Mighty Men and Mistress Maker
2014
As a child, my brother had a toy called Mighty Men and Monster Maker. This toy consisted of several plastic plates with raised images on them representing different heads, torsos and legs of generic superheroes and villains; the boy was supposed to pick out a set of plates to create his own man or monster, making an image of it by overlaying a piece of paper and rubbing on the surface with a crayon. This toy was very clearly gendered, as was my sister’s Fashion Plate, (basically the same toy, but made for girls with images of Barbie-like women), which lets the girl put together her own fabulous outfits for her favorite doll. I was never confused about my preference for the monster maker; I don’t think it had anything to do with sexual preference or gendered behaviour; the boy’s playset simply had much more imaginative options, allowing for creation of not only superheroes, not only villains, but the potential mash-up of both into one hideous, glorious creature!
Around the same time in my childhood, I was fascinated by my father’s not-so-secret dirty book collection. Well, that is to say, it was no secret that he had pictures of naked ladies adorning his basement workshop, but the smutty novellas I was so titillated by were not exactly out in plain sight - in his office, in the back of the bottom desk drawer. They were filled with stories of sexual adventure so much more colourful and diverse than any naked lady centerfold could ever hope to be. I kept this obsession secret throughout my childhood.
Like the centrefolds in the workshop, though, the nudie magazines the centrefolds were ripped from were somehow more acceptable to share with siblings, friends, and other visitors to the house. At least once every couple of months, I would find myself hiding behind the furnace with friends (or sisters), or new acquaintances, leafing through a playboy magazine and giggling. Whenever my brother was caught, he would be in big trouble; usually a spanking and an afternoon spent alone in his room. When my sisters and I were found with Dad’s dirty mags, though, we were gently chastised for “sneaking around” and let off with a warning. Later, my parents would tell me that the reason for this double standard is that for boys, it’s dirty. For girls, they’re just exploring their own bodies. I wonder if they ever thought about that parenting choice the first time I brought a girl home. I doubt it. It never really crossed their minds, just like it never crossed mine, either, for as titillating as all that naked flesh was. I wonder if it would have been different if I had been caught with one of those smutty books, which did not contain pictures that I could compare to my own body, but instead filled my head with pictures of bodies of all shapes and sizes that I certainly had no real-life comparison for.
Now that I’m older and have more sophisticated tastes (and more complicated), I think back to those childhood toys and wish I could have them again, but this time to have the girls and the boys, the good guys and the bad guys, the toys and the sex all rolled into one. To allow me to design the perfect lover, and for others to design their own lovers, and to giggle with them and with all the visitors over our fantastic and impossible and desirous creations.
Mighty Men and Mistress Maker is a sculptural object, designed for gallery installation. Designed to look like a lifesized plastic toy bed, it comes with interchangeable plastic plates with mix and match body parts that can be placed on the bed. Visitors coming into the gallery are invited to select the body parts to design their ideal lover. Like the toy, the images will not be printed on the plates but sculpturally raised so that you can place a piece of paper over the plates and using a crayon or other soft drawing implement, rub over the surface to create an image of the person you've created. Mighty Men and Mistress Maker will beg to be performed. The performance of this work is two-fold – in order to create the ‘print’ of their ideal mate, the audience member must physically engage with the object, moving plates, placing paper down and rubbing the image into being. At the same time, the person creating the work becomes a spectacle for the other viewers, as they kneel beside, lay on top of, or straddle the lifesized bed and, therefore, their own hand-selected sexual fantasy creature, rubbing every line, curve, and bump on their body in order to flesh out the image. so that the act becomes a potentially scandalous spectacle for other gallery visitors and observers.
