He Told Me I Would Fail As An Artist ...Because I'm a Woman

[Music] here [Music] neat everyone my name is emily and oh my gosh i have been sitting on this story for for years at this point years this is the story about how a uh quote-unquote woke startup bro tried to tell me that i would never be a successful artist because i was a woman and i was a woman who wanted to have children before i go on i want to clarify hashtag not all startup bros i've had a few really lovely experiences with startup bros one even save me from a lady throwing sand at me on the light rail but that's a story for another time but there is kind of a negative association with specifically silicon valley startup bros for those who don't know startup bros are young people usually men typically between the ages of like 25 and 35 working at an internet startup and silicon valley is a general cluster of cities located on the peninsula of the san francisco bay area in california in the united states companies like apple google and facebook all got their start in silicon valley so naturally a bunch of other tech startups decided to take root in silicon valley in hopes of mimicking that same success this caused a huge influx of young people working in i.t specifically young men to come look for work there not only that but because of the success of some of these startups it caused a lot of our local youth to go into i.t in hopes of ensuring a financially stable future in a world that was rapidly becoming financially unstable all seems well and good right wrong this influx of people working in at the time well-paying tech jobs not only caused the cost of living to absolutely skyrocket in the entire san francisco bay area because where else in the united states would making a hundred thousand dollars a year put you in the low income category low income to who but this also created a culture of people called startup bros and you definitely don't have to be born male to be a startup bro anybody can be a startup bro that assholery does not discriminate again i have to say hashtag not all startup rows some of them can be really nice some of them can be a great lay some of them can have you know what's it called a personality and be oh what isn't funny but if someone's calling you innovative and industrious to your face and then calling you a startup bro behind your back i'm just going to let you know now it's not a compliment sorry to all nice startup bros everywhere you're the real mvp and that brings us to the introduction of our sort of antagonist anti-hero of the story arnold and i don't hate arnold at all actually he was kind of fun to be around sometimes but arnold was a dick everyone has that one person that's part of their friend group that is perfectly fine to hang out with but after a certain point especially when alcohol is involved they're a dick they're arrogant they're smug they think they're better than other people because of their status or their job and they always have to be right and that was arnold specifically that one night in a bar in downtown palo alto where he was about to explain to me why i couldn't be a successful artist because i was a woman did i mention that arnold considers himself progressive and woke we'll get into that but before we do let's hear a word from today's sponsor today's sponsor is skillshare skillshare is an online community for those of us who love to learn at any level skillshare is a huge collective of tens and thousands of different classes for every different genre of creative learning you can check out everything from music to photography web design and my personal favorites fine art and illustration being a busy mom i really don't have a lot of spare time but that doesn't mean i have to sacrifice my creativity and desire to learn thankfully most of skillshare's classes are under 60 minutes and packed full of useful tools to help me get started on a new skill what's also really great is their classes are affordable much more inexpensive than any in-person option this month i took the course take better photos of your art and illustrations by elena katie okay you got me i've taken this course before i liked it so much that i include it in every skillshare ad it's been about a year since i last took the course so i wanted to review it i actually regularly use skillshare and one of its most valuable assets is the ability to retake courses especially courses like this one that provides so much value elena shares with us the fine details of taking an attractive photograph of one's artwork something that may seem easy to do upon first glance is actually quite an art form in and of itself this course helps to illustrate its complexity in simpler steps the first 1000 people to click the link in the description will get one month of skillshare premium for free come and start your creative journey today explore with skillshare like i said earlier this takes place in a bar in downtown palo alto that is no longer there because of the absolutely wild cost of owning or renting commercial property in the bay area thanks tech startups sorry i sound majorly bitter but that's because i am this is all kind of ironic because i'm making this video and in it i'm kind of bashing slash poking fun at big tech and then i upload it to youtube and youtube was actually one of the major players in the big tech boom in the san francisco bay area don't think i don't see the irony in that back to the store we don't care about big ted why are you so long we didn't need any of those explanations i liked it i was at the bar in palo alto with my then partner b and some of his friends from high school arnold had brought a whole herd of first-time salary big boys startup bros and it was very clear that they'd been drinking before they came to the bar this was apparent because when startup bros or any bros for that matter drunkenly greet their other bros they take on a deep patrick star-like register hey douglas what's up matthew my partner b went to the bar to get us some drinks so i was left to awkwardly engage with arnold and all his startup row friends at this point in time arnold was actively pursuing one of our mutual friends who i'm going to call becky and because of this he would obsessively talk about her because she was so different from other women because she was so much more of a feminist i'll just give you a moment to let that sink in he acted like one time she farted in his presence and it didn't even smell bad in fact it smelled good and it was his job to tell everyone about the good smelling fart and i loved becky i would not be surprised if she had good smelling farts but i was more in the boat of protect becky and her sweet small hands from this horrible man at all costs okay he wasn't horrible but he did not deserve becky so the majority of our conversation was just him sniffing those farts like just huffing them in and then we got onto the conversation of what everyone did for a living and after they were done explaining how a circle jerk actually works they asked me what i did for a living and i told them that i was an artist arnold kind of like laughed under his breath and he was like are you serious and i was like yeah and he said can you please be more specific like an artist how i explained to him that i was making most of my money off of commissions graphic design work and some photoshop editing i also told him that i was marketing my skills and my business through my youtube channel which although i wasn't making any money off of it at the time it was a very useful marketing tool i used youtube videos as advertisements but i used my whole channel kind of like a portfolio arnold scoffed at that and was basically like do you have a real portfolio though because if you don't have a real portfolio no one's going to take you seriously and i was like yes of course i have a real portfolio so he asked if he could see it at the time i only had a few pictures on my phone my real portfolio was a physical portfolio that i would carry around and show to prospective clients but before i even got a chance to explain that and because arnold had only seen a few pictures on my phone