Blog Post #2

 

I really enjoyed Rossetti’s poem, “In an Artist’s Studio.” The theme and meaning of this poem really stuck with me. It highlights how a man (the artist) dreams of this “perfect” woman, yet she does not exist. This artist has painted many pictures of “one selfsame figure.” He can only dream about one type of woman. He has an image of what he imagines a perfect woman to resemble. One line says, “One face looks out from all his canvases.” This shows that he doesn’t find many different types of women beautiful; just one. He has a concept of what a woman is supposed to look like and paints them all the same. Another moment in the poem that stuck out to me was when the author wrote, “A nameless girl…” He doesn’t even have a specific woman in mind. It isn’t about a certain girl he loves who looks this way; it is a nameless girl. It is all about her looks. Lastly, the last line tied this whole piece together for me. It said, “Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.” The author is pointing out that no matter how many pictures an author paints of this same beautiful girl, she is not real. She does not exist, yet this image is his dream. This is still an extremely common problem in our society today, but it deals with the image of women created in media. People constantly are bombarded with images of extremely skinny women on TV, in music, in movies, in magazines, and more. These images of women are photo shopped, the women sit in makeup and hair chairs for hours and have stylists. These images are not accurate of what an average woman looks like. It is unrealistic, yet women worship these models, singers and actresses, while men want to be with these women. I found an interesting website that lists facts about how Barbie dolls are even a bad model of what women should look like. Most little girls collect and play with Barbie dolls for years during their youth, yet if Barbie was a real person, she would be very unhealthy or even dead. It is interesting to think about how the images we are putting out in the world are shaping the minds of even young boys and girls about what is beautiful, when in reality it is truly unrealistic.

Website with facts about if Barbie was a person:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/galia-slayen/the-scary-reality-of-a-re_b_845239.html