Throughout history women have been portrayed in art either as the birthgiver, muses, have been compared to flowers and celestial objects, idolised as the mother or pedestalized as goddesses. Female beauty in art was always about the voluptuousness, sensuality and aesthetic allure which evokes desire. Women are either elevated to objects of desire or idealised because of the role they play for others but never just as they are. Their everyday lives in the ordinary and mundane often get lost in translation. It sends a message that we aren't worth being seen and celebrated unless we are performing.

Women portrayed in the media are repeatedly shown in this light. Pablo Picasso often used his lovers as muses. And sometimes depicted them in ways that crossed the bounds of experimentation into dehumanisation. One such instance is the stark transition of his depiction of Dora Maar from delicate portraits of her to his The Weeping Woman series where he portrays her in anguish, in tears and as a perpetual victim. Maar made her disappointment with the portrayal obvious when she stated "All (Picasso's) portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar"

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola or Balthus's painting "Thérèse Dreaming" in the Met depicts a young girl in an otherwise mundane setting with a cat reclining at her feet. She is shown in a sexually suggestive pose with her undergarments on display, something that was quite common in his oeuvre. His work The Guitar lesson (1934) was also scandalising. He later admitted in an interview that he used the scandal to gain notoriety.

This sentiment further trickles down to other visual media too, which slowly gets engrained in us and becomes a guiding principle. With time this pattern has been challenged. Female artists have decided to give us a portrayal where we could actually relate to what was being depicted. Not as symbols of nature or the guardians of it, not as the epitome of beauty, grace, poise and femininity but just as human beings first. They showed that we won't need to recline in sensuous poses, have flowy hair and ample curves or have to be elevated to a superhuman status for us to be worth being portrayed.

Frida Kahlo is one such trailblazer who always fought to make her voice distinct in the boys club of artists. Her portraits, especially those of herself, were paintings that were heavy with symbolism. They speak of her everyday struggles as a woman and as a person who lived with chronic health issues. She painted about her own pain (both emotional, and physical), her identity, homeland and revealed herself in all her messy reality. In her portrait Self Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940), she represents herself as someone grappling with her identity and with her autonomy. She is seen with cropped hair and wearing a man’s suit. It showed us a different avatar of hers where she abandons the traditional feminine look.

Amrita Shergill, who is also called “Indian- Frida Kahlo” marched to the beat of her own drums. In her work like Young Girls (1932), she depicted three women seated in a parlour in quiet contemplation. Though it does show a woman in the state of half undress, it lacks that male gaze that permeates the depiction of women by male artists.

Sally Nixon, a contemporary illustrator, focuses on women as subjects in the most mundane contexts : brushing teeth, scrolling on the couch, cooking noodles in pajamas. Her illustrations are framed by squares which gives it a feel of a window into their daily lives. They are works of art which make you go, ”that’s me!” Her portrayal of women contains none of the overt sensuousness and the deliberate performative aspect common in the paintings of women. It's obvious that her overarching theme is to depict women as real people.

So much for who we are, what gives our lives meaning and our inner worlds are shaped in the little moments of our everyday lives. So much of our psyche is moulded in the spaces where we aren't performing gender expectations and just allowing ourselves to be. The gaps between the monumental moments of our lives are just as pivotal to our identity. So much of life exists in the mundane, in the everyday cleaning of our space, in the cooking of meals, in the trips to the grocery store, in the quiet moments where we are sitting and spacing out and in the tiny moments of solitude that we are blessed with everyday. These are the moments that build our identity and humanize us. And the erasure of that seems like an erasure of us.