Female Artists: The Struggles & Triumphs

Angela Dawson
Aug 23, 2019
8 min read

A commentary on female artists and the female perspective. Let's discuss how to fight through adversity & get shit done.

* Disclaimer: For this particular article, the struggles of female artists was the requested topic. If my readers would like to read more regarding the LGBTQ+ artist community, and others that are underrepresented or under appreciated, please let me know in the comments!

Becoming

When I was just a little earthling, I thought I’d grow up to be a professional pianist. I played the piano almost every day for seven years, memorizing pages of classical pieces and crafting my technique on my grandmother’s Able Nelson baby grand.

With a melodramatic disposition, I would close my eyes and bend my spine backwards with extended arms reaching for the white and black keys, performing ever so deliberately. Look what I can do! It was my attempt to become the next Victor Borge, an older comedian pianist that I was fascinated by at the time. I wanted to make people smile and laugh like he could, while harnessing my skills to perfection. It was something I loved, up until I could no longer find happiness from it.

"Your one job in life is to figure out what it is you are called to do."

Eventually the act of sitting in front of a piano became a chore. I felt restricted, my energy drained with each day that I grew more resentful towards it. And so I stopped until I began to despise classical music altogether. Through piano I discovered the importance of having a passion, and I will forever hold this appreciation towards the instrument. Passions have the ability to fade, but I was lucky enough to have found a new one. The art of writing.

Choosing an art form to pursue is hard enough—there are so many options out there, so many people we can become and things we can do. We should be grateful to find our purpose, to find what our heart calls for. As Oprah Winfrey once said (and if you follow my blog you know I love quoting the queen herself) “Your one job in life is to figure out what it is you are called to do.” Once we figure out what that calling is, we must cherish and nurture it.

Being an artist is not choosing the easy way out. An artist's job is complex and trying. When we choose this career we are saying that we're willing to struggle, that we want to share our work with the world knowing that some may hate it—that we are willing to be vulnerable and expose every part of ourselves, because that is art.

We are exposing all of ourselves, both the dark and the light. We want to create because we live for it, hoping that we can survive in the process. Being an artist comes with its difficulties, but being a female artist comes with its own unique ones.

A Woman’s Dilemma

Virginia Woolf knew exactly what it was like to be a female artist in a man’s world. In fact, she discusses this in her widely renowned book, A Room of One's Own, in which she paints a fictional scenario that might as well have been true for many female artists.

She sets the stage as such: William Shakespeare, our beloved English poet and playwright, had a sister named Judith, with the same artistic genius to that of her brother. Though, she was forced to suppress her talents. For as long as she was a woman, she would not be taken seriously in the patriarchy of the sixteenth-century. Surprise, surprise.

Judith was wary to embrace what she was inherently taught to hide. She lit her work on fire, for fear of being ridiculed. She got married, obeying her gender role while remaining locked in the domestic sphere. Time passed, her passion began to boil over, and so she ran off to follow her dreams. Risking everything, she crossed the threshold into the public sphere. A manager ended up taking advantage of her, and she became pregnant. Her dreams were crushed in the end, and she couldn't take it. Judith’s story ended in suicide.

Suicide was a frightening pattern in real life amongst female artists. In fact, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1941. Marylin Monroe was said to have purposely overdosed in 1962. Sylvia Plath placed her head inside an oven in 1963. Anne Sexton sat inside her garage, poisoning herself with carbon monoxide from a running car in 1974. These are just a few examples.

Her piece, and the story that was painted within, pertains to a particular human experience that still has yet to be fully embraced or understood—the female experience and perspective, especially in the world of art.

Today’s Struggle

Now, imagine a present-day Judith. Arguably, she would not be as suppressed as she was in the past, but her journey to fame would not come without its challenges. Even if Judith does get the recognition she deserves, not everyone can be Shakespeare’s fictional sister, who would most likely be white and middle-class. Socio-economic status greatly impacts how successful someone is, based on the likeliness of being given opportunities and higher education.

A patriarchy is still existent in our culture, and sexism is the cherry on top. Everyday women struggle to break down these barriers in order to be respected in the art realm, or in any realm for that matter. When they do break down, another appears—commonly referred to as the glass ceiling effect: “The popular notion of glass ceiling effects implies that gender (or other) disadvantages are stronger at the top of the hierarchy than at the lower levels and that these disadvantages become worse later in a person’s career” (David A. Cotter, et al.).

Women are given more opportunities and access to communities thanks to the amendments to sexist and discriminatory laws, as well as the advancement of social media. However, this is not to say there are no commonalities with Judith’s fictional situation and today’s female condition. Even though societal shifts occurred as the feminist movement took flight again during its second wave, women still face challenges with the workplace, traditional expectations, the media, and more. (If you would like more in-depth coverage of these movements and their effects in another article, please let me know in the comments below!)

It continues to be an uphill battle. If we do not understand, associate, or sympathize with the female experience based on how little it is represented in the media, how are we to embrace it as a collective community?

