I mentioned this tweet to my followers on Facebook, and one friend of mine got pissed. Because apparently this request is totally unreasonable. Apparently she was requiring that people be forced to draw characters they don't like. Apparently she was abusing her influence in geek culture to coerce poor artists to draw characters they didn't wanna draw.
Look, if someone is drawing character art at a convention, they're usually drawing multiple characters from multiple fandoms. Female characters may be marginalized in most corners of geek media but they're not non-existent. If someone's drawing character art and not featuring one print of a female character, that's a little odd. And if women are absent from so many booths that Ms. Pantozzi felt the need to make this request, then maybe it is necessary for her to use what influence she has to suggest that people include a little diversity in their art.
Seriously, most people who only draw men don't do so because they only like to draw men; most either don't think to draw women, or don't bother because they assume the prints won't sell as well.
Artist alley tables aren't cheap. Even at a relatively small event like ConnectiCon, I believe a table is upwards of a thousand; I'll bet a table at NYCC is a lot more. These artists may not be in it for the money, but I'll bet most of them would at least like to break even. Artists want to feature art that will sell, and they may think that prints of men will do just that. The pictures of women I see at most booths are highly sexualized; outfits are skimpier, waists are thinner, and breasts are bigger than they usually appear in the official media they appear in. Why? Because sex sells; I've heard an artist admit that as I browsed through his portfolio full of female characters drawn as 1940's pinups. There's no shame in wanting to make money, this is America after all, and we all gotta make rent somehow. Maybe if a highly influential woman suggests they feature pictures of women, they might be more likely to do so, knowing such a product will actually sell.
I could talk about how a convention floor that features art, comic books, t-shirts, and other merchandise that's pretty much all made with men in mind, but every time I talk about women feeling alienated and unwelcome in geek spaces, some jerkface assumes I want every convention to be some warm fuzzy hug lounge where people greet each other with tea and stuffed animals. So forget it, I won't bother this time.
Ultimately, yes, people can and should draw whatever they want. This is America after all, freedom of speech and stuff. No one is asking for some weird quota system where all artists at a convention must sell X number of prints featuring women. Pantozzi may have fans, she may write for a publication, but if people are staunchly against drawing women, they're probably going to ignore her, and they'll probably brush it off if some angry feminist calls them out for only selling pictures of men.
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