he proceeded to tell me that one only having a few sketches in your portfolio won't show off any versatility and won't make you seem very appealing to potential clients and two these photographs are pretty low quality and really poorly lit so i'm going to go out on a limb and say that if i were a client i would assume you don't care about your work because you're not going out of your way to give it a proper presentation and if you don't care about your work then why should i as the client care about your work and of course number three if you don't have any proper professional references or like business cards or anything to go along with this portfolio then i think it'll be really hard to find people that will want to hire you like no offense i'm just trying to give you some advice and that advice actually would have been pretty sound advice if that had actually been my portfolio but because he didn't let me get a word in edgewise and put up his hand every time i tried to say something as if to shush me i didn't get a chance to explain that that was not my real portfolio that my real portfolio was at home and the digital copy of my portfolio was on a disk drive until after he had explained all that and when i did explain all that he looked bored and just said sure and then one of his friends started laughing and talking like i wasn't even there and he's like dude how funny would it be if she ran home right now and did all of that just to prove what's on her phone isn't actually her real portfolio they all had a little laugh and it was generally pretty harmless and i explained that i love art and i do it as a passion and i'm going to continue to do it until arnold cut me off and said well for as long as you can because you can't actually expect to make a living off of that i told him that it would be hard but it's not impossible especially with the rise of social media giving everyday artists like myself a bigger platform to showcase our art and of course arnold's response was dry and pedantic as ever yeah but social media can only do so much if you don't have the skills to back it up then no one's going to hire you i'm not implying that you don't have the skills i'm just playing devil's advocate also historically and this is really unfortunate but it's really been men who have been the most notable and recognized among famous artists so it will be even harder for you to break through and become famous i'm not saying it's impossible for you to become a famous artist i'm just saying that it's going to be really difficult and you should probably have a backup plan i told them i had no interest in being famous and that i just really enjoyed sharing my art and art tips and networking with other artists and i also explained to him that i did have a backup plan in fact i had an opportunity to make a large portion of my income on photoshop editing alone but as i was explaining that he just was shaking his head and said no i would still consider photoshop editing part of like the art realm i'm talking a backup plan like in the real world like a real job for example becky got her masters in psychology but her real love is writing historical fiction which she does as a hobbyist so i explained that yes i know that but because a lot of my skills are in art and graphic design my backup job will probably be somewhere in that world and just because it's still in the realm of artistry doesn't mean it's not a viable back-up plan he didn't really even acknowledge my answer and then asked me do you want kids i obviously said yes i feel like being a mother is something that i've always wanted to be and i know it's not for everyone but for me in particular it's something that's very important to me and his lovely response was see and that's going to set you back even farther because of the notable famous female painters even fewer of them had children so that puts you in a very small percentage and at a very big disadvantage have you thought about this at all and again i had to tell him yes i've thought about it i've thought about it at length that was another reason i wanted to be a working artist because that would enable me to stay home with my children when they were very young but i could still contribute to the household at this point my partner had come back to the group and funnily enough my partner at the time was the person from the my ex was embarrassed of my artwork story time so he was well aware that this topic was a sore spot for me he asked what we were talking about and i explained and he just kept awkwardly drinking his drink i think arnold could sense the tension so he tried to break it up by saying look it's not that i'm not supportive of you i'm just trying to be realistic here at that point i was pretty much done with the conversation and walked away when i look back i really wish i would have stayed and stood my ground but i felt like we were going in circles and just decided to step outside and take a breather the things that he was saying were not wrong the problem was that when we were going around the circle and asking what everybody did what their specialties were what their original degrees were my profession my career choice was the only one that was questioned and i just find it kind of funny almost that the person who questioned the only female in the group about their career path was the self-titled woke feminist guy and let's be real this guy wasn't actively fighting for women's rights he wasn't an actual feminist he was just wearing it like a costume to impress a girl what he was doing was actively weaponizing unfortunate statistics about women in the professional art world in order to seem superior to me in front of his friends i'm usually not a fan of unironically using buzzwords but he was mansplaining and look i definitely think there's such a thing as womansplaining too in fact i might be doing it right now we should just call it peoplesplaining because certain people are just ripe shits plucked from the hairiest of ass at birth when they were just tiny little ripe dingleberries arnold was not only huffing becky's farts but i'm pretty sure he was doing his fair share of huffing his own farts and the important thing here is not arnold and his farts the important thing here is what i took away from that conversation very similar to the time when my ex told me i could never be a real artist this conversation made me want to work harder and even though initially it discouraged me after i had some time to think about it all it did is make me want to prove him wrong do better for myself and surround myself with better more caring and supportive people and guess what i did all three of those things when someone tries to knock you on your ass or even if they do knock you on your ass you've got to use that fall as a learning experience the person who did the knocking is irrelevant because they aren't the ones ultimately in charge of your life and even though i think arnold's only intention there was to get some brownie points with his friends he gave me a lot to think about and ultimately change the course of my career for the better if i would have taken his negativity to heart and given up on being an artist i wouldn't be here talking to you all today and that's not to say that i owe any of my success to him he is one of many detractors i've come across in my career and they are in my opinion a necessary evil to help push me forward because the more they want to silence me or put me in a box the more i want to speak out and break free the things that people say to or about you don't control your life you do so get out there and make it happen thank you guys so much for watching and don't forget to stay out of trouble see you guys later [Music] you you

Channel: Emily Artful

Views: 22,765

Keywords: art, art video, creative, illustration, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils, artwork, artist, graphic design, painting, winsor and newton, golden, qor, holbein, gouache, sennelier, white nights, comedy, funny, laugh, jokes, emily artful, tattoo art, gothic art, goth

Id: fQthahhO2Pc

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021