Submission Guidelines

For regular Escher Girls images:



I accept any pop media art that depicts women as being ridiculously sexualized or posed out of context (like sexualized in death or defeat), having incongruous anatomy, or in ridiculous clothing for what they’re doing.  I do take into account style, and if both men and women are drawn in that style (i.e. very thin like in CLAMP) then I won’t be posting that.  However, if the style only applies to women and fits one of the above criteria, then that is acceptable.  Disparities in the way men and women are portrayed, posed or clothed in a video game, comic, etc may also count.



Please keep in mind context.  A woman having a literal swivel waist to show her boobs and butt in a swimsuit pose is fine (because her anatomy is at issue and exists because the artist just didn’t care about anything other than putting boobs and butt in there), but simply a woman in a swimsuit on the beach is not.



I only accept professional art, by which I mean art that’s produced as part of the industry.  I accept art books, posters, calenders, or other things produced for a wide audience, but consider commissions by professional artists to be out of this range.  Please don’t submit just anything you find on Deviant Art.



If your submission is not obviously from a professional source (e.g. a comic or manga), please tell me where you found it so I can check out its source myself.  This saves me having to Google around to see if it’s a fan produced image or not.

In general, I would appreciate it if you are able to include any of the following in your submissions: the name of the artist, the comic book and issue, the name of the character in question, the name of the publishing house.  Again, this just saves me having to find it and put it in the tags.



I also accept pictures of industry produced statuettes or other such things if they fit the criteria, as well as advertising.



Finally, if you choose not to give any commentary in your submission as to why you think it fits the scope of this blog, I may not know why you submitted it and reject it.



Redraws and Fan art:



I accept all fan art, as I consider it amateur art made by fans of the blog just trying to participate and have fun.  I post all redraws, and I don’t consider it part of the commentary of the site, merely the opinions of individual fans and what they themselves want to see, or see as an issue in the original piece.

I think it’s important for amateur artists to practice, draw and get feedback.  If an artist is comfortable submitting a piece to a site with as many viewers (and critics) as Escher Girls, then they’re probably open to feedback and criticism as well.



I will request that any commentary submitted with redraws avoid putting down the original artist and placing themselves as being superior: “this person was terrible, my redraw fixes everything”, and especially avoid making generalizations or commentary on the body types of real women.  Because a certain body type is vastly over represented in comics, some redrawers may want to show what type of body type they’d like to see more of, or that they believe that body type would make sense for the type of character (i.e. muscular for an axe warrior).  However, if you are changing the breast size, hip size, etc of a character, please avoid making statements such as “nobody has boobs the size of their head” or “she looked like a boy in the original”. 



While I can’t control what people say about the fan art, I also request that anybody commenting on a redraw also avoid such body-policing statements, as well as try to keep their commentary about helping the artist improve. 



Just to reiterate the original point: I post all redraws as I consider them amateur art made by fans of the blog.  They are not part of the commentary of this blog, but an expression of what individual fans would like to see in the product they consume.

(The only exception is if I consider the submission to be a submission in bad faith.  I.e. a troll trying to take advantage of the “I post all fan art” policy.)

Letters/Questions:

I rarely post letters or questions, as I don’t want to clutter up the blog with me just answering stuff, unless it’s something that I haven’t addressed before and I feel it’s important to talk about publicly.  Because of this, if you send me an “ask” anonymously, you probably won’t get an answer, but if it’s using a tumblr account, then I can reply to you personally. :) (You can also email me if you want an answer to your question.)



Other:



Parody pictures, men in comics in Escher Girl poses, pictures of yourself in boobs and butt poses, photoshopped advertising, and other off-topic submissions that are funny but not necessarily in the scope of Escher Girls, may be accepted depending on how funny they are, and I’ll occasionally post them just to give everybody a laugh.



I also accept blog posts and articles that are relevant, including pieces about how pop media relate body image and eating disorders, and the treatment of women in geek culture as a whole.

Image Hosting:

If you have to host an image to submit it to me, I suggest using http://imgur.com.  The amount of traffic this site gets tends to break Photobucket’s free bandwidth limits.

Please make sure you are using the .jpg imgur link and not the page link when you submit your pictures or the images will break.

Commentary:

For ALL submissions (including redraws) with commentary, please avoid using sexist, racist, ablist, homophobic, transphobic or classist language.  Please avoid using terms like “slut”, “bitch” or “whore” in your commentary, and please don’t refer to a female character being too thin as “anorexic”.

Ultimately, the above are just guidelines to help you (and me) in the submission process. Feel free to submit whatever you think I’d like to see, just don’t expect I’ll always think it’s relevant to post.

These guidelines may be updated as things progress.  I’ll let everybody know if a guideline has been added, removed or altered.

Update February 4th, 2013: If you are submitting by email, please tell me what name you want to be known as if/when I put your submission on this blog. :)