An illustration I did for Instinct Magazine on unfair Adoption cases.
This should have thousands of notes.
^Seriously though.
More people need to see this.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. :[
Needs more reblogs. Seriously people.
Reblogging for the beautiful illustration as much as the point at hand.
I know that I’m probably being nit-picky and oversensitive but my heart sinks a little every time I see fat poor people being representative of laziness, hatefulness, bigotry, and evil. Like, I never see bodies that look like mine in beauty magazines or in popular media (unless they’re there to be laughed at), but only as the bad guy, the evil in the world, the child harmer, the unfit parent.
Every single time a piece of media which is otherwise dedicated to shedding light on a pretty good poin dips into this kind of fat-equals-bad representation, I can’t lie, it makes me really depressed. It sucks that bodies that look like mine equal so much that’s negative in public perception, because that gets enacted out on me every single day of my life.
I dunno. Sorry to harsh the buzz.
Yeah, I’m gonna disagree with you on this. This is a cartoon, and it’s meant to intantly convey that the family on the bottom are Bad News For Kids using mise-en-scene that includes the ‘parents’. They smoke, which is bad for the kids. They drink, which means they’ll be neglectful of the kids when they’re wasted. The fatness indicates that they don’t eat healthily, and as such it is highly unlikely that they will feed their kids well either.It’s a cartoon, after all - the fatness here clearly indicates that they’re diggin’ in to KFC a lot more than they should rather than that they both have an unfortunate glandular problem.
WAAAAY more contentious is the crucifix on the wall in the background of the lower frame.
We can agree to disagree on this, but I’m not going to leave this unsaid.
It is a cartoon. It is a piece of media that people will see and they will internalize a message through consumption of it. As a creator of media, the illustrator is using imagery that resounds with people by catering to their preconceived notions of other strata of people in order to provoke an internal reaction. If the illustrator wants to make a salient point, which that it is a travesty and grossly unfair that loving devoted gay couples cannot adopt simply because they are gay while people who are abusive and unfit to be adoptive parents can because they are in a heterosexual partner (all of which I agree is a terrible reflection on our society) there are ways of doing this without invoking fatness and poverty. Not all ‘unfit’ parents are a) fat and b) poor. But you’re right. This piece of media is clearly designed to instantly show who the bad family is. Unfortunately, it uses imagery that should not be instantly solely equated with ‘bad family’.
I grew up in a household where we ate tv dinners or KFC because we had no money for anything else or because my mother had a night class and wanted something her 15 year old daughter (me) could fix for the younger siblings. My mother occasionally drank wine at dinner and it never affected her love or devotion for us. The fatness in this picture is clearly designed to make you feel revulsion for the family, whether because of their food choices or not, and I find that a disingenuous move to make.
I am sure there are ‘bad families’ that look exactly like that representation. I am also positive that there are ‘bad families’ that are thin, upscale, and rich. I am certain that bad families exist in all kinds of formats and that this deliberate use of imagery works so well in part because it plays on class stereotypes and body stereotypes that people have in their minds and that is problematic.
I know the point being made here. I see the crucifix. I agree completely with the message being presented here. Just not with the way its being said. As a creator, people have a responsibility not to prove their point at the expense of others.
Maybe the first couple’s request was denied because they are atheists, and the point of this image is to convey that even atheists are caring parents. Maybe the image is social commentary about the misconception that highly educated people are cold, overtly rational people without feelings.
Maybe, but unlikely.
The ways in which the second couple are depicted as bad parents is not a referendum on Christians, fat people, people who don’t wear pants (seriously, no one in the bottom picture is wearing pants, wtf), people without cell phones, people with really old TVs, people with cans of woodland creatures, children with arthritis, women who smoke cigarettes that are not merely lit but actually ablaze, the impoverished, or bald men.
In order to depict a negative situation, you have to make it look negative. Any means of accomplishing that will no doubt include traits that, when isolated, are not negative. A seemingly lovely gay couple can’t adopt, but an apparently dysfunctional heterosexual couple can, annnnnd Yahtzee! Th-th-that’s all folks!
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” Mark Twain
