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Hello Bumble Boys: Art and Dating
121 Plays4 years ago
This week we are talking all about dating apps and art. What is visual culture like on dating apps? And what is it like being a single woman working in the arts? We also compare two different works of installation art, from 1972 and 2016.
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Transcript
Emotional Roller Coaster and Friendship Solace
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome to Art Path Talk. I'm Gianna. And I'm Bianca. Hey, Bianca. What up, what up, what up? Yo, yo, yo, yo. What up, what up? Winston. I said yo. How's it going? Good. I mean, that was probably even a dumb question to ask of me, because I know how you're doing. But yes, this week has really just been like a roller coaster of emotions.
00:00:59
Speaker
So at the present moment, I am good because I'm here with you. I'm feeling happy, but I never know if I'm gonna cry or laugh within the span of an hour.
Lady Gaga's Chromatica: A Bop and a Banger?
00:01:12
Speaker
I completely agree, this week has been a roller coaster for so many different reasons. So, of course, Lady Gaga, number six, Chromatica was released this week, and as we inferred, it's a bop, it's a banger, and it is everything.
00:01:32
Speaker
But aside from that, so many other things happened this week as well.
Hannah Gadsby's Humor and Art History
00:01:37
Speaker
Truly. This morning, I watched Hannah Gadsby's newest Netflix special, it's called Douglas. And if you haven't watched Hannah Gadsby's first Netflix special, it's called Manette and she
00:01:51
Speaker
is so funny the I will say like if you haven't watched it it does get really dark at the end so just be prepared for that but she makes these art history jokes that are just so on point and when she's talking about cubism
00:02:08
Speaker
It's everything. Cubism! But cubism! It's so good. And then I watched her newest special this morning and she does the same thing where she's talking like using these art history references and it's just so good.
Wine and Palette Collaboration Idea with Gadsby
00:02:25
Speaker
It's so funny. And I was thinking like a realistic goal I now have for this show is I really think that we should do like a wine and palette with Hannah Gadsby.
00:02:34
Speaker
Oh, she would be so on board. No, I know. But the thing is, I really think that we could get her. Do you know what I mean? I do too. Because so for those of you who don't know, she has her bachelor's or master's. I think it's her undergrad. I think it's her undergrad. She has her undergraduate degree in art history. So she makes all these jokes about like not knowing what to do with her art history degree.
00:02:58
Speaker
And people kind of having conversations with her, you know, trying to speak about art history and they're like, ah, but cute Missa. It's so funny. I just really think that we could like reach out to her and I really think we could get her to do a wine and
Gadsby's Comfort During Turbulent Times
00:03:16
Speaker
palette. We so should. And also, please watch her first special because it's amazing, but it gets really real at the end. Yeah, it is like socially important to watch as well. I'm not just for like the humor.
00:03:29
Speaker
And Bianca hates the story of mine so I'm not going to go into it, but when I watched her first Netflix special I was on the flight from hell and I truly thought I was going to die. And I was literally just going from Connecticut to Philadelphia, it was the worst, but that Netflix special really got me through it. She would be happy to know that. The thing is we have great references and I feel like she could use that. I'm on this flight and at the time I was like, yeah, I'm going to die here.
00:03:58
Speaker
The Cubism! Really good.
Mixed Feelings on SpaceX Launch
00:04:02
Speaker
Aside from Hannah Gatsby's new special, we just got done watching the SpaceX launch, which I don't know about anybody else, but this whole SpaceX thing has given me so much anxiety.
00:04:18
Speaker
I don't know why. It's just I also equally understand how exciting it is. It really is truly exciting. It just happened and everything is going great. Like they are now up in space.
00:04:31
Speaker
space is just really scary to me. I'm really fucking terrified of space. I think my two biggest fears we were just talking about are space and the ocean. I don't know which one is worse. I don't know which one is worse. I'm just a scaredy cat. And then right from under that it goes birds.
00:04:48
Speaker
And frogs. Oh my god. Oh yeah, I forgot about your frog fear. Mine is bugs, like grasshoppers. I don't fuck with grasshoppers. They fly, but jump. I just don't get it the way that their bodies are. It drives me nuts. I took entomology, my junior
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, my junior year. And everyone who knows me was making fun of me that I was taking entomology because they know that I have like a very rational fear of bugs. But it was a really easy natural science class. But the day that we talked about the classification in which grasshoppers existed, you bet your ass I didn't show up to that lecture that week because I just fundamentally couldn't. I don't blame you. So yeah. But the SpaceX launch.
00:05:35
Speaker
is crazy and I think it just really has taken me a minute to wrap my brain around the fact that a privately owned company has just successfully launched human beings into this space.
Cultural Impact of SpaceX Launch
00:05:51
Speaker
The space. The space. I know we were watching like the live footage of the astronauts and I think they said it was the first time where there's
00:05:59
Speaker
live footage of them actually taking off in the rocket for the US I think other countries like like Russia have done that where they've had more success with like live footage But that's the first time the US has done that. I don't I understand the cultural impact that this has but just for me given my irrational fear of like the infinite depths of space um
00:06:24
Speaker
I didn't know that I needed to watch astronauts launch into the atmosphere.
00:06:30
Speaker
It is just truly insane and you know, Elon Musk is a whole other thing, just aside from like SpaceX, like trying to kind of separate the two, which is obviously very hard since it's his whole shebang, but it really is crazy.
Tom Cruise: Movie in Space?
00:06:47
Speaker
And this is one of those moments where yeah, it might sound cliche to say, but we are living in the future and even like their space suits, they talked about they had a whole new like wardrobe look and they looked
00:06:58
Speaker
futuristic as fuck. And they drove off in a Tesla. Yes, they drove to the launch pad in a Tesla. But then the news anchor was like some branding here for Elon Musk. I was like, yeah man. But good on CBS because they were the only news platform to have an exclusive interview with Elon Musk.
00:07:19
Speaker
And I was telling Bianca because they were supposed to take off earlier in the week and they had to postpone today due to weather. So, CBS did an exclusive interview with Elon Musk and it was the only one that he was going to do until the launch happened.
00:07:36
Speaker
I don't know who I really don't know who this guy was in this interview with Elon Musk. But he was talking about how he got into the military because he watched Top Gun with Tom Cruise. And I just can't even with this comparison. But that again, Tom Cruise is also like a whole other thing.
