is simply “a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.” Take out the word “excessive,” and it’s truly a beautiful character description. Unfortunately, our culture exaggerates and directly correlates any use of the word “narcissism” with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a serious mental condition. Inflating the word “narcissism” and using it incorrectly in our jargon puts those labeled “narcissists” in the same category as those with mental illness, which makes light of actual NPD sufferers and furthers the assumption that intense introspection is wrong. As beings with the ability to look into ourselves, to introspect and self-analyze, shouldn’t we take full advantage of this splendor? The word “excessive” in narcissist’s definition implies that after a little while you must stop, that you can only do so much soul-searching because if you cross some invisible, culturally-drawn line, you will become… a narcissist. Gasp. Shriek. Brouhaha. After the centuries of oppression that female-identified individuals have endured, shouldn’t we be able to enjoy a little narcissism with our afternoon tea? After all, we have to work excessively hard just to feel good about ourselves in a world that’s constantly tearing us apart. How is it possible to truly self-discover when self-worth is constantly in question? In my opinion, women need to be narcissists in order to thrive. A tool to negate and defend ourselves from a misogynistic and patriarchal system, excessive interest and admiration of ourselves is necessary. 

I am currently studying abroad in Rome, as Francesca Woodman once did. When I walk through the silver-black, rickety cobblestone streets, lined with dusty yellow, blue, and salmon-pink palazzi, it’s only a minute’s time before I’m snatched from my observations and bombarded by catcallers and male restaurant hosts, who, for some reason, think that hollering sexual remarks about a woman’s legs will entice her into buying a caprese salad. I can’t help but imagine Francesca, 40 years earlier, in the same situation. Did she yell something back? Did she ignore them? Did she just tune them out entirely? Her work during this time is exceptional, from portraits of herself posing naked against a dirtied stucco wall to curling her body around a bowl of eels on a marble floor, suggesting that little broke her focus. From a safety perspective, the fact that her naked body collided with the Roman outdoors is astounding to me. Maybe her so-called narcissism is what abetted her concentration and determination, but when it broke three years later, she broke too. Female introspection does not often gain acclaim, and she knew this.

Perhaps, reclamation of narcissism is necessary to insight cultural change. This female ownership of self, represented not only in artwork but also in our minds, is a vital step towards equality. Not until a femme individual needs no excuse to look into and discover herself, as well as ensure that there is no limitation on socially acceptable introspection, will the gender gap close. I am not suggesting a public outpouring or boasting of self-love, for narcissism is a mentality, not a definitive of action, and it shouldn’t affect the well-being of others. But until our daughters can represent themselves as they please (with or without bare shoulders), or merely until they can look in the mirror and smile at their reflections without onlooker judgement, we have a lot of work left to do.

[1] The Guardian

[2] The Huffington Post

[3] The Guardian