Women need iron. Not the vitamin. The barbell.

We are trained by the world around us to have fucked up ideas about our bodies; iron unfucks them.

We are supposed to be as thin as possible, as small as possible, perhaps until we disappear; iron teaches us to take up space.

We are taught that the only good direction for the scale to go is down, and to agonize ritualistically when it goes up. Iron teaches us the power of gaining weight for strength and gives us another weight to care about – the weight we are lifting.

We are taught to eat small amounts daintily and treat food as sin and pleasure. Iron teaches us to eat heartily, to see food as fuel for life, and to seek out nutritious food rather than avoiding sinful food.

We are taught to think of our bodies as decorative, an object to be looked at; iron teaches us to think of our bodies as functional, our own active selves, not passive objects for another’s regard.

Whole industries exist to profit by removing from us our confidence and selling it back as external objects. Iron gives us confidence from within through progressive training and measurable achievements.

We are taught to be gentle and hide our strength or even to cultivate charming physical weakness until we start to believe our bodies are weak. Iron teaches us how strong we can be.

Words by AK

Image by *PaulSizer

So....

In general, the group is meant to showcase women who are combat ready in convincing fighting attire which may depend on the theme and setting of the story.  That, along with angles and poses are the only things we as a group look for when accepting or declining submissions.  Weapons, for instance, can be completely exaggerated and non-realistic for all we care.

Though the group is meant to be about women fighting.  The group is not about women in day to day lives or in non-combatant situations.  Therefore, female characters in fictional settings is not the only requirement for submissions.  For example, a female character drawn in a beautiful dress is still non combat ready even if the dress is not sexualized.  Putting a weapon in her hand does not fix the situation either.  Her dress still makes her unready for combat.  The group is not necessarily about strong female characters, but more importantly about strong fighting female characters.   So unfortunately in these cases, I have to decline the submission.

But at times, I am a little torn about this.  Sometimes a character can be caught off guard and maybe wearing their casual or extra formal clothing when fighting breaks out.  This is case, I would accept the submission as long as it meets all other group requirements.  But this is still circumstantial.  In these cases where the female character is caught off guard or finds herself in a combatant situation without being prepared, there must be some indication of this either given by the rest of the art or in the artist's comments.  A girl drawn in a school dress with a sword with a blank background with no indication that she was maybe "at school when monsters attacked and had to fight then and now" by the artist would have to be declined.

I do this not only to maintain the theme of the group but also because it is not the group's purpose to say how women should dress in more casual life.  The group's purpose is to confront how women are sexualized out of context in stories that contain fighting and adventure.  Stories which are not meant to be sexual but women are made to be eye candy as if it were normal.  Though a story about a woman who works in a clothing store and goes to school, it would make perfect sense if that character wore high-heels, for example.  Therefore, the group doesn't accept women simply in day to day lives because the group is not about telling women how to dress.....unless they are going to fight and then we care.

Though this brings up a new circumstance which is what to do with friendly, or even not so friendly, competition.  I'm mainly talking about sports.  Competition is an element of fighting and sport stories can be contemporary fantasy.  

So, I'll be making a Sports Folder and maybe later a caught off guard folder.

Thanks everyone!

Edit: More stuff to add.

This group obviously has a feminist vibe to it.  While I welcome that, this group is not about feminist issues (problems which are more or less faced by women) outside of entertainment and media.  On a similar note, this group only accepts fictional women.  This is done because it is okay to label and simply female body types on fictional women for...well...the sake of art and especially for teaching art.  If the group were to accept photos of real women then we would be bashing real women based on their appearance.  The group, remember, has nothing against porn or modeling and the women who choose to engage in those activities.  Fictional women can't be victims of criticism, basically.