Creating art is a gift, being able to share it is a privilege.

Women throughout History

The male gaze dominates the entertainment sphere. Any characters that were created in literature and art in the past were perceived predominantly through the male voice and the male eye.

Those who wrote with a pen name—George Eliot, George Sand, and Currer Bell, as Virginia Woolf explained, were not as concerned with fame as their male counterparts were. They simply wanted to share their work. How inspiring is that?

There is much to gain from learning about these inspiring women, but there is one very important message that I have found to be especially true—creating art is a gift, being able to share it is a privilege.

Mary Shelley, a female writer who edited much of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s work, was not given enough recognition. Emily Dickinson only had a dozen or so of her poems published while she lived, yet wrote over a thousand poems in her lifetime. Her work has been the subject of many studies in institutions across the nation, along with other female poets and writers underrated during their time.

Women’s work has consistently been underrepresented—and not just within literature. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, in 2018 “women comprised 20% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.” Women are highly underrepresented and misrepresented within the movie industry.

In a recent study, it has been discovered that “Using a sample of 1.5 million auction transactions between 1970 to 2013 in 45 countries for 62,442 individual artists, we document that auction prices for paintings by female artists are significantly lower than prices for male artists even after including country-fixed effects” (Renee Adams, et al.). The outcome—female artists sold their work for 47.6% of what male artists made during the auctions. Buyers and audiences may actually view artwork created by women to be less valid than the art created by men. We are no longer in the sixteenth-century—this is all happening today.

Despite these steps backward, there have been those who have created some cracks in the looming glass ceiling of society. Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou (all which were born into working class families) were just a few of the most recent integral voices in bringing female black voices into the mainstream public.

Oprah and Michelle Obama are even more modern examples of female voices taking the media by storm, supporting significant causes dedicated to women—such as women in the workplace, equal pay, and body image, just to name a few.

Margaret Atwood, another writer, used her voice to comment on the female condition in her well-known book, The Handmaid’s Tale, which was adapted into an award-winning television show.

Rupi Kaur, an Indian-Canadian poet, sold millions of copies of her book of prose and poetry, Milk and Honey, landing her on the New York Times Best Sellers.

These female artists did not experience an easy journey to success. Each of their backgrounds are diverse and contain their own unique trials and tribulations. They likely faced most, if not all, of the aforementioned issues pertaining to the omnipresent glass ceiling. Although I am able to compile a brief list of female artists that have made their mark on society and the world of art, a range of female perspectives must continue to be sought out.

It is an infinite puzzle as to why women keep hitting their heads on the glass, while men seem to have little to no problem in soaring through to the blue skies of success. This is not to say women are not capable. It is in fact the opposite, we are capable, but being capable does not mean we will be respected or given the opportunity by men to show that we should be seen in equal standing.

The Fight to Keep Going

We all feel at a loss sometimes, fearing future failures like a bruise that hasn’t yet surfaced; worried that what we are creating isn’t enough, that the world for successful artists is too limited. But it will only stay true if you believe it is. You are creating that reality of doubts to protect yourself from the lessons disguised as failures, but you are also keeping yourself from flourishing. You cannot rise to the occasion without a few trips or falls.

Art is always expanding—expanding in form and opportunity and mediums. Our imagination is the limiting factor. And yes, the world may try its best to keep us from achieving what we have worked so hard for, but we cannot stop. We will not stop. Que Miley Cyrus in a fuzzy bodysuit singing we can’t stoppp, we won’t stoppp.

There is no career without some sort of struggle. The struggle to provide. To please people. To compare yourself with others. To find joy or satisfaction. But if you love it, don’t stop creating. Don’t stop your drive, your focus. You are doing everything for a purpose. If you are no longer happy doing what you are doing, then move on to the next best thing. Change is inevitable. This world has so much to offer you, and we have so much more to offer ourselves. Art transcends, and so will you.

As Virginia Woolf would attest, women must help each other in attaining a room of their own, one where we find glass shattered at our feet instead of thick above our heads. Looking back at our history from the feminist movement to today, women are the ones who paved the way for new female voices to emerge. Men cannot free women from the oppressive hands that force them down.

In the end, women must support the diversity of female perspectives, tearing down the stigma that female art is lesser than. Women must free women.

Sources:

Adams, Renée B. and Kraeussl, Roman and Navone, Marco A. and Verwijmeren, Patrick, Is Gender in the Eye of the Beholder? Identifying Cultural Attitudes with Art Auction Prices December 6, 2017.

Cotter, David A., et al. “The Glass Ceiling Effect.” Social Forces, vol. 80, no. 2, 2001, pp.

655–681. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2675593.

Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” The Norton Anthology English Literature: The

Twentieth Century and After. Greenblatt, Stephen, Abrams, M.H. 9th Ed. Vol F. W.W.

Norton and Company New York, 2012. 2264-2272.