it's rough to be a male

For this swap we were supposed to create a collage that is mostly "neutrals" (including brown) with just "A Bit of Red." I decided to work only with the clippings from my collection of writing, maps, & diagrams. As I put together the neutrals, I noticed that a lot of my elements (the ones that are legible) had something to do with men: men's hats, helmets, & swords; men fighting dragons; men carving tablets, designing ancient temples, building cities; men getting in fights; a man who faked his C.V. and wore blue eyeshadow; even men choosing restaurants. So, inspired in part by Hallowe'en, I decided that the "bit of red" should be a ghost of an unhappy man. As it happened, the only red I had in that box had to do with male-male competition in different species—fish, mammals, birds, etc. (!) When I cut out the little red ghost, I didn't expect words like "vigorous thrusting" & "sperm" & males dealing with rivals to show up so prominently, but it seemed fitting—and humorous to boot. The last piece I added was the big "El"—Spanish for the masculine "the."