00:07:55
Speaker
But he was saying that Tom Cruise might be part of this project where they are actually trying to film a movie in space and Tom Cruise might be one of the first actors to be like an astronaut actor. And I have a lot, a lot of feelings about that.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yes, I don't even know like how's that gonna happen? Like do you think that Tom Cruise is gonna be like well enough in his like physically to do that? You know what I mean? Because you like condition your whole life to go up into space. I don't have a lot of faith in Tom Cruise for a lot of different reasons so my answer is no. I don't like him and I don't have confidence in him and if anyone deserves that moment I don't think that it's him.
00:08:41
Speaker
I would agree with that sentiment.
00:08:43
Speaker
But anyway, so stay tuned for more information on that. We update on the next movie filmed in space. Right. But Elon Musk is very interested in partnering with production companies or film agencies to make that
Existential Thoughts on Space Exploration
00:08:56
Speaker
happen. Now that this, guys, this went successfully. And so that means, well, thus far, it's been an hour. Thus far it's been an hour. That's true. But it is going to change the way that we essentially explore space. And I'm having a very hard time wrapping my brain around that.
00:09:13
Speaker
I agree, so. Oh boy. It freaks me out probably too much to dwell on it any longer because then I just crawl into an existential hole and will not come out of it. Well, speaking of existential holes.
00:09:28
Speaker
I've done nothing the past two days besides listening to Chromatica. Bianca and I obviously have a lot, a lot, a lot of things to say about this album, but to give you all time to really process it, we are holding ourselves back and we won't be doing a full recap of Chromatica till next week. So we're gonna give you guys a little bit of homework, we're gonna give ourselves a little bit of homework,
00:09:57
Speaker
and then it'll be time to really dive into it. But I want to hear your thoughts,
Emotional Impact of Chromatica
00:10:03
Speaker
like first impressions. Okay, so from the beginning. From the beginning. Okay, so I'm in my bed and it's Thursday night and for some reason I thought that the album was coming out midnight your local time everywhere. I didn't realize that it was midnight
00:10:19
Speaker
East Coast time? So I'm in my bed and it's 11 o'clock and all of a sudden I'm like, oh my god, I have, it's here, it's here, it's here. And so I just laid in my bed for the first listen and I listened to it all the way through and I'm sitting there and so number tracks two and three are stupid love and then rain on me. So I was kind of already familiar with those. But the instrumental chromatica one, two and three, like the way it's broken up,
00:10:48
Speaker
I can't. So it really hit when I got to the track Fun Tonight and I'm in my bed and I just started bawling my eyes out. It was like finally like because I think because I'd heard Stupid Love and Rain On Me I was just like getting into the few other tracks Free Woman and Alice but something about Fun Tonight it hit me like first of all I was like oh my god she's here do you know what I mean like Chromatica's here I'm in this
00:11:17
Speaker
place that you're supposed to be in and i think i i got to that realm of chromatica with fun tonight and so something just i can't even tell i'm like i'm thinking about it like i can't even tell you the tears were just rolling down my face and my heart just felt like so full but that song just
00:11:38
Speaker
hits different. It just hits different. Yeah, I so I completely agree. I listened to the rest of the album. And then so I was in my bed during that time. And then after I listened to the first time I got up and I danced in my room and I was like, you know, scrolling Twitter and things like that. And then
00:11:54
Speaker
yesterday, Friday, I was home alone, which was really nice because mom was at work and you were gone. And I turned on the whole album on like the speaker in the house and listen to it on repeat all day long while I was working. And it was fantastic. I'm so happy that you have the space to experience the album like alone. I think that that was so important because I did the same thing because I was
00:12:21
Speaker
at my boyfriend's place when it dropped and he went to bed like loser. Of course I stayed up and listened to it but yeah it was really nice to just you know not have to like explain it to anybody in the moment and just kind of feel how I wanted to feel and like go through those things by myself. The more that I've listened to the album and just the more that I start to connect with it I think
00:12:47
Speaker
It's so groundbreaking for her personally in so many ways. But I think this is especially so interesting that Chromatica is essentially a realm, a different kind of space that she is creating. Yeah. But where is that space inhabiting? For me, it's inhabiting my subconscious, right? Yeah. Or my consciousness. So I really am like entering the space. And when I think about how we've been analyzing this album thus far independently,
00:13:15
Speaker
It really intersects the lines of how I view installation art. And we talked about how Lady Gaga has released other descriptions of each song. Oh, yes. So part of your homework for this week is if you listen on Spotify, Lady Gaga has an exclusive playlist with Spotify called Welcome to Chromatica. And there are four videos that you can watch on Spotify where Lady Gaga describes the breakdown of the album,
00:13:45
Speaker
then parts one, two, and three. And with each song, you can swipe up and read a description of the song or like the interlude. Right. So she has these like deeper descriptions that she put out.
00:13:57
Speaker
that you can read along with the songs. But as we begin to talk about installation art and those of you who are familiar with experiencing art in that way, everybody does it differently, right? But for me personally, if I see a whole big installation set up, I like to go in and I like to experience that first and then I read the label.
Artistic Significance of Chromatica
00:14:19
Speaker
Totally. So I have held off on reading these descriptions a little bit because I'm not done experiencing the art first, but also what I find so refreshing about this album and not that she hasn't done this in the past as well, but it's so raw and it's so visceral that I don't even feel like
00:14:39
Speaker
she necessarily had to put out these descriptions because she is straight up telling you in the songs. And we talked about how like the more we listened to it, you know, we didn't, you know, we hit that lyric and we find that one and that resonates more now. But the lyrics are very literal. So I really challenge you all to because every song is just such a bop. Like it's so good, really hard not to get lost into it. Yes.
