Crafting Answers To The Madonna-Whore Complex

An interview with Whitney Lee, the textile artist of Made With Sweet Love:

Like the rest of us kids who made latch hook rugs, you grew up. You're now in your late 20's, a professional photographer, but you came back to the rugs. What made you take on the images, the issues, with the rugs?

360 Degree Spin Rugs by Whitney Lee Like it says in my bio, I am the product of piles of women’s studies and feminist art classes. I can look at almost any image of a woman (especially one from a magazine!) and tell you how she is being objectified, how the lighting, pose, make-up, and airbrush are giving the model a look that is impossible to achieve, and how that makes real women constantly feel physically inadequate. I can talk about 'male gaze' and how images of sexy women make it seem like the entire female gender is one-dimensional and simply waiting for sex.

If you wanted to encourage public conversations about beauty from a feminist point of view why not use your profession, photography? Why use the rugs?

As a handmade artworks the rugs are to provoke a reaction against mass-production and consumerism, and I was interested in pointing out the dichotomy between a crafty, 'motherly' type woman and a sexually confident 'slutty' woman. In our society it is nearly impossible for a woman to be both types, but the two should be -- do -- coexist.