THE central piece of de Veyra’s A Gingerbread Man’s/Woman’s World triptych, which he titled The Bitch (or, Allegory of a Slur + A Black Man), is supposedly a view-from-the-behind portrait of a “bitch.” The allegorical composition addresses issues around the “bitch” slur so common today, even at the topmost level, in international culture and politics. It shows a kneeling female figure with its back to the viewer.

    This painting’s central figure is inspired by a 1990s Kool cigarettes print advertisement, which ad’s central figure de Veyra appropriated for the pose and color of this painting’s central female figure. However, de Veyra’s woman figure faces another figure while the female figure in the source ad faced a mirror on a wall. The other figure in the painting is likely what is being referred to in the painting’s parenthetical title as the “black man.” This black man is sitting spread-eagled behind the female figure, and his naked arms are raised.

    Now, as per that parenthetical title, the painting is an allegory of a slur, obviously the slur “bitch,” as hinted by the painting’s main title and then by the presence of a white dog figure in the middle of the canvas as well as by the female figure’s holding to her cheek what looks like a vibrator. The female figure holds the vibrator like a cellphone or a beloved object.
  Here’s how complex this blue joke of an allegory behind this blue composition is:
  First, consider the fact that the vibrator is often regarded as a symbol of female “horniness,” of phallic monism, or of submission (by “slutty” “bitches”) to the superiority of the phallus. And so this painting may be seen simply as a sexist erotica piece portraying a “horny bitch,” which sexist eroticism seems to be supported by other offered images or presences in the painting—images of vegetation, as a representation of life to underscore supposedly pre-assigned gender roles for the propagation of life; and an image of a vague jet aircraft “cumming” out, if you will, out of a wet rain cloud it has penetrated, naughtily hinting either at sex or at coitus interruptus (that form of birth control that is almost insensitive to the risk of pregnancy) or “the creampie” (another manifestation of male narcissism).
  So, at first glance, the overall narrative of the painting seems to demean woman as a mere receiver of phallic ideals—the phallic vibrator, the black man qua symbol of “the man with the big dick,” and that speech balloon that looks like an egg (egg is a popular symbol of the testicle).

    However, if we look at the composition again, this time from a feminist or lipstick feminist point of view, all might suddenly be reversed.
  The egg is, after all, female, not male. And, despite appearing as a kneeling figure preparing herself for a fellatio service, the woman figure (wearing feminist denim jeans and a third-wave feminist tube top) could in fact be the one on top of things (woman on top, figuratively speaking), as the vibrator, while a phallic tool, is also a feminist symbol of man’s inadequacy and of woman’s independence (note that the vibrator is a common tool in lesbian pornography).

    And, wait. Why is this woman who’s supposedly in the process of initiating fellatio holding a vibrator? Is the vibrator really for her, or is it for him? Well! If the plan in this painting’s narrative is suggesting that the black man is going to get “pegged” by the female figure (see pegging, the sexual practice), might his raised arms (usually an expression of freedom and triumph) actually in this case be tied to two trees? If so, then who, finally, is the “bitch” in the painting? Is it really her, or is it him? If him, is he being a “bitch” (a hip-hop slang word for a weak black American man) by choice, as in consensual BDSM activity wherein she could be the dominatrix and he the subject of sexual objectification through sissification? And . . . could she also be kneeling to him, as to a Goya-painted Christ Crucified, for a sort of religious and irreligious fetish (see convent pornography), wherein he as object of worship becomes both worshipped male god and slave?

    Externally, it must be noted that the “bitch” slur, while traditionally despised by activists in first- and second-wave feminism, may actually be viewed by lipstick feminism as 1) a slur invented by male convention to acknowledge the power of insulting the mother inside a matriarchal society, in turn to acknowledge the lameness of demeaning the father whose effect in the life of a person in that matriarchal society may likely be less than that of the mother’s effect, and 2) as man’s linguistic insecurity device acknowledging his fear of woman’s potential to cheat in a relationship when the woman is in rebellion against man’s long-self-prescribed privilege (or prerogative) to do the cheating.