I have hopes for where cultural acceptance goes from here, but I also know that there is a time and a place to make these statements. I see my own race marginalized in media, but I understand that there are market forces driving it. It certainly isn't great to see, but it's a logical move, one that I myself would make if I were the director of a blockbuster movie. Change comes slowly, and forcing it immediately into the spotlight will only open more chasms and lessen mainstream willingness to accept the new. We must move at a pace that is comfortable for the population at large, and acceptance is a two-way street.
Again, my profession is as a product designer, and with that comes more than knowledge of how to make things pretty, but social psychology and anthropology. We must know not only WHAT people want to buy, but WHY. There must be restraint, purpose, and most of all CLARITY.
This deck's purpose and vision was not to be a vessel for social change. It was not my intention, and all the work done this far has not been towards that end. If it were, I would have approached it entirely differently. I started to make a sports car and someone said "wouldn't it be great if you could haul a trailer too." Another time, another project, and another purpose.
And Hollywood is changing, but again slowly. A black actor here, an asian actor there. Change comes on a human timescale, and by that I mean generation by generation. When they tried to shoehorn a movie made for the mainstream into a social-change movie (Ghostbusters' all-female cast) it is met with critical failure.
And how would that benefit me? How would that benefit anyone at all?
What if I made a deck with peoples of all various colors and shapes and ages, and meet no mainstream success because it was declared a "social change" deck? Who will have listened? How far-reaching was my message?
And in a divergent case, what if I made a mainstream deck with only the normative ideals of beauty, and it gains a much wider audience? Do I not then have a massive base of followers to send messages to? And if these followers had never considered blacks or asians or older people beautiful, aren't they the audience most worth speaking to? Who's to say that this is my last deck?
If you've not heard recently, Leonardo DiCaprio is leading his own crusade of sorts for climate change awareness through a TV show. What if he hadn't started as a famous actor and instead began his career as a climatologist? Who would he reach? Would we have even known his name?
There must be a strategy behind social change, and it is never as simple as we'd like.
With that said, this was still never my intention for this deck. I grew up poor, to a 1st generation immigrant mother with no father, and I have gained considerable success since then without ever having to draw attention to my race. I am not here to further any racial image or body acceptance, only to return to painting with a subject matter that interested me after a 7-year hiatus.
If this forum wants my deck to be a rider vessel for their own addendum, why not create your own deck in this "Tarot Deck Creation" forum? Where are the messages pushing for more body types or races or ages in any of the other decks I've seen? Who's here to start a "boycott the RWS deck because everybody is white and the same body size" thread? ESPECIALLY when the artist herself was black in 1910?
I have heard your message, but it is not one that I want to adopt into this specific work. That was never the plan.