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My exhibition shows readers what it is truly like to be a female. It is not all glitz and glamor. Everyday women are torn apart by society and told what they can and can't do. They have to look a certain way, dress in a particular way, look a certain way, etc. and if they don't they are looked down on. If women show too much skin they are considered a slut, but if they don't show enough skin they are criticized for being too conservative. In order for women to be successful in life they must have a male presence telling them what to do. Society makes it seem like women can't do anything without men. Rather than objectifying women, why not praise them for all of their hard work? Women go through harassment or men everyday and society makes us think that it is normal. The purpose of a woman is not to please a man. Women should be living for themselves and not having to worry about what others think about them. They shouldn't have to worry about if what they were is going to distract men. They shouldn't have to worry about if they are wearing too little or too much makeup. Instead they should be doing what makes them happy and not having a care. If they want to go out they shouldn't have to worry about if a man is going to try and hurt them. Women should be able to live without being held to standards like men. Women have feelings too so why don't we start respecting them.

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“Cultural sexism in the world is very real when you’ve lived on both sides of the coin” by Charlotte Alter

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“Cultural sexism in the world is very real when you’ve lived on both sides of the coin” by Charlotte Alter

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This article stuck with me throughout the semester because it brought up many good points. It talked about how society is obsessed with fitting the beauty standards which breaks down one's self esteem. It also talked about how men are treated differently than women are. Trans men found out that they gained respect, but lost intimacy. This article gives examples of the ways that society treats men differently than they treat women. In the article it stated that many trans men didn't realize how hard women had it until they actually transitioned.    Females are looked down on, sexualized, and mistreated just because of their gender. “As a man, you’re assumed to be competent unless proven otherwise,” she says. “Whereas as a woman you’re presumed to be incompetent unless proven otherwise.” This quote is particularly important because there is no reason that men should be thought of as smarter than women. Men and women work just as hard so there is no reason that they should not be seen as equal.

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Three guys are sitting at a Harlem bartop eating fries, drinking whiskey and talking about love. One of them, Bryce Richardson, is about to propose to his girlfriend.

"I'm putting it together in my head, I'm like: 'He's gonna be one of my groomsmen, he's gonna be one of my groomsmen,'" he points to his two friends and grins. The other men light up when they hear the news and start talking about rings, how much they cost, will it be princess cut or pear shaped? Pictures are Googled, phones are passed around. "That was one of my dreams, to get married, to be somebody's husband, to be somebody's father," says one of the friends, Redd Barrett. "From when I was like 12, I used to think about that all the time."

I ask the groom-to-be how he knew his girlfriend was the one. They met at work, he says, and by the time he came out to her, they were already in love. "I said 'I'm trans, and you're not gonna want me anyway," he recalls, unable to keep the smile off his face. "And she said 'I'm in love with you, I don't care about that.'" His friend Tiq nods and says, "That's your wife, right there."

All three men are trans. But if they hadn't said so, you wouldn't have known.

Over the last three years, transgender awareness has exploded. From Orange is the New Black to Transparent, from Janet Mock to Caitlyn Jenner, America has a growing fascination with the lives of transgender people, most recently in light of recent debates over controversial bathroom laws. But the spotlight on trans issues has mostly been focused on transgender women, and transgender men have been largely left out of the narrative. Our cultural obsession with feminine beauty contributes to the imbalance. "Women's appearances get more attention, women's actions are commented on and critiqued more than men, so in that world it just makes sense that people will focus more on trans women than trans men," says Julia Serano, a transgender activist and author of Whipping Girl. (Because most surveys ask people to identify as male or female but not cisgender or transgender, the size of the transgender population in America is unclear, though one study suggests there are about 700,000 trans people in the U.S.; it's nearly impossible to know how many of them are trans men.)

Yet experiences of trans men can provide a unique window into how gender functions in American society. In the last few months, I've interviewed nearly two dozen trans men and activists about work, relationships and family. Over and over again, men who were raised and socialized as female described all the ways they were treated differently as soon as the world perceived them as male. They gained professional respect, but lost intimacy. They exuded authority, but caused fear. From courtrooms to playgrounds to prisons to train stations, at work and at home, with friends and alone, trans men reiterated how fundamentally different it is to experience the world as a man.

"Cultural sexism in the world is very real when you've lived on both sides of the coin," says Tiq Milan, a friend of the future groom.

