Our freedom of expression is often limited by the society around us. Societal and cultural norms often dictate what is ‘acceptable’ for one to do and say. One specific norm that seriously influenced my choice of theme for my piece was the idea that men’s sports and intrinsically better than women’s sports. As a female soccer player who practices with boys, I have seen the insidious effect that this internalized belief can have on both boys and girls. Boys will put down female players, maintain the attitude that we are nothing to take seriously, while simultaneously being doubly harsh on any mistake we make. To make matters worse, female players often believe that they are somehow lesser than their male counterparts. “Boys are just better”, they say. But I find that to be such a limiting mindset. I can allow that a full grown male will likely be physically faster than me, but how in any way does that mean he knows how to play the game better than me? No. All one has to do is look at the success of the US Women’s National Team versus the Men’s. The women have won two Olympics and a World Cup in the past ten years while the men have barely been able to make it out of the group stages. Yet, 32 million dollars will be pumped into the men by US Soccer, while the women will only receive 10 million.
So, for my project, I wanted to display a female soccer player with an explosion of color following her. The player is faceless and like completely devoid of color, the boundary being herself versus the rainbow of color she is emitting behind her. I used water colors for two reason, 1) because we were skill building with them and 2) because I really wanted the colors to blend cohesively. This was easy to achieve with the water colors because they can easily been layered over each other. And, really, beyond tracing the outline for the player off of a picture of Ali Krieger (a national-teamer), that is all I did. My medium was reflective of what I wanted to practice and use to implement the image I had in my mind. Hopefully, people will be able to easily perceive the bursting potential of female athletes that I see in my piece.
So, for my project, I wanted to display a female soccer player with an explosion of color following her. The player is faceless and like completely devoid of color, the boundary being herself versus the rainbow of color she is emitting behind her. I used water colors for two reason, 1) because we were skill building with them and 2) because I really wanted the colors to blend cohesively. This was easy to achieve with the water colors because they can easily been layered over each other. And, really, beyond tracing the outline for the player off of a picture of Ali Krieger (a national-teamer), that is all I did. My medium was reflective of what I wanted to practice and use to implement the image I had in my mind. Hopefully, people will be able to easily perceive the bursting potential of female athletes that I see in my piece.
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