Why She is Beautiful and I’m not Making Fun of Fat People
Part 2 of Explaining Art
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Yes, she is a luxuriously plump beacon of woman, made in an time before obesity gained the connotations it has in the 21st century.
I rewrote the preceding sentence like ten times to try to find the least offensive way to phrase that — Tanna Po
The Venus’s assets are lovingly carved using cutting-edge stone-age technology in an act of devotion to the female form. I see her as a physical expression of the idyllic gateway we all pass through into this world. Her swollen breasts are a life-giving feast to nourish us before we can nourish ourselves. Before ideas, before art and music, assholes and leaders, microchips and screwdrivers, we all had to be born. The Venus represents our roots in a truly fundamental way.
Or maybe the artist thought fat people were funny. We don’t know. It could have been some wide-spread joke between the small nodes of humanity that had formed over thirty-thousand years ago, because there were a lot of famous ‘Venus’ sculptures from that era, but if it was a joke there’s no need to get mad — all the artists are definitely dead now.
It doesn’t really matter what the Venus stood for, though, because to me it’s beautiful. It’s an element of our culture that hasn’t been forgotten. The icon of the matriarch is still prevalent through story-telling, information and art. If there was a Venus for our generation in western culture it’d probably be Roseanne — a loving, witty older woman who does everything she can to hold her family together through chronic mediocrity. Someone who creatively brings laughs into the heart of the middle class struggle. Roseanne makes everything a little warmer. I hate to hear people make fun of her because she’s exactly what I’d want in a mom, if my mom wasn’t already amazing. Hi mom.
Surrounding the Venus is an artistically-rendered trace of the ten-thousand year old hand prints in the Cuevo de los Manos in present day Argentina. Famous archaeological sites aflat the world have similar hand prints, so it was pretty much an old-old-school meme. To me, it represents community and communication. Along with hand prints you can often find depictions of animals, hunters, natural scenes and geometric patterns. Why did we use hands? Probably because we all have them or at least know someone who does.
There is a universal need for an individual or a group to inseminate the womb of the community with their idea sperm. Our ability to communicate ideas between minds, tribes and generations is integral to our growth. Everything we have built can only be maintained and matured through effective, reciprocal exchanges with the occasional water and sunlight. Now we exchange information with internet memes, which some of the preceding generation may not fully understand or embrace, we have a new conundrum. The sheer information density in simple, shared images and ideas is astonishing, but the meaning relies on the context. For instance, I could describe dogecoin as the “beanie babies” of our generation and everyone who gets their information on cryptocurrency from CNN will think I’m calling dogecoin a worthless joke. Everyone in the crypto-spear will think that I’m making a satirical jab at dogecoins whimsical tom foolery. You’d all be wrong because I am in fact referring to the lasting value of beanie baby commodities, their stable marketability and inevitable come-back.
We’re a confusing generation and I have nothing but sympathy for anyone who wasn’t in the right place or didn’t have the time to catch this weird train we’re on. With that being said, our parents did the same thing to their parents and our kids will do it to us, just like ancient people might have been pissed off about the new-fangled lady sculptures that don’t kill animals or grow crops or anything. We all know that bitching about things has never stopped cultural progress.
So here we are, in the age of #metoo, a battle cry of retro-active feminism. Women have had a difficult trip these past thousands years. It’s not only not-cool to slap a waitresses ass, it could ruin your life. Yay! I guess…. Either way, the power of womanhood is back, so let’s praise this ancient lady not just because she is female, but because she is also overweight, old, and still revered for the treasured idol that she was.
Now it’s over.
