Teen Pregnancy
This is an Ink Wash Reduction, I used watercolor paper, colored and black ink, and rubber cement.
This piece is about how we generalize people who are different. It specifically deals with the idea that we call pregnant teens sluts or whores or stupid, even if it's just to ourselves. But in reality, we don't know that person, we aren't looking at her, we are only seeing her as a pregnant teenager. We assume she has had sex so many times, we assume she sleeps around with multiple people, or at least we imply it. She could have had sex one time with one guy she was in a relationship with for a year and she used birth control, but it failed. She could have been raped. Because she is not what we expect from the average teenager and has maybe made some mistakes in her life, we feel like we know everything about her, we assume we can judge her, that we can tell her exactly what to do with her life. That we can tell her that she is going to fail.
This piece is about how we generalize people who are different. It specifically deals with the idea that we call pregnant teens sluts or whores or stupid, even if it's just to ourselves. But in reality, we don't know that person, we aren't looking at her, we are only seeing her as a pregnant teenager. We assume she has had sex so many times, we assume she sleeps around with multiple people, or at least we imply it. She could have had sex one time with one guy she was in a relationship with for a year and she used birth control, but it failed. She could have been raped. Because she is not what we expect from the average teenager and has maybe made some mistakes in her life, we feel like we know everything about her, we assume we can judge her, that we can tell her exactly what to do with her life. That we can tell her that she is going to fail.