And that cultural sexism is often more visible to trans men, because most say they find it easier to be low-disclosure than trans women. They're often not recognized as trans, which means they can be less vulnerable to obvious transphobia. Some call it "passing" or "going stealth"; others say those terms suggest secrecy or deception, preferring the term "low or no disclosure." In practice, this means that a 6'2" woman is often more conspicuous than a 5'4" man. James Ward, a lawyer in San Francisco who transitioned about six years ago, put it this way: "We have the ability to just walk through the world and not have anybody look at you twice."

One day in court, Ward and his opposing counsel were making a big request to a judge. Ward knew their question would not go over well, so he wasn't surprised when she reprimanded both him and his opposing counsel for asking. What he didn't expect was for the opposing counsel lean over to him and call the judge the c-word. "We weren't out the courtroom door when he said that to me under his breath," Ward says. "He never would have said that when I was female."

Many trans men I spoke with said they had no idea how rough women at work had it until they transitioned. As soon as they came out as men, they found their missteps minimized and their successes amplified. Often, they say, their words carried more weight: They seemed to gain authority and professional respect overnight. They also saw confirmation of the sexist attitudes they had long suspected: They recalled hearing female colleagues belittled by male bosses, or female job applicants called names.

"If I'm going off-the cuff, no-one really questions it," Ward says. "It's taken as, 'He's saying it, so it must be true.' Whereas while I was practicing as female, it was 'Show me your authority, you don't know any better yet.'"

Mitch Davis is now a director of organizational development at Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York City, but he's worked in HR for many different companies since coming out eight years ago. In one previous job, he heard his boss call female colleagues "old cows" and refer to a middle-aged job applicant as "Dame Edna" after she'd left an interview. "Evidently men say things like that to each other all the time," he says.

Other trans men say they've heard male co-workers sexualize female colleagues when no women are present. "There's some crude humor, some crass humor," says Cameron Combs, an IT consultant in Olympia, Washington. He says he's heard male colleagues do "appraisals" of women in the office or observe how female co-workers used their "womanly wiles" to rise up the ladder, conversations he says he never would have heard when he was a woman. "When they saw me as female, it was kind of an automatic stop," he says. "It's a little less censored, the jokes I hear, the comments."

Some trans men have noticed the professional benefits of maleness. James Gardner is a newscaster in Victoria, Canada, who had been reading the news as Sheila Gardner for almost three decades before he transitioned at 54. As soon as he began hosting as a man, he stopped getting as many calls from men pointing out tiny errors. "It was always male callers to Sheila saying I had screwed up my grammar, correcting me," he says. "I don't get as many calls to James correcting me. I'm the same person, but the men are less critical of James."

Dana Delgardo is a family nurse practitioner and Air Force captain who transitioned three years ago. Since his transition, he's noticed that his female patients are less open with him about their sexual behavior, but his bosses give him more responsibility. "All of a sudden, I'm the golden child," he says. "I have been with this company for 6 years, no ever recommended me for management. Now I'm put into a managerial position where I could possibly be a regional director."

Trans women have long observed the flip side of this reality. Joan Roughgarden, a professor emerita of biology at Stanford and a transgender woman, says it became much more difficult to publish her work when she was writing under a female name. "When I would write a paper and submit it to a journal it would be almost automatically accepted," she said of the time when she had a man's name. "But after I transitioned, all of a sudden papers were running into more trouble, grant proposals were running into more trouble, the whole thing was getting more difficult."

"As a man, you're assumed to be competent unless proven otherwise," she says. "Whereas as a woman you're presumed to be incompetent unless proven otherwise."

HOW MEN THINK

Every transgender man interviewed for this story said he wasn't just treated differently after he transitioned-he felt different, too. Those who had taken testosterone treatments said they noticed psychological changes that came with the medical transition. Most trans men said that after they took hormone treatments they felt more sure of themselves and slightly more aggressive than they had been before the treatment.

"After transitioning I was able to think more clearly, I was more decisive," says the radio newscaster Gardner. He says the shift has affected his daily routine, even for something as ordinary as a trip to the grocery store. Before he transitioned, he says, he used to spend 45 minutes debating which pasta sauce to buy, which vegetables were the freshest. "I would stand there and look at the different varieties of yogurt," he recalls. "Now I just grab one. I'm looking for utility, I don't second-guess myself."

