From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator
Drawing Men Naked in Response to Tinder Messages
Having been using Tinder for a few months artist Anna Gensler (aka Instagranniepants) started retaliating to the crude messages she was receiving by drawing unflattering pictures of the offending men. As she states on her Tumblr she is “objectifying men who objectify women”.
Not wanting them men pictured to enjoy the images she says that she tried to portray them as “fat and not very well-endowed” using their profile picture as a point of reference. Having started drawing these men Anna then started posting them on-line and sharing them with the original subjects and recording their responses.
I came across these amusing drawings a couple of weeks ago. Of course I was particularly fascinated because they use messages received via an on-line dating tool to generate a creative output – much like my Unicorn Dating project.
The key difference between Anna’s project and my own is of course that she is a woman retaliating against the attitudes of men on dating sites whereas I am a man masquerading as a girl on a dating site to solicit content from men for my art. She is setting out to produce caricature’s of the men in the hope of shaming them whereas I have taken a much more documentary approach.
I had looked at Tinder as a possible platform for my Unicorn Dating project but eventually decided that Craigslist offered me more flexibility. The greater popularity of Tinder seems to have gifted Anna with some much more ‘interesting’ and entertaining quotes though. I haven’t ruled out using other platforms however for further developing my work in future if it’s appropriate.
I noted that Anna also branched out on to OK Cupid and added a disclaimer to her profile stating “I’m going to draw you naked if you send me rude messages”, and provided a link back to her previous drawings. I do feel that this demeans the project somewhat though as it is something of an invitation to playful or childish men stumbling across her profile.
She has since announced that “Now anyone can be granniepants-ed! Submit your material at granniepants.com”. Like the disclaimer on OK Cupid I feel that this devalues the project somewhat as Art since it opens it up to be abused or manipulated.
The project started off from quite an interesting conceptual point but it seems to careered off down a popularist route reducing the whole affair to something of a one-liner. That’s a shame because it could have developed into an interesting contemporary exploration of objectification and gender differences.
You can view the doodles at www.granniepants.com
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