I keep mulling over this conversation I had with the boyf yesterday. I was going through an art instruction book, reading a section about "these are the differences between boys and girls [sic]" and I mentioned how dysphoric I felt going through it. (Their response upon skimming it: /same/)

We started talking about how the importance of having a solid grasp of anatomy for figure drawing reinforces gender essentialist/white supremacist beauty norms, and I just wish there were some art book that taught you explicitly how to draw non-normativity: furries, queer and disabled people, people of color, etc. It's urgently needed.

What art books are: Women have smaller necks and narrower shoulders than men. They're about half a head shorter but [blah blah blah...]

What art books should be: Don't fall into the rut of only drawing characters with white-coded facial features. Here's a picture of a goo girl happily taking her progesterone pills. Binders don't entirely make someone's breast tissue vanish, and affect the draping of shirts in X and Y way[...]