Virtue, Be Damned!: A Six Hour Sketchzine (18+)

It's 2011. I'm in the finals week of my final semester of college. Everything is going great, I have all my studio projects done, I have my senior show wall planned, it's all done.

Except for one thing. I forgot to do my final for my Gender Studies class... and I didn't realize until the night before we had to present it to the class. Cue SHEER PANIC.

Now, luckily, I had planned my project a little. We had to create a response to any of the essays we read during the semester, and we had to do so artistically (I went to an art college). I had already picked my favorite essay: Libby Lumpkin's Virtue, Be Damned! A Modest Proposal for Feminism.

To summarize: Libby had issues with how 90s feminist art tended to place the feminine as a 'nurturer', and the masculine as a 'destroyer'. She points out this does a great disservice to both: first, it ignores all the positives that come with masculinity. Second, by depicting femininity as a pure nurturing force, these artists were trading one shallow stereotype for another. Instead of The Shrew, they became The Earth Mother- and effectively denied themselves a way to depict all the complexities that come with being a woman in the modern world.

I loved this essay. There was not a single piece of writing that resonated with me more in that class! And now I had to create a response in a single evening.

Well, I had experience with 24 hour zines. What if I made a quick, funny little zine inspired by all my ladyfriends in the LA punk scene?

So that's what I did. I drew a VERY off-the-cuff zine of un-virtuous women, got it done in six hours, and completely ad-libbed my presentation. Somehow, I got an A! And thanks to the response I got from my classmates, I decided to sell Virtue at shows. It has since become my most popular zine, ever.

You will get a PDF version of the original zine, plus the little summary I made for the sealed package version. Due to the adult themes depicted in the zine, you must be 18 or over to purchase. Please note that the PDF is for personal use only. Permission for resale or reuse in commercial products is not granted with purchase of this file. Please contact me if you want to license any of the artwork for commercial use.