00:15:04
Speaker
I want you to get lost in it and experience it in that way, but go back and really listen to the lyrics I think before you read those descriptions. So I think that if you maybe are not a little monster and you just kind of listen to Gaga on the radio or at the club,
00:15:21
Speaker
Um, at the club, maybe you kind of don't know that evolution of Gaga or maybe you don't know like about her chronic pain and things like that, but really listen to the album and it is such a story. So I encourage everyone to kind of just like party it out, dance it out, but also listen
00:15:41
Speaker
really really listen to it just kind of get in your own headspace and it really does feel just totally right it feels like a work of installation art like it's so sensory when you watch the graphics and the videos that are out like make sure you guys watch stupid love video watching on me video it's so good and I really
00:16:00
Speaker
It's important that in moving forward like we need to give ourselves time to do that homework But I'm so interested in obviously the visuals she's creating But I can't wait for like new music videos to drop some more like she's dropping more visuals every single day right so it's
00:16:15
Speaker
even like we don't even have the full installation yet to a point I just I can't but I can truly say that nothing makes me more happy on that album than those beautifully composed orchestra melodies they are they're just so beautiful it's just like
00:16:36
Speaker
warms my heart like it warms my soul and like the rain sounds in the background they're they're just stunning they they're just stunning yeah they really do like transport you to a different mental space and now those transitions
00:16:52
Speaker
when I first heard it's just genius and it was it felt so seamless and beautiful and effortless seamless seamless and this album is just a combination of everything everything of who she is everything that she's accomplished her musical background it's dance gaga it's joanne it's cheek to cheek oh it's a star spawn like I can't
00:17:14
Speaker
We need to, I know that we need to save it for next week, but I'm still, Jen and I were thinking about this, like we just kind of needed to get out these initial thoughts before we like try to calm down and break it down a little bit more. I think what I am appreciating so far about
00:17:31
Speaker
the album and people's responses to it is that people are finding different ways to connect with it. And I'm going to be very interested in hearing everybody's responses and stories and
00:17:46
Speaker
just the way that they've connected to it, so I'm so excited. I'm so excited too and I can't wait for the tour and I'm just so excited for the next – this gives me hope for the next year or two. I have something to look forward to because in two years
00:18:02
Speaker
I will be going to the Chromatica concert. My wallet has just... I'm just preparing now. It just left me. It's gone. Worth it. No regrets.
00:18:16
Speaker
Alright Bianca, well I think we should get into it, save all of Chromatica for our next episode. Agreed. But I must say, I am very excited to talk about what we're going to talk about today.
Origins of Upcoming Podcast Episode
00:18:31
Speaker
I have been chomping at the bit. This was one of our first ideas when we started this podcast.
00:18:36
Speaker
I just can't wait. I know, do you remember when we took that walk around the park and we literally spent like two hours talking about this episode and it's finally here? It's finally here. Let's get into it.
00:18:47
Speaker
Okay, so if you never listened to the trailer that we have for the show, we make a joke about Bumble Boys taking an art history class and kind of liking it.
Dating Apps and Art Intersection
00:18:59
Speaker
So obviously we think that this show as a whole is for you, but if you are a Bumble Boy or a Bumble Gal,
00:19:08
Speaker
And you only listen to one episode of this show. Please listen to this one, okay? Because today we are talking about Bumble, we're talking about dating, we're talking about apps and art. So I'm so ready. I know, I'm really excited. So Gianna, unfortunately, has literally the best boyfriend in the entire world.
Gianna's Humorous Boyfriend Description
00:19:31
Speaker
Unfortunately. You know, I just speak out of a little jealousy, it's fine.
00:19:37
Speaker
Phoebe is quite literally an angel falling from the heavens and I think that our entire family thinks so, all of my friends think so, and all of my art history faculty thinks so because everyone at Oklahoma State University seemed to have a slight obsession with Phoebe.
00:19:55
Speaker
So Gianna, you know that being said like why don't you just tell us a little bit about your boyfriend? And he said something really funny the other day. Oh my god I just can't with him sometimes but yeah Just because he is the kind of guy that like shows up for my art things even if he doesn't always Understand. Hey pro tip as a good boyfriend should you should show up to your girlfriend's art things. Yeah
00:20:19
Speaker
which he definitely does and it was funny and the last episode we talked about going to that Kiki Smith conference and he was there with me and I remember from that day on it was kind of like he was just always there and he was this like six foot five dude that just followed me around everywhere.
00:20:36
Speaker
A lot of my faculty members seem to know him. I bring him into the studio a lot too. We're very late night studio hours, you can bring in your friends or whatever. He just seems to always be around. He is ridiculous. A little bit about Theban, he is a financial analyst and if there's anything more that he likes than checking his fake stock app thing, where it's like a game.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's posing very analytical, philosophical questions. He's incapable of having a short conversation. If you know, you know. So the other day I was working on stuff for the podcast and we were talking about how he's a couple episodes behind.
00:21:21
Speaker
So I take a break and I go to see what he's doing and he looks up at me and says, hey, I just got finished listening to this podcast with my two favorite people. And he says it in this cute kind of flirty way where I think, surely, surely he is talking about his girlfriend's podcast with his favorite girlfriend sister, right? Like, surely. Totally. So I said like, ooh, like, you know, which episode are you on?
00:21:52
Speaker
this guy has the nerve to respond with oh oh no no no no i'm listening to a sam harris podcast andrew yang is on i can't
00:22:07
Speaker
I'm just like, of course, I always knew that one day I would have been replaced by Sam Harris and Andrew Yang and the day has arrived. I'm sorry to hear it. He looked at me like I was crazy, like I was crazy for even thinking that he was listening to my podcast. But the thing is, is that Theban is just like the sweetest man I've ever known. That's why like none of me and my friends think he's real, like my friends talk about him all the time.
00:22:37
Speaker
Phoebe can literally do no wrong, but I bet he just said it so nicely that you couldn't even be Max. He was probably like, Andrew Yang. He was probably just so excited. I know, because the thing is, he was just so happy. We all knew it was coming, but the day Andrew Yang dropped out of the presidential candidacy
00:22:55
Speaker
he was a little part of him die that day. And so he's so relevant. He is. And actually, we were talking about how Andrew Yang might be running for New York mayor. Oh, okay. Because what's his face? Bill de Blasio. I guess that election is coming up next year. In Trissant. In Trissant. So Andrew Yang, I think he's got some stuff in the works. But
00:23:21
Speaker
Well, I'm happy for Thieben. Thieben really needs to catch up on his art pop talk. He truly does. But before you met Thieben, Gianna, you had a little bit of experience with dating apps. Do you want to talk about that? Which one did you like the best? What was kind of your general feeling about
Gianna's Tinder College Adventures
00:23:39
Speaker
them? Yeah, so when I got to college, all my girlfriends were on Tinder, and this was in, what, 2016?