"As a female there was black and white and everything in between. When I started taking the hormones, it was more black and white," he explains, adding: "If I get into a disagreement with someone at work, I don't have that feeling afterwards of, 'I hope I didn't hurt his or her feelings.' I'm not a worrier as much as I was in the female body."

Of course, Gardner's story is unique to his own experience, and not all trans men who take testosterone have noticed quite so dramatic a shift. But men's testosterone levels do have a significant influence on some traits and behaviors that are associated with masculinity. A small recent study on trans men taking T therapy showed changes in the brain structure of those undergoing medical transition-though whether those changes lead to the effects trans men described to me is not yet proven.

The changes in patients taking testosterone are strikingly consistent, says Dr. Joshua Safer, director of the Endocrinology Fellowship Training Program at Boston University. Dr. Safer has treated hundreds of people with testosterone for more than a decade, and says he observes his patients becoming more decisive and more aggressive under testosterone treatment, though he laments the lack of data to back up this observation.

"I feel a sense of urgency, like I just want to kind of do it and get it done," Tiq Milan says, adding that he was surprised at the personality change when he transitioned at 25. "I wasn't expecting testosterone to have such an effect on how I think."

WALK LIKE A MAN

Most trans men I spoke to also identified another commonality: Once they transitioned, walking became easier, but talking became harder. To be more specific: walking home after dark felt easier, casually talking to babies, strangers and friends felt harder.

"I have to be very careful to not be staring at kids," says Gardner. "I can look at a mom and her baby, but I can't look for too long. I miss being seen as not a threat." Ditto for kids on the playground and puppies, multiple guys said.

And to a man, everyone said they'd experienced a moment when they were walking at night behind a woman, and suddenly realized that she was walking faster or clutching her purse because she was scared.

"If I start to get too close, I can feel her fear, I can feel that she's getting upset," says Milan. "And it's really just an indication of how dangerous this world is for women."

As a trans man of color, Milan says he feels that the world perceives him as a menace, and his interactions with police officers have gotten much more fraught. "I've had people make assumptions that I was dangerous or I was a criminal. I've been followed around stores. I've seen white women who look physically scared, visibly shaken if there's just the two of us in a elevator," he says. "You can't even ask a cop for directions as a black man."

He says that before he transitioned he was catcalled on the street, but he didn't feel like people assumed he was a criminal. "When I walk down the street no one knows that I'm a trans black man, people just see me as a black man," he says. "So when we're looking at all of this horrible police violence, it's scary."

Dana Delgardo also says that being a man of color comes with new problems. "I bought a Porsche convertible and I'm afraid to be out late at night after having one cocktail driving that car," he says. "It deters me from doing things that I think a Caucasian male could probably do without fear of being pulled over by the police."

Many white trans men said they felt it was easier to walk through the world, freed from the myriad expectations placed on women.

"As a female I felt I had to smile all the time, just to be accepted," James Gardner said. "As a male I don't feel a sense of having to be pleasant to look at."

Many also noticed a shift in their friendships after they transitioned, with some struggling to make friends with cisgender men, unsure of the social cues of male friendship.

"I'm still trying to figure out all of the different secret codes that guys use to talk to each other and to make friendships," says Mitchell Davis. "But I still I don't know what the language is. I don't know what that punch on the arm meant." He says he doesn't know what a close male friendship looks like, only that it probably looks different than a close female friendship.

For Milan, male friendship has been mostly positive, but occasionally alarming. While he says most cisgender men he meets are fairly respectful of women even behind closed doors, he's also noticed what he describes as a culture of toxic masculinity. "I've heard men say things about slapping a woman or cheating on women in the most brutal ways and think it's okay," Milan says.

"Being privy to the conversations that men have amongst themselves really does give me an indication of how they think about women," he says. "And sometimes it can be really scary."

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Trans Men Confirm All Your Worst Fears About Sexism

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Three guys are sitting at a Harlem bartop eating fries, drinking whiskey and talking about love. One of them, Bryce Richardson, is about to propose to his girlfriend. "I'm putting it together in my head, I'm like: 'He's gonna be one of my groomsmen, he's gonna be one of my groomsmen,'" he points to his two friends and grins.

