Body of work: how the graphic novel became an outlet for female shame

The artform has allowed many female illustrators to confront how they see their bodies and how their bodies are seen by the man around them

In Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame, Erin Williams draws herself dozens of times. The rough, reality-based illustrations of her body move through the memoir’s pages both as a person enduring the banal, and as a sexualized figure, recovering from trauma. Spanning a single day with extended departures into reflection and digression, the memoir chronicles both the journey of a daily commute, and a larger one from blackout sexual encounters to sobriety and motherhood. That means a fair amount of difficult, sometimes shame-filled, material: “All the mornings I woke up and couldn’t remember whether I’d had sex the night before, I’d finger myself to see if I was sore,” writes Williams beneath a drawing of her with a hand beneath her scrunched-up shorts.

Related: Before emojis: the utopian graphic language of Marie and Otto Neurath

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L3gJBt