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm sure that there were other ones at the time, other apps, but it seemed like that was kind of like Tender's Prime days, you know? So in the beginning, I was like, you all are nuts. And like, again, keep in mind, this was like my early freshman year of college, I had gone from innocence to catastrophe in like, point five seconds. Yeah, but it felt like all the time, that's all my girlfriends were doing, we would sit around our
00:24:15
Speaker
apartment and they would just be on Tinder and comparing guys and just laughing at things. And then of course, I didn't want to be left out. I was getting like major FOMO. Totally. So yeah, I got on Tinder and honestly, it was really just for shits and giggles, especially there in the beginning. It was really just something funny to do. It felt like a very new experience in college and it was just something to do while we were lying around the apartment all day drinking.
00:24:45
Speaker
Um, because you didn't go to class or anything, you're Russian here. Yeah, rip. Um, yeah, so it was really fun, just kind of light hearted. And also, I think, too, at the time, you know, I'd moved to
00:25:00
Speaker
a new place. And Tinder, I don't really know, you know, what the evolution of Tinder is now. I don't know if it has expanded, not expanded. I don't know how people are really using it now. But at the time, you could meet up with other people and in groups. Oh, and so we also use it to do meetups with other people.
00:25:18
Speaker
Okay, so it was a really fun way to honestly just meet people regardless of a romantic setting, right? It is kind of especially when you move to a new place or like you go off to school or like I just moved like you don't have any friends in that area like it's it's not just a hookup app necessarily like you can actually make
00:25:36
Speaker
Friends. Right. And I had a really hard time meeting people my freshman year in college because I made the mistake of, which I really do regret, living in a campus apartment. And it really separated me from a lot of what was going on in campus life. I didn't have a traditional dorm experience. And I didn't join a sorority. I didn't immediately go into having a group of people other than my roommates. And it was a really easy way for me to meet people. Right. Right. But Bianca.
Bianca's Dating App Preferences
00:26:06
Speaker
As I'm sure you have experienced, just like every other single woman or person on a dating app, is that it can be really fun to spark these new conversations with people you've never met. But to get to that fun, you have to weed out all these other garbage people and you have to quite literally take out the trash way more often than you should have to.
00:26:32
Speaker
I want to know how long you have been on dating apps and which one is your favorite one now. Yes, so I'm in this Facebook group for single girls. I have been on Hinge and Bumble for about a year now, so right when I graduated from OSU, when I moved back to Oklahoma City,
00:26:54
Speaker
I felt like all of my friends were now kind of in different places. I had been single for a while, so I just kind of ready to start going on dates again, starting to meet people like outside of that kind of still water bubble. So in this Facebook group that I'm in, I would say that they actually connected me with a lot of knowledge that I needed kind of prior to getting on the apps, so they recommended starting with
00:27:18
Speaker
Hinge and Bumble if you're new to dating apps like they were like probably don't jump right into Tinder I do like those to the best I like Hinge and Bumble because they give you kind of a lot to work with like they give you height Which is very important for a tall girl like me
00:27:35
Speaker
And they give you political affiliation where you are what you do. And then there's also kind of questions and prompts that you have on those apps, which I like and I also think that with Bumble, since it's a women run company and the women are
00:27:51
Speaker
the first to reach out to a match, those kind of prompts really give women who are maybe more timid or who have never asked anyone out before or never started a conversation with a boy, like how to get that started. So I think the prompts are really helpful. So that's why I kind of like those two the best. Yeah, I think it's interesting now that more dating apps have been on the market.
00:28:13
Speaker
Just interesting the kind of dynamics or culture that surrounds each app. And I think Bumble has done an especially good job of the way that they market themselves. But that we also need that and the fact that they are like a women led company, really trying to set up these new safe parameters for dating apps is really interesting. I think that Bumble also does a really good job of reaching out to women who have felt harassment on the dating app or
00:28:42
Speaker
have been in uncomfortable situations. Bumble does a really, really good job of taking those kinds of reports seriously. And they're always sending flowers to women who have made a report or been harassed. It's really, really sweet. So I love that. Yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker
Priyanka Chopra, if you're listening, let's bring you on our pop talk. So do you want to talk a little bit about, as we call them, the Bumble Boys? What is it like being someone who has studied art on one of the dating
Art Conversations on Dating Apps
00:29:11
Speaker
apps? I think this is an especially important question.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yes. So it's kind of weird because when I first got on the apps, like the majority of people I was matching with or talking to were obviously not in the art field. Like these apps are not just for art majors. So I was kind of used to this like bubble at OSU that was kind of my art squad and they just, everyone I talked to there kind of understood the way my brain worked and what I was interested in and things like that. So
00:29:41
Speaker
On the apps, I now felt like every single conversation started with, oh, you studied art, what do you paint? And I'd have to explain, oh no, I'm not an artist, I actually studied art history. And then the response was, oh, so what's your favorite painting?
00:29:58
Speaker
And okay, like, while all of that is well and good, and a lot of these conversations are just getting to know someone, which makes sense. And not everyone knows everything about the art world. That's totally fine. But it became so incredibly repetitive. And a lot of these types of conversations got to the point where they felt very diminishing. So I realized that most of these questions and discussions I was having
00:30:24
Speaker
were not just simply a lack of understanding of the art world, hence the bumble boy who took that one art history class and knew enough to ask me if I liked the Mona Lisa. But the more that we talked, it became a question of, well, what are you going to do with that? And at the time, it was kind of embarrassing because post graduation, I didn't have a job like I did not graduate with my master's with a job in my field.
00:30:49
Speaker
So, I was spending the next nine months in this limbo period, and here I was talking with these guys about their engineering, their business, and their finance degrees, and they all got this job while they were still in school before they had even graduated.
00:31:07
Speaker
It's so interesting because I haven't experienced this virtually on an app, but I'm not even shocked because I've had men tell me very similar things or we've had very similar conversations in person.