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"Mother’s Day? Don’t make me laugh" by Jane Caro

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"Mother’s Day? Don’t make me laugh" by Jane Caro

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This article talks about the hardship that mothers go through. They carry their children for nine months, provide for them, clean up after them, and give them the best life they can. There is nothing pretty or easy about being a mother. We take our mothers for granted everyday and we think that by giving them one special day out of the whole year that makes up for it. Instead of giving our mothers flowers one day out of the year it is something that we should be doing on a regular basis. We need to appreciate the things they do for us everyday and thank them for their sacrifices they made. Nothing is easy about being a mother and it should be taken more seriously.

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How regularly it rolls around - the one day of the year when we offer an off-hand, mostly self-interested, sentimentalised 'thank you' to our creators - aka our mothers.

I am on the record (in this very publication, in fact) as a hater of Mother's Day. Not a hater of mothers themselves, of course, being one, but of the absurdity of their so-called special day. Just calling it 'special' is a bit of a wake-up call.

I will never forget the late, great disability activist and comedian Stella Young saying once when someone talked in a smiley voice about people with 'special' needs; "You know what 'special', means, don't you? A little bit shit."

I hate the sickly-sweet, patronising tone we take about mothers around Mother's Day, as if by giving birth to children we have somehow become quasi-children ourselves.

Yet there is nothing sentimental, pretty or fluffy about motherhood. It is a dirty, earthy, messy business from beginning to end; sperm, blood, shit, vernix, meconium, mysterious 'waters', colostrum, breast-milk, mucous, snot, tears, vomit - you name it, mothers either excrete it themselves or must clean it up when excreted by others.

It was Simone de Beauvoir's 'Second Sex' that opened my eyes to the fact that far from venerating mothers, we secretly despise the animal nature of giving birth. The only mother celebrated by Christianity, for example, is a virgin - isolated from messy, beastly (literally) sex. Way to make sure no other actual mother ever felt good about themselves.

Female bodies - particularly when they do what nature designed them to do - and conceive, gestate, birth and feed human young give the lie to the idea that humans are created in the image of the divine.

On the contrary, human reproduction, including sex, reminds us that we are animals, specifically mammals - a kind of brainy ape. We are not special or different. Like every other living creature, we are born, we live, we reproduce, and we die.

Women have borne the burden (if you will excuse the expression) of embodying this annoying and ego-deflating reminder ever since men invented patriarchal religions. Perhaps it is one reason why we have been so universally accorded lesser status by such religious traditions, or as de Beauvoir eloquently expressed it, second place.

Perhaps that is also why there remains such implacable taboos around female reproduction and bodily functions. Why normal activities such as breastfeeding and menstruation still evoke feelings of disgust and a desire to keep them both out of sight and out of mind.

Perhaps it is also why the most unspeakable word in the English language is a word for female genitalia. Why is the word cunt deemed so disgusting? Half the human population have one and the vast majority of us entered the world through one, yet this four-letter word has acquired an almost mystical power to shock.

It is the hypocrisy of it that fuels my resistance to Mother's Day. Just as I think a cheap bottle of perfume (if I hear Cate Blanchett say 'Si' one more time while pulling a face that looks like she's trying not to fart, I will explode), a pair of fluffy slippers or - worst of all - a household gadget is no recompense for the unrelenting work, care and effort of mothering, so I do not believe for a moment that we really respect mothers or the work they do and I don't think we ever have.

Far from it. We take mothers for granted and hardly notice the work they do. We don't pay them for their work and we directly penalise them in the long-term for shouldering the lion's share of caring for others.

We charge them a motza for childcare and structure the tax system to make it uneconomical for them to return to paid work. Despite the fact that women have given birth to every tax payer who has ever lived (as well as being tax payers themselves) we seem to begrudge any expenditure from the public purse which might make their lives easier.

Mother's Day? Don't make me laugh. We need mother's lives to be understood and taken seriously in a way they never have been for the full 365 days a year. Otherwise we will continue to have generation after generation of women - particularly those who have been mothers - becoming the fast growing group among the homeless as they grow old.

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'Mother's Day?' Don't make me laugh: Jane Caro

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How regularly it rolls around - the one day of the year when we offer an off-hand, mostly self-interested, sentimentalised 'thank you' to our creators - aka our mothers. I am on the record (in this very publication, in fact) as a hater of Mother's Day.

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I think that this poem needs to be heard by everyone. It talks about what beauty really is. There is more to beauty than looks and what you can buy in stores. There is more to beauty than what someone sees and it is more than what social media portrays it to be. We are so hung up on what we look like and fitting the beauty standards that we lose who we really are. We forget that often times people on social media platforms are photoshopped and we spend hours wishing to look like a fake image. Everyone is beautiful in their own way no matter what society has told us.

