Why Angie Paints Men as Fried Eggs
A woman painting herself naked is one thing. A woman painting a man as a fried egg is a whole argument about the female gaze in art. I was leaning on the kitchen counter watching Angie work when I asked why the men in her pieces are never men, and she did not soften it. Spend two days with the work and the yolk stops being a punchline. Most of what follows is the black Dominican painter, explaining it with a brush in her hand.
“This is how I represent men,” she said, holding up a piece. “Why an egg for a man? Because I really don’t like how they look.”
The female gaze, why she paints men as fried eggs
The female gaze in art is when a woman holds the brush and the eye, so a male subject becomes the object instead of the woman. Angie paints men as fried eggs and animals, decoration at the edge, while a woman holds the centre, which is the female gaze made literal. The male body, usually the one doing the looking, gets demoted to a flat, comic shape.
“The only way I could think about it in a way that looks pleasant for me was making it like icons,” she said, “and putting the center of my pieces with a woman.” It is not contempt, it is a demotion of importance, which is more interesting than hatred.
Is this man hating, or reversing objectification
This is not man hating, it is reverse objectification, refusing to centre the man rather than erasing him. Angie loves her husband and enjoys male company, but declines the default where the man is the meaningful subject and the woman the decoration. By loving an actual man and still painting men as eggs, she makes clear it is about the gaze, not the heart.
“I’m straight and I love my husband and he’s beautiful,” she told me. “But the only men I could find beautiful are kind of feminine. They don’t have the curves women have, they are very hairy.” She admits the demotion plainly. “I’m not saying I use them as an accessory, but I do. Eggs and animals as decoration, not the main thing on my work.”
Female gaze vs male gaze, the theory under the yolk
The male gaze, coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975, is the way image making frames women as objects for a male viewer. The female gaze looks back, and in Angie’s hands it finds the man not threatening or desirable on his terms but faintly absurd, a breakfast item. The same pose means the opposite thing depending on who holds the brush.
Angie can tell instantly whether a nude was made by a man or a woman. “You can’t even realize when a nude of a woman is made from a man and when it’s made from a woman,” she said, “it feels like we are really an object for them.” When the woman is both author and eye, the object becomes the author.
Women painting men, Sylvia Sleigh and the male nude
Women painting the male nude to reverse the gaze is a real feminist art tradition. In the 1960s and 70s Sylvia Sleigh reworked old master compositions, replacing the reclining female nude with male models on patterned sofas, because women had so often been painted as objects of desire in humiliating poses. Angie takes the colder, funnier road, the man as egg rather than honoured sitter, but the project rhymes.
Sleigh painted men she knew and respected, as portraits (how Sylvia Sleigh turned her gaze on the male nude). A woman seizing the brush and deciding how the male body appears, that is the shared move. The egg is not the argument finished, it is the argument started.
The vintage references behind the female gaze
Angie sources her poses from vintage porn magazines, then runs the format the other way, taking imagery built to objectify women and using it to objectify the man instead. She also points to Marlene Dumas, the painter she admires for nudes unmistakably made from a woman’s hand, as a model for the female gaze.
“My references are mostly from vintage porno magazines, because they are more stylish and risky with the poses,” she told me. Dumas, born in Cape Town and based in Amsterdam, became the auction record holder among living women artists in 2025 (Artnet). Angie told me, delighted, that they share a birthday.
Dissociation, why a man becomes a symbol
Turning the man into an egg is also a small act of dissociation, converting a subject she finds alienating into a symbol so she can include it without being overwhelmed. Women learn this move early, reducing a discomfiting male presence to a type or a category. Angie paints the coping mechanism out loud.
To paint the gender she finds aesthetically and culturally alienating, “so aggressive, so hairy,” she has to put distance between herself and the subject, and the egg is that distance made visible.
Moulding, the male gaze women are taught to perform
The flip side of the female gaze is moulding, the way women are shaped to perform for the male gaze, lighter, thinner nosed, straighter haired, remade for male approval. The egg paintings are the counter move, if women are moulded into objects for men, Angie remoulds men into objects for her composition and keeps the full interior life for the women.
Why women do this, reduce men to symbols and paint themselves instead, is answered by the world that moulded them first. You learn to look the way you were taught you would be looked at, and then, if you are an artist, you pick up a brush and change the rules.
I took Plutarco's wife, the female gaze tribute
The cheekiest piece is a tribute, and where Angie lets herself be the man for once. “The painter is Plutarco, and I’m trying to steal his wife,” she said, laughing. “Let’s say I’m the man here.” The reaching hand is hers. “I took this girl he always uses on his work to put it on mine. She’s thinking about if she’s going to cheat on her husband with me.” A love letter and a theft at once, and even when a man matters, she takes the active role. The gaze stays hers.
The colmado, the corner shop in feminist art
That same instinct runs through a piece built around a colmado, a tiny neighbourhood shop. “How do you call it in England, maybe a corner shop?” Angie asked. The painter she answers works out of Monte Cristi, a fishing city where her father is from. “He always uses these fishes, so I tried to have details of the things he puts on his work here.” Appreciation, made visible, in her own colours.
What we can take from a fried egg
There is a quiet lesson in Angie’s eggs, and it is not about hating men. It is about who gets to be the subject and who gets to be the scenery. For centuries the woman was the muse, the decoration, the still life. Angie turns the camera around. You do not have to agree with where she lands to feel how rare it is to see it done at all. When you travel, this is the same eye worth keeping, who is centred in the art, the adverts, the postcards, and who is left at the edges.
Thank you for staying with something this strange and this funny all the way to the end, and for taking a black Dominican artist seriously when she tells you a man is a fried egg. That is exactly the kind of attention her work deserves.
If you want more of her world, read the self portraits where she turns that same gaze on herself, and the colorism and moulding she grew up inside. When you plan a trip, our Dominican Republic eco stays let you support the island consciously while you are there. See you in the next one, my loves.
Thanks for reading. @queenofvitality
- Facts to confirm with Angie: the spelling of Plutarco Andújar and the Monte Cristi colmado painter, and whether the egg pieces are oil on canvas.
- Photos needed: the egg piece in her hands (hero), the La mujer a Plutarco tribute, the colmado painting. Alt text “the female gaze in art, Dominican Republic”.
- Keyword gaps: “female gaze vs male gaze”, “women painting men”, “reverse objectification”, “Sylvia Sleigh male nude” now placed in H2s and answer paragraphs.
- Lived detail to add: which pieces are in her living room versus stored, for accurate captions.
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