00:31:24
Speaker
Which I I mean I can count on my hand But it's crazy how they will ask me in the most sincere way like for example I was at a bar with some of my girlfriends and There's this other group of guys and you know you just meet people at bars meet groups of people you start drinking It was like all well and good and we were having like a really fun time like with this other group of people and
00:31:46
Speaker
And then this dumbass, in the most sincere way, and this was the part that I found so extremely shocking, was he had absolutely no idea that what he said was so incredibly offensive and problematic. He just had no clue. And so we finally get into like, Oh, what are you doing? Like, what are you studying? And I'm like, Oh, well, you know, I'm here at OSU, I'm getting my bachelor's in fine arts. And he's like, Oh, yeah, so
00:32:13
Speaker
So art, and of course I get the thing, so, oh, so you paint. I mean, kind of, but no. And, you know, then going into explaining what I'm doing and the sculpture and print, and he's like, okay, cool, cool, cool. So, are you planning on marrying Rich? What? In the most...
00:32:32
Speaker
Sincerest heartfelt way that he had absolutely no idea like he thought he was helping you by telling you You need to marry rich. Yeah, like and and the assumption that you're not making any money with your artwork is
00:32:47
Speaker
Baffling. I just can't. And also to put that into perspective too, like a lot of people who get their bachelor's in fine arts aren't going into the world to also be art makers too. And I think that's a really common misconception of this degree as well. Right. And it's just so incredibly frustrating that I just looked at this asshole, frankly, and was like, I need you to understand that what you just asked me was very, very offensive and presumptuous.
00:33:13
Speaker
And oh, no, no, that's not what I mean. That's what I mean. Then what did you mean? Right. What did you mean? So I told him he needed to get up and he needed to go away. And that was the end of that. But that wasn't even the first time that it happened to me. Of course not. I had had male friends of mine ask me that question and say like, oh, well, it's a good thing that you're pretty. Right. And when you have male colleagues in your classes,
00:33:41
Speaker
if you have men in your watercolor class or your ceramics class. Like when those ceramicists get asked like, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm a ceramicist. I as a woman or as a person would never be like, so is your wife a millionaire? Right. What? Right. What? And I also think that that question is under the assumption that you are heterosexual as well. Oh, absolutely.
00:34:08
Speaker
What if you're gay and you have another underpaid woman who's a fucking teacher or something? My lesbian lover is actually a boss ass bitch and she takes care of herself and I take care of myself. The audacity and the assumptions of that one question
00:34:26
Speaker
are out of control. It's total and complete ignorance at its finest. And yeah, it really got to me. It's gotten to me a lot, you know, over the course of several occasions. And at a certain point, like with that bar store, you know, I just shooed that person away. And you just have to know that if you're a woman in the field in the industry that has experienced that kind of ignorance, like
00:34:47
Speaker
It's hard to be the bigger person and it's hard to want – because all you want to do is flip that person off, right? Right. But it's really hard to be like, I need you to understand that what you ask me really hurts, especially when you're at a bar drinking with a random person. Right. And it's really hard and it's really frustrating, but it wasn't the first time and it's probably not going to be the last time. Definitely not.
00:35:10
Speaker
So like we said, I mean, some of these questions are legitimately coming out of interest. Not all of these questions about John and I or what we do are necessarily bad, but it happens so often that more than not our careers are looked down upon in these like dating conversations.
00:35:31
Speaker
So my master's thesis, for example, which I worked extremely hard for, feels like more of a hobby when I start explaining it to someone. It's just kind of something that I like and not something to be taken seriously.
00:35:46
Speaker
Do you want to tell the story about going to all the museum exhibitions thousands of times with these bumble boys?
Repetitive Museum Date Experiences
00:35:55
Speaker
Last summer there was this impressionist show that opened at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and it was really built up around the Oklahoma City community. I mean for a while everyone in the city had seen these kind of banners and this publicity about this Venko Monet Degas show.
00:36:14
Speaker
And it was a really great show, but for me, I just didn't feel the need to see this impressionist show 50 times in two weeks. So I had some bumble boys suggest going to the museum to see the show when it opened. And I think I saw it like six times just because it was a nice gesture. It really was a nice gesture to want to take me to the museum. But these boys were like, oh, she likes art. Let's go to the museum.
00:36:43
Speaker
And they're not wrong. I thoroughly enjoy going to the museum and I would have liked to see the show once. But literally it was like they could not think of one other artsy place to go in Oklahoma City, a pretty big city with lots of different things to do. Right. You guys couldn't go to like 21C and like grab a drink. Right. Exactly. Because just because I like art doesn't mean we can't go to dinner. And
00:37:07
Speaker
That's where the dates felt like hobbies, because that would be me being like, oh, you work in finance? Like, let's go to the bank and you can teach me how to open an account. Okay, the frustrating thing about that is that if I said that to Theban, he would be like, okay, let's go. Okay, well, once again, let's just preface that Theban is not a normal boyfriend. Theban has been dying for me to get like a separate account. Oh my god. I can't with him.
00:37:30
Speaker
But the nature of my field, maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe it's just I'm the girl that gives tours when you go to a museum. And don't get me wrong, I love doing that with my friends. And I would love to do that on a date too. But it was happening so often that it was like,
00:37:47
Speaker
pressure for me to teach these boys about art. Like, why can't you just like, be prepared? I don't know, like read a book or read an article about the exhibition before we go there. Right. Because we would walk in and they'd be like, so what's this about? Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, you know, it's just, which is fine. And I do really enjoy having those conversations with people. But again, it's just, I noticed the repetitive quality of this to an extent that was like getting kind of uncomfortable.
00:38:14
Speaker
right and you're also entitled to have like a fun careless free date where like you know like I don't want to go to work right like you're also allowed to have just like funny not always like super meaningful conversations like yeah right you said like you art doesn't actually like fuel your body in a way where like you have you don't like actually get like fed off of art like I mean sometimes I do sometimes I really do
00:38:41
Speaker
But with an Impressionist show that you know cracks me up that it was an Impressionist exhibition cuz I'm sure they just saw the word Impressionism and was like no that word wasn't even in the description I don't think it was van gogh Monet de Gaulle was like the big header. Oh my god. That's hilarious That's just like the cherry on top really, right?
00:39:02
Speaker
Oh my gosh. So with dating apps and conversations about art, the dick pic. It is just something that feels inevitable and unfortunately unavoidable to many women online or those who use a phone.
