Comic Arts: Approachable Means for Disseminating a Feminist Message on Aging

This supporting thesis attempts to argue for the use of comics and comic arts as an effective visual language with which to disseminate the question of female ageism (prejudice or discrimination on the basis of one’s age). Through familial and self-reflexive references, my hope is to bring attention to the ubiquitous yet undervalued loss of voice of the middle-aged woman by means of an art form that has historically been dismissed within the fine art world. Through minimal black and white line-work, 2D comic-art iterations are placed in the gallery as a representation of the struggle middle-aged women have endured for a place in contemporary Western society. While intersectional feminism attempts to include all races, economic and social demographics within feminist discourse, ageism has been a silently pervasive phenomenon.