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Still Not Asking For It created by Rory Banwell

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Still Not Asking For It created by Rory Banwell

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Rory photographed both men and women standing in their underwear with tape covering their nipples and in the picture they are holding a sign that says "still not asking for it". This project is significant because often times the first thing that someone is asked when they are sexually assaulted was "what were you wearing?" "were you provoking them?" or something along those lines. These pictures are significant because they are helping take a stand against rape culture in the United States and raise awareness for it. Contrary to what society believes, both men and women can be sexually assaulted and we need to start talking about that so we can end it.

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This poem talks about the quality of being feminine. She uses words like frilly, pouty, silly, and other words to describe a woman. She then goes on to talk about how woman are seen in a sexual way and how they seen like glittery tinsel. Comparing women to glittery tinsel is important because in the eyes of a man they are just a new shiny object to play with and look at. At the end of the poem she talks about how the female mind is snatched by whatever rushes by. This is saying that women rush into things and easily get attached to whatever crosses their path.

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The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly

drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while

science was the music of our minds. Our sexual

identities glittery as tinsel, we fretted about god's

difficulties with intimacy, waiting for day's luster

to fade so we could slip into something less

venerated. Like sea anemones at high tide

our minds snatched at whatever rushed by.

Hush, hush, my love. These things happened

a long time ago. You needn't be afraid of them, now.

"Womanishness" from Scattered at Sea by Amy Gerstler, copyright © 2015 by Amy Gerstler. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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Womanishness by Amy Gerstler | Poetry Foundation

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The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while science was the music of our minds. Our sexual identities glittery as tinsel, we fretted about god's difficulties with intimacy, waiting for day's luster to fade so we could slip into something less venerated.

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"Women's Rights" by Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman 

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"Women's Rights" by Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman 

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This poem talks about what women have the right to do in their home and what their role is. It used the example of how women are supposed to take care of the children, make sure that the house is a comfortable environment for men, and keep everyone healthy. It then goes on to talk about how a woman is precious like a flower and should be sheltered in her home. This is significant because it is talking about once again how women have particular roles in the home and they can't do the same job that a man would do. Saying that a woman is like a flower and better unseen is just degrading women. It is like saying they look pretty, but they can't do anything. Flowers can't survive on their own and if you call a woman a flower that is basically implying that she wouldn't be able to live without a man in her life to take care of her. This poem is a good representation of how women are looked down on by men and the rest of society and are just seen as pretty and fragile objects.

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It is her right, to bind with warmest ties,

The lordly spirit of aspiring man,

Making his home an earthly paradise,

Rich in all joys allotted to life's span;

Twining around each fibre of his heart,

With all the gentle influence of love's might,

Seeking no joy wherein he has no part -

This is undoubtedly - a woman's right!

It is her right to teach the infant mind,

Training it ever upward in its course,

To root out evil passions that would bind

The upward current of his reason's force;

To lead the erring spirit gently back,

When it has sunk in gloom of deepest night;

To point the shining path of virtue's track,

And urge him forward. This is woman's right.

It is her right to soothe the couch of pain;

There her pure mission upon earth to prove,

To calm with gentle care the frenzied brain,

And keep her vigil there of holiest love;

To watch untiring by the lonely bed,

Through the bright day, and in the solemn night,

'Til health ensues, or the loved form is laid

To rest for ever. This is woman's right.

She is a flower that blossoms best, unseen,

Sheltered within the precincts of her home;

There, should no dark'ning storm-cloud intervene,

There, the loud-strife of worldlings never come.

Let her not scorn to act a woman's part,

Nor strive to cope with manhood in its might,

But lay this maxim closely to her heart -

That that which God ordains is surely right.

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Woman's Rights by Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman | Poetry Foundation

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It is her right, to bind with warmest ties, The lordly spirit of aspiring man, Making his home an earthly paradise, Rich in all joys allotted to life's span; Twining around each fibre of his heart, With all the gentle influence of love's might, Seeking no joy wherein he has no part - This is undoubtedly - a woman's right!