Whitney Bell's Art on Harassment
00:39:16
Speaker
So we want to talk about the 2016 traveling feminist festival called I Don't Ask for This, a Lifetime of Dick Pics.
00:39:25
Speaker
which includes an art installation about dick pics, you guessed it. So this was started by an artist and activist named Whitney Bell, who after receiving a dick pic so beautiful, it should be in a museum, created a home full of penises. She wanted to make a gallery that would mirror her exhaustion with the constant harassment that women and femmes are expected to silently endure.
00:39:51
Speaker
So, the intent is to not shame the penis or to shame the individual men or man, but rather to expose the normalization of misogyny.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, so I feel like this installation was really great in that it got a lot of press and especially, you know, the time. It was in 2016, I think it was very poignant. So essentially, the artist has not only created this massive festival with speakers, educational resources, it was kind of this communal experience to talk about something that
00:40:25
Speaker
happens so often that it's just normalized. I think that's another part that Gianna and I were thinking about is when you get a dick pic or you get a question like, oh are you gonna marry Rich? Half the time it's not even worth it for me to address and confront this dude who's saying this to me or giving this photo to me because it happens so often. It's more worth my time and mental space it feels like just to get rid of it and not deal with it.
00:40:54
Speaker
So she also made this artwork that is essentially a recreation of her own home. So it's a replica of her home with all of these different dick pics hanging on the walls in different kind of mixed media forms. And even just in the images, when you look at the room, you can see how extremely pervasive these images are, how when a woman receives this,
00:41:20
Speaker
It influences your mental state, how extremely unavoidable it feels. I mean, women can be walking to work, they can be in their home, they can be at work, they can be at a bar, they can be hanging out with their friends. It feels like it happens all the time. And to see these images on the wall of this very homey and what should be a comfortable space really, I think, hits the viewer in a really strong way.
00:41:48
Speaker
So quoting Bell, she says, I want to show how invasive and dominating it is all the time to be a woman and how it's everywhere you go. It's in your house. It's in every magazine. It's on the internet and you can't escape it. It is not so much about the dick pics as it is about the overriding patriarchy in our lives.
00:42:08
Speaker
This isn't an anti-male thing or an anti-dick thing. It's an anti-harassment event, and that's pretty incredible.
Comparisons with Historic Womanhouse Project
00:42:16
Speaker
So when I started thinking about the kind of space of a home, obviously
00:42:21
Speaker
in the past, it's been seen as this very domestic space, this space that's dominated by women. And I find it fascinating to think about this phallic imagery on a space that is thought of as being very womanly. And then I started thinking about woman house and sure enough, Miss Judy Chicago has come up yet again. And in 1971, she did this collaboration with Miriam Shapiro and a bunch of other women artists.
00:42:48
Speaker
where they kind of took over this home that was supposed to be demolished and actually created different installation pieces in every room of the house so you have like the lipstick bathroom you have the kitchen you have a bride kind of descending the stairs it's really really fascinating so I was just thinking about
00:43:07
Speaker
how far and not far we've come since 1971 these women artists are in a home making a statement that they feel trapped with all these kind of womanly forms and like you know cooking and makeup and marriage and then you have Whitney Bell in 2016 hanging up dick pics on the wall of her home and
00:43:30
Speaker
And that even feels so threatening. It's not that even harassment has changed or it has stopped or it has grown. It's that we are really just experiencing it in different ways. And it's also being documented. It's being recorded.
00:43:50
Speaker
We have a record of it, which is also really interesting. And I think that's really something important to acknowledge in Belle's work. I mean, it's essentially like a record and time encapsulating her one experience on a virtual dating app, a virtual experience. Right. And to think about in Woman House, the bride that's on the stairs. I mean, there's that kind of imposition of being forced to marry.
00:44:19
Speaker
And then here in Bell's work, we have this imposition like, oh, you're a woman, you're a modern woman, you must like sex, you must want this. Here's my dick, it's so great, it's so beautiful. You're welcome. You're artsy. Put this in a fucking museum, you know what I mean? Right.
00:44:36
Speaker
What I also love about Bell's work too is that it's again, it's acknowledging this other side of dating apps, right? Because dating apps are a two way street. And it's really hard to be the person on the other side of the conversation. Because I haven't experienced that because I'm only able to see my point of view
00:44:59
Speaker
as like a woman on a dating app talking to other men. I'm not even a woman talking to other women or a man talking to other men. Like it's very different and there are so many different experiences that exist in this kind of two-way street that people are having. So her perspective is also just one of many too. And I'm so excited to just get into it because I
00:45:23
Speaker
have experienced recently a project in which one of my fellow peers tried to tackle this idea of dating apps and was unsuccessfully able to do it because of the lack of viewpoint, only one singular non-inclusive conversation that was being taken place. Right. So I think that we're going to take a little break and we will be back in just a second to talk about more Bumble art.
00:46:20
Speaker
Okay, we are back and Gianna has a really interesting story to share with all of you. Definitely pertinent to the app situation. So pertinent to the situation. I've been so excited to share the story
Classmate's Problematic Art Piece
00:46:37
Speaker
with you all. It was one of the first things me and Bianca talked about. And just like story that I had experienced that I felt like was so on point and so essential to kind of everything that we were talking about, right?
00:46:49
Speaker
And also a little bit scary for me and experiencing this within an academic setting. Right. So this might come out a little bit mumbo-jumbo, you know, we're just kind of, I'm gonna just kind of take you through the story a little bit, but feel free to add some good commentary in there, Bianca. Oh honey, you know I will.
00:47:10
Speaker
Oh honey I'll do anything for you. Okay so um this past year in my BFA program as you all know I was taking printmaking and the way that projects kind of go in a art class setting is you know you have your project you have your deadline and then after that's done everybody in the class brings their artwork together and you always do a pretty formal critique of everyone's work together as a class.
00:47:38
Speaker
So in my printmaking class, which is a fairly small group of people, so we are able to spend a little bit more time on critique. So we essentially spend a full three hours being able to dive into each person's work, which is really great, but also can be very exhausting when you have a work being presented to you.
