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Jul 3, 2013

My "Work of Art" Was Demeaning?!?

Yesterday I saw +Mark Joseph Deutsch of Happy Garaje created the below poster for +Adrian Walag the Wagee's Enduro event. And, I thought to make one also for an ultramarathon in Negros Occidental, an organizer shared with me to work on. So I load the "skitch" and craft my work of art event poster.
The organizer has this promo discounts for his race event, and so I thought to make a poster for it. And, this is the most creative I came up with.

Isn't it naturally beautiful?!? 

It's about a Lola against a runner. It's like she's challenging runners that if she can do it at her age, shame on runners who chickened out on this.

It's also about the Lola being a local resident of the race route welcoming runners to their area. For me it's always important that locals of the race area should be thanked for for sharing their place to the outsider runners.

So that was my meaning behind the poster. So I happily posted it on runroo's page and blog site.

But then an hour after, someone commented that the picture was "offensive," and it was "demeaning" to the runners. It "rattled" me. Hey, I would never ever do that. So I took the poster down right away, and find the person who made the comment, and apologize to him. (I missed to screenshot the comment for posterity. That's how I was in #thatawkwardmoment.)

So I asked Markjeee to take a look at my work of art, and tell me what's wrong with it, why it's offensive. He said because it looked like an African Malnourished Child poster, like a beggar.

Ow! =( "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder," indeed. It makes me think I might have a very wrong set of requirements for what is beautiful.

Anyhow, I'm thankful to the person who took the time to point it out to me that it's offensive. At least, I'm now doubly careful as to what to post. =)




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