Gardan Shekasteh

Atefeh
by Atefeh
23-Mar-2011
 

Iranian.com, on March 23rd posted a painting of a women on its first page. This is supposed to be a piece of art announcing Now Rooz. Every time I see such paintings , I cannot help but recalling the word " gardan shekasteh", an expression used to refer to someone miserable and innocent in Persian/Farsi.

Rendering women passive and docile by any mean possible is nothing new. Patriarchal systems have done this to no end. Beautifying docile women has preference over portraying women embracing their imperfection of any sort.

In 21st century, we are still looking back, reproducing Qajar art, painting women with connected eyebrows, covered hair in their “latchak” and tilting their head to one side. As if nothing has changed in the past hundred years. We still hang them on our wall and present them to our offspring as “authentic” Persian art! No wonder this cliché, depicting the fantasies of mostly men painters continues form one generation to the next. The question is: doesthis depiction reflect our vision for women’s social place and role at the present time? If so, then please do not utter any word about women rights or women movement!

Balatarin
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Kill Mouse Traps

Speaking of “Nitpicking”

by Kill Mouse Traps on Wed Mar 23, 2011 03:06 PM PDT

Nitpicking is the act of removing nits (the eggs of lice, generally head lice) from the host's hair. As the nits are cemented to individual hairs, they cannot be removed with most lice combs and, before modern chemical methods were invented, the only options were to shave all the host's hair or to pick them free one by one.

This is a slow and laborious process, as the root of each individual hair must be examined for infestation. It was largely abandoned as modern chemical methods became available; however, as lice populations can and do develop resistance, manual nitpicking is still often necessary.

As nitpicking inherently requires fastidious, meticulous attention to detail, the term has become appropriated to describe the practice of meticulously searching for minor, even trivial errors in detail (often referred to as "nits" as well), and then criticizing them. (Source: Wikipedia)

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitpicking

Disclaimer: I have no contribution of my own regarding the pieces presented, thank God by a woman, on the front page of this website, which by the way nowhere it says they are art pieces, although to me they are, expect to say your blog has several spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors, and even though you did your best to be politically correct (i.e. appeasing to everyone and everything), there are things in there that I am sure would be considered politically incorrect, such Now Rooz. But, who am I to criticize!

P.S. Please try to do your best not to engage me in your comments. I am a male chauvinist rat, and as such I move in, move out.


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Azadeh Azad

Good point, Atefeh

by Azadeh Azad on Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:16 PM PDT

Qajar art authentically depicts the 19th century male chauvinist view of women. While two centuries later, the male view of women has not much changed  (notwithstanding many men's opportunistic talk of the "Women's Rights" as a tool for fighting againt the Islamic Republic), I believe the reason for reproducing this kind of art among women, is their unconscious heedlessness of its role in reproducing and strengthening gender stereotypes.

Azadeh


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