00:48:01
Speaker
That is just not it. Yeah, and it's very very scary that it's just not it and you as a student have to be the person to tell them that mm-hmm, so In my print class we you know We're getting ready for a critique and we're putting all our works up on the wall yada yada So in print there are different methods you can do to create your image so I had not seen what this
00:48:29
Speaker
person this guy my fellow peer was working on because we were doing separate techniques. At the time I was doing relief printmaking and he was specializing in intaglio. So I had not seen this work and when we started putting up our prints on the wall
00:48:47
Speaker
my jaw just dropped it just fell to the floor like I felt like I was a cartoon character I just I've never had such like an out of body like experience like that to just take me back I just couldn't believe what I was seeing so just long story short you know we
00:49:06
Speaker
saved his for last like best for last and my heart is just like beating this whole time because I'm so I'm looking at my my friends or my other peers around me and we're like looking at each other and then admittedly I was texting during class I'm not gonna lie because part of the story but I was texting one of my friends next to me and before we got to this piece we're like oh my god like I'm not alone right like
00:49:32
Speaker
You're feeling what I'm feeling. Right. And everybody is just really not okay. Yeah. This is a class mainly full of women prayer makers. Am I wrong? Or at least there are a fair number of women in the class. There's a fair number of women in the class. And I will say in most of my studio classes, there's the women kind of outnumber the men. Okay.
00:49:53
Speaker
But I'd say this class was maybe split a little bit more evenly. Okay, but yeah, so to give this person a name, I'm going to call him Picasso, fitting. If you know, you know. So Picasso starts talking about his super fucked up art piece.
00:50:15
Speaker
And to give you all kind of a visual for what it looks like, it is arguably, it's a beautiful image because just FYI, we will not be sharing these images on our resources. No, nobody, I'm not going to give this art any kind of platform to
00:50:34
Speaker
It just no so you're gonna have to try to use your imagination here. Okay, so But cute Okay, so Picasso arguably is a very skilled Printmaker in the sense of intaglio. It's very beautiful. Very delicate Linework very detailed images. Mm-hmm. So I'm like so frustrated because I'm like this is done very you have skill and
00:51:02
Speaker
beautifully and you clearly have artistic ability, but I don't want to know what's going up in your mind because it's super fucked up. So he is explaining how he's interested in this idea of ownership when it comes to images being displayed on dating apps. So the image that we are looking at is
00:51:23
Speaker
a selfie, essentially, of a woman that he took offline off a dating app off his own platform. So he has a dating app. And he was very interested in these images that only he was receiving by women. So essentially, he is copying the image of another woman's profile. Correct. So his main source, his original source to create these images, yes, is he is
00:51:52
Speaker
verbatim, taking that image off a dating app, taking it out of his original context and manipulating it to his own will. Right.
00:52:02
Speaker
So this is all to say that I think the idea of ownership in regards to the digital world or digital media is very, very interesting. I have a friend currently that just got done with her degree in art history, her undergraduate degree, and she is starting to apply for law school because she's really interested in like art and law. And she wrote her entry paper about the idea of ownership in TikTok.
00:52:31
Speaker
and how you put all this time into creative content and then TikTok has the ability to do whatever they want with your video and you relinquish creative control or ownership over that video. So the idea of ownership in social media is a very interesting topic with so many possibilities, right?
00:52:51
Speaker
So the idea that Picasso went straight to a dating app, for me, I just think was a little bit baffling, especially since he is only dealing with the images that he's being shown on his side, right?
00:53:09
Speaker
So, this image again is just a selfie of a woman. It kind of looks like it was taken in like a mirror, you know, it was a mirror selfie because she had her phone in her hand. And she was in a position where I'm like, yeah, like she looks cute, like she's wearing booty shorts, like she's doing her like, whatever, like, I'm sorry, am I supposed to care about this? And his whole thing, it's honestly guys, I think I blacked out during this whole critique and this whole conversation.
00:53:38
Speaker
But he goes on to talk about this idea of ownership, again, only through his perspective, not talking about images that women get. And also to preface, he's not showing images that like women have sent him privately, right? He's just like pulling images that women use on their profile. And so I'm like, if that woman wants to put that picture of herself on her dating platform,
00:54:04
Speaker
That is her prerogative. Like, that is her right. And I just, who the fuck cares? Like, I'm sorry, do you want me to go in and analyze how you think that this woman's position and this gesture is supposed to be very provocative and is supposed to evoke the male viewer in some way? And the way that the conversation was going, it really just felt like we were not analyzing this image, but we were slut shaming this figure.
00:54:32
Speaker
right and i find it so interesting in comparison to the piece that whitney bell had where she takes all these dick pics that she has been personally given sent and that is a form of harassment but this girl this image that he took
00:54:49
Speaker
is not a form of harassment. It is a woman taking a selfie in a mirror and the fact that she's being slut shamed for being on this dating app that he is also clearly on is very interesting. And I also wonder what the background is, like what is their relationship? Did he talk to this woman or did he just see a photo of a woman liking the way she looked?
00:55:16
Speaker
taking a photo of herself and putting it on a dating app because she wants some kind of human connection and whatever that may be if this girl just wanted sex on a dating app who cares that's also fine but she's not taking a picture of her vagine and posting it as like one of her profile images and from this conversation that you all had in class it also sounds like this woman did not send graphic images back to Mr. Picasso
00:55:43
Speaker
absolutely not yet. And again, the frustrating thing is all questions that I've tried to ask in this setting where we're supposed to get these answers and formulate these conversations. And Picasso was not willing to fairly answer any of these questions that I was asking him. And it was a very defensive
00:56:04
Speaker
conversation, which sucked. And had I known that he was creating this work, I would have maybe tried to intervene early or I'm not saying I understand that to make art like sometimes you have to make the bad art to get to the good art. But the fact that he had gotten so far into making this extremely problematic image, I was like, just how did this happen?
00:56:31
Speaker
how did we get this far? And I wish that I would have known about it earlier. So I could have had tried to have had those conversations with him. So in this critique, you know, we're kind of going through the motions a little bit. Again, I'm still just floored. But we start talking about the other visuals that surround this female figure, right? And he has embellished this image to where around the figure she is
00:56:59
Speaker
surrounded by this very beautiful and highly decorative floral background. And he has framed it in a way where it's like the frame of a phone. So you can essentially see that, oh, okay, this is an image like taken offline, a mobile device, but he, he surrounded her
00:57:19
Speaker
and all these floral patterns and this decoration. And I ask him and I say, there's a time and a place for conscious objectification. And I need to know if you know if that is what you just did with all these decorative aspects by embellishing her body and a flower.
