Not impressed.

I was looking through Slate’s slide show for Women’s History Month. I didn’t like it. They’re all so still, just sitting or standing or posed. The only dynamic picture of the bunch was of novelist Han Suyin, who looks vivid and engaged with the wind and the pier and photographer; they somehow made Martha Graham look still. A full four pictures had women with their heads thrown back, and I can just barely hold back a nasty comment accusing us of only wanting to see women in orgasm-like abandon. I do get that many of these women were extraordinary in the only way they could be in their times and that piercing thought is hard to photograph. But the only person who looks to have a useful skill is Amanpour. She is certainly the only woman portrayed with an actual tool. From the rest of the pictures, you would think Uncommon Women sit all day, pouting, smoking and looking directly at the camera (although a couple of them seem to entertain people). Fuck that.

And then today Slate had a bullshit slide show about women athletes. They managed to take one of the most dynamic possible subjects for photography and still show mostly women standing around. The fuck? Where is the flying layout contest for a disc? Where is a huge arcing spinkick about to descend on someone? The wheelchair racer and the diver have a sense of motion in their pictures and the wushu practioner shows some nice extension, but why all the pictures of pansy-ass flexibility? There was some teamwork, but only a bare nod to real competition, and certainly no sweaty, all-out, face-distorting aggressiveness, which is what athletes do. I've no doubt that those women trained ferociously, and are capable of feats that would make me gasp, and I want to see pictures of them going all out. No fucking portraits of their faces. I don't care what their muscular bodies look like in repose. I say bullshit.