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"The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards, she says, like newly found uncles and brothers." (Page  17) Women are seen as weak and not able to stand up for themselves. Women can't defend themselves or fight back so that is why men need to do it for them. Men are so much stronger than women and therefore they must protect females. Society makes it seem like women are so weak when in reality the majority of females can fight back and they will. Women have always been pushed around men and they are supposed to just accept it. This quote is significant because it literally says that men grouped behind her like they were her body guards. She doesn't need a body guard, but when she does need is for the male figure to respect her and then there wouldn't be a dominance issue in the first place. Women are just as mighty and strong as men are so there is no point in degrading them.

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"We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" by Ella Eyre

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"We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" by Ella Eyre

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This song talks about how women are treated as sexual objects. Men just use women for sex and she talks about all the things you could do to have fun instead of taking your clothes off. In the start of the song she talked about how a quick hit was his game and that he only saw her for sex. He took her for granted and only saw her as someone to have sex with. She then questions why boys want to move so fast and that they can't just slow down and enjoy the things in the moment. Women will never know what it is like to have a man love them if all the man wants them for is sex. They are used to being used left and right. If women are constantly told that they are sexual objects that is what they will believe they are and they will never believe that they are as valuable as they are.

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Ella Eyre - We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off

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"I don't think she ever gets a pimple-slanted brown eyes, and long eyelashes that aren't store bought. She's the perfect height for modeling too, but a little thicker than those toothpicks on the runway. She never wears the same outfit twice." (Page 5) This quote is a good example of how there are beauty standards that women should be meeting. Women are expected to have perfect smooth skin with no blemishes. They are expected to have the perfect body and they can't be too skinny or too fat otherwise they are seen as ugly. Women are expected to be naturally pretty and as soon as they put on the slightest bit of makeup they are called a cake face. Women should have a certain eye color and if they don't then they don't meet the perfect beauty standards. Women are expected to be perfect in every way. Society makes women think that they aren't beautiful if they don't meet the standards when in reality everyone is beautiful in their own unique ways.

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This song clearly states the differences between male and female life. In the very start of the song she sings about how if she were a boy she would just roll out of bed and wear whatever she wanted without having to worry about what others thought of her.  As a female you can't roll out of bed and wear whatever you want without someone judging you, or trying to make sexual advances on you. She also talks about how she would be a better man and love a girl if she were a boy. More often than not you see women being thrown around like objects and they are treated as if they are garbage and replaceable. I think that this whole song does a good job at explaining some of the differences between men and women in everyday life and what women have to go through.

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"Rapes: eighty percent of the women and girls who cross Mexico to get to the U.S. border are raped on the way. The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precautions as they begin their journey north." (Page 25-26) It is so sad to think that so many women have had to go through such horrific scenarios in order to try and have a better life in the United States. It broke my heart when I was reading and it talked about how when women come to the U.S. they have to start taking contraceptives so that if they do get raped they won't get pregnant. No one should ever have to go through something like that, but yet they do. Women are tossed around like sex objects and men don't care about when they are doing to them. That takes such a huge toll on all aspects of their health and if a woman tries to speak up about rape she is often shunned. One of the first questions is "what were you wearing?" or "were you leading him on?" instead of asking "who did that to you? and let me help you, I'm here for you" which really shows society doesn't care about women.

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This song talks about how women are taught that they need a man in their life. They are taught that if they sit still and look pretty obeying everything that the male figure in their life tells them to do, then they will get what they want in life. She talks about how she may be pretty, but she doesn't want to listen to the "rules" that say you have to do everything a man says. By telling women to sit still and look pretty that is objectifying them and taking all of their power away. It is just another way for a man to be in control of the women's life and people now believe that without a man they won't be successful. They think they can't have a white picket fence and a lot of money without a man. They also think that being pretty is the only thing that matters to a man.

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Venus of Urbino painted by Titian (1534)

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Venus of Urbino painted by Titian (1534)

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This painting was a gift from the Duke to his wife and it reminded women of marital obligations she should fulfill to her husband. It represents Venus, the goddess of love. The viewer of the painting can not resists the beauty of her. The maid in the back is watching over a young girl which is also a symbol of motherhood. This painting is significant because Venus symbolized love, beauty, and fertility. Instead of using a "skinny" woman they used a "plus sized" woman and so this image comes up when you look up beauty standards. The standard is that women have a slim waist, big boobs, and big butt while maintaining an hourglass figure. To create an image that represents love, beauty, and fertility the artist decided to sexualize a women and paint her naked instead of putting her in proper clothing.