00:57:41
Speaker
And a flower, a fucking flower. I'm like, of course. And of course, no. You know, I didn't get a valid answer. And the interesting thing that he had also mentioned was this idea of taking the image off the dating app and trying to then present it in a way where it shows its original context or where it originally came from.
00:58:09
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, that's all said and good. But if you go so far to manipulate the image in that way, what you were doing is actually taking it out of its original context and manipulating it so far to the point where you have embedded your own perspective in it and your perspective makes me feel like you are shaming this woman for taking a cute photo of herself.
00:58:34
Speaker
right and it's really interesting just thinking about what you said earlier the relationship that you form with different people on different kinds of social platforms are always changing so on dating apps it feels kind of
00:58:48
Speaker
one-sided because sometimes you haven't even met this person yet or all you're doing is swiping one way or another. So it really, when I think about this work, makes me question the nature of that instant image. So what did he think when he just saw this profile and swiped right or left?
00:59:11
Speaker
Well, and I mean, you and me both, but the way that his ideas are being presented are obviously not well developed. And I know it is something that he is probably going to continue to explore, hopefully now with the help of, you know, more mentorship.
00:59:27
Speaker
But yeah, I had suggested to him many times reading this image would be completely different if you had had a male photo that you manipulated it next to it and it was a compare and contrast because you're showing these both sides. Maybe you're showing your image that you sent and that
00:59:44
Speaker
You have formed this connection with this person and then that's what you saw in return Completely different. Okay, what do what does his profile look like? That's what I want to know. What does his profile look like? Has he ever sent a dick pic to a woman? I mean I just right the the one-sided Nature coming from a male perspective is really fascinating and again, I understand that it is hard to
01:00:09
Speaker
to communicate on a dating apps. First of all, women are not always comfortable communicating with men. I wonder why. And second of all, when men reach out to women on these apps, it's a tough thing to kind of navigate. I mean, not everybody, men or women are kind of initially comfortable with these different forms of communication. And the fact that it's purely visuals and all of this is so
01:00:35
Speaker
speculative. I mean, again, that's a obviously huge problem with dating apps is this person thinks something about this other person and it leads to a whole different array of problems. Right. And I that is also the really
01:00:50
Speaker
essential problematic thing about this image is that it wasn't a photo and it was an original source that he manipulated and he staged himself. It was the idea that you are using this woman's photo to create this project and she has absolutely no idea. If you are using a dating app that probably means that that woman exists somewhere in this area. Hell, she might go to our own university.
01:01:17
Speaker
And the thought of that just, it made me want to cry. Like it was so incredibly uncomfortable that this person has no idea that her image has been manipulated and turned into something that it's just simply not. Right.
01:01:34
Speaker
from this really one-sided narrow perspective, and I think if he had engaged in more research, talked to other people on the other side of the dating app. And given different perspectives. Given different perspectives, again,
01:01:50
Speaker
completely different. And I also think that that is even a more interesting idea. How are you functioning in social media? Totally. Why are you trying to talk about someone else's experience, let alone a female experience? You have done no research. You have done nothing to better yourself. I would not consider you a person who identifies as a female advocate. Who are you to talk about contemporary female experiences? Right. In the world of dating. I am very offended by this work.
01:02:18
Speaker
And I just am. And I have no problem with other men and other people talking about what it's like to function as a woman if you educate yourself, if you talk to women, if you use your platform to speak to other experiences in a positive way. Right. And there's nothing wrong with making art out of dating apps. I think it's prevalent. I think it's an experience that a lot of people could potentially relate to.
01:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. Because aside from everything else going on that was so frustrating, is that I'm not arguing that there's potential for it. It's an interesting subject. And I think like Whitney Bell is a great example of that someone who has successfully made that happen. Right. And is an extremely relevant piece. And I would be fine to hear from a man's perspective, or like there are also different sexualities, like men talk to men on
01:03:12
Speaker
social media women talk to women you know there are a plethora of different conversations that we could be having here but this one feels so extremely dated and back to Gianna's point if this woman saw her photo and felt like she was being put on blast for simply taking a selfie in the mirror it really like truly like breaks my heart like
01:03:50
Speaker
It was a
01:03:52
Speaker
hard one to get through and it could be such an interesting topic and the I it's simply you know what it is it's immature and that's the only way I can describe it it feels like bullying and it's just immature and Picasso that's just not it right it's just not it but extremely one of the most interesting critiques that I've had in my college career is
01:04:20
Speaker
But a very interesting topic and very pertinent to the podcast.
Listeners' Dating App Experiences
01:04:26
Speaker
If any of you have had experiences like that on dating apps or different kinds of social media, let us know because honestly that would be fascinating to hear.
01:04:36
Speaker
from some men about their experiences because it's not like when I when I go on a date from Bumble I'm not like hey like you get any terrible Bumble matches today like this is not something that I necessarily have talked about with men on dating apps so definitely let us know if you have anything you want to add to this conversation right because you know what when talking about dating apps it is a two-way street and that that is just a simple fact about it
01:05:05
Speaker
or a three-way street or three-way street seen those on there oh yeah totally fine totally fine you do you anyway before we end today's episode Gianna and I know that while we love doing what we do there are a lot of other more pressing issues happening around the country right now and
01:05:28
Speaker
I think we just wanted to end letting everyone know that our hearts are with you and we wanted to address the murder of George Floyd and the complicit behavior of the government and white Americans.
Social Justice and George Floyd
01:05:42
Speaker
So I think we try to be cheerful. We still wanted to do this episode, but that doesn't mean that any of us can ignore the pain of the black community and black people in this country right now. So please educate yourself.
01:05:56
Speaker
stand with Black Americans, you can call the Mayor of Minneapolis at 612-673-2100 and you can also call the District Attorney at 612-348-5550 and on our social media and our resources website we are going to link
01:06:21
Speaker
the anti-racism resources for white people. It's a Google Talk. So please take a look at that. And with that, we will talk to you on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.