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Parsons Challenge: Gum Ball Birth Machine
Acrylic, colored pencil, 18" x 24"
December 27, 2008
Illustration

3 Perspectives

Lisa Chang
Parsons Challenge
3 Perspectives on Feminism

People who watch commercials or those who read trendy magazines have seen
striking images of women whose appearance has been radically changed. Many of
these women altered their image through diet and exercise, makeup, or surgery.
I believe women, either those on television or on the streets, have shielded
their choice to improve their appearance as an effort to gain power in
normative society. My first perspective of feminism is shown in the woman's
face. It demonstrates women and their pain to surrender themselves to expensive
and risky, deforming, and fatal procedures in an attempt to claim power through
altered beauty. The big hair demonstrates stressful woman who fear and dismay upon
weight gain, aging, or discontentment to standard principles of appearance.

The fact that women are always in danger and limited in their opportunities, is
dire. It stimulates mistrust and fear of men and as a result breeds a feeling
of weakness among women. My second perspective on feminism is shown through the
heels. Heels can be the height of superiority and feminism or become the
degrading of women in many wrong ways. The heels are used in my painting to
represent the issue most women question. They wonder, if they can be just as good
as men and do just as many things, why do they have to continuously prove it?
The heels show that although it allows women to be physically taller, it only
hurts them because they have to put in so much effort to do so. Woman
should be able to be just as good as men, in their own feminine way.

There is no hesitation in saying women and men are different. Not only do women
never look good with a beard and hairy face, they also endure pain more than
men. My 3rd perspective of feminism is shown in the gum ball machine and water
drops. The water drops demonstrate two things: one when a woman’s water breaks
when giving birth, and another to demonstrate tears. Although giving birth
causes excruciating pain, it's what differentiates women from men. The gum ball
machine represents how woman are naturally born to give birth. The blue and
pink gum balls symbolize the random outcomes of gender when a baby is
born. Overall, as I have overlooked feminism, it is only women who can,
at the end of the day, have the true rewarding feeling of joy and ecstasy from
that hard, sacred labor.

...Just one short story :

One of the more fortunate inmates, Maria Saloman, gives us her impressions of Stanislawa: "For weeks she never had a chance to lie down. She sometimes sat down near a patient on the oven, dozed for a moment, but soon jumped up and ran to one of the moaning women. . . . When Mrs. Leszczynska first approached me, I knew that everything would be alright. I do not know why, but this was so. My baby managed to last three months in the camp, but seemed doomed to die of starvation. I was completely devoid of milk. 'Mother' somehow found two women to wet-nurse my baby, an Estonian and a Russian. To this day I do not know at what price [she did this]. My Liz owes her life to Stanislawa Leszczynska. I cannot think of her without tears coming to my eyes."

Stanislawa displayed as much common sense as courage. One survivor tells how she would procure water and, on occasions, a herbal brew which she used to wash the infants. Having to use the same water for all the babies, Stanislawa washed the healthy children followed by the sick ones so as not to infect the former. Kazimera Bogdanska explains that she was unable to nurse her tiny daughter. Nevertheless, Stanislawa informed her that she should still give the child an empty breast "so the glands would not stop working." "Mother was right," says Kazimera, "How lucky I was that I believed her. When liberty came in January 1945 and I was taken to a real hospital (since I had typhoid fever) the doctor allowed me to continue to give my child my breast devoid of milk. After some time milk returned. My daughter began to gain weight. . . . She started to become round and rosy cheeked. . . . Mother's wisdom and faith saved my only child."