The essay title is : a reflection on figurative nudes (usually used for art history class)

I am not a feminist. In fact I do not conform to any of the 'isms' that one so easily throw around these days. Yet when I see this piece of work I begin to wonder all over again why the body has become such and extensively important item of display and spectacle in art.

If one were to reflect for just one moment on the historical precedent of the women's body as represented in the media one would realize that it has constantly been represented as an object that is owned. The impressionist artists later on began to paint women, their mistresses with a different understanding of body maybe more as attempting to look at the person. But her I am looking at the body.

English: Managing emotions - Identifying feelings

English: facial expression and emotion

Figure 15 from Charles Darwin's The Expression of ...

If one was to un-gender the body and look at the representation of 'body' rather than female body, one could look at Michelangelo's David. The body here becomes an object of miraculous beauty. He has looked at the body after having done years of biological research on it and realizing that it is indeed beautiful because of the way it functions and the life it holds.

This artwork does neither.

This work of art has taken a female body (the re-gendering of the body will be explained later) twisted it in a pseudo surreal way, stretched in uncomfortably, almost disturbingly and infused it with some sort of sexual passion as seen in the tense nipples and the facial expression and the thigh and leg positions.

As opposed to precedents of display of the human body as either being owned or being on display for beauty, I feel that this body is on display for emotion.

Here the body of the women becomes a spectacular display of emotion. I think it might be...