Women Trying To Sleep Unsuccessfully In Western Art History

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okay rule A, don’t take off her cloak when she’s sleeping

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rule B, don’t touch her hair when she’s sleeping

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i don’t care how asleep they are, don’t bend over them and stare directly at their vaginas

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no touching someone’s hips just because they’re asleep either, that seems like a given

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this is just dickish
why would you do that

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i don’t know what you’re about to do but don’t do it

A Silent Greeting 1889 by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 1836-1912

just walk away man she’s clearly exhausted

Cupid and Psyche exhibited 1867 by Alphonse Legros 1837-1911

oh, hey, there she is, i’ve been meaning to talk to her about — SHE IS ASLEEP GIVE HER A FUCKING MINUTE

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don’t PULL THE BLANKET OUT FROM UNDER HER WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, YOU HAVE WINGS, YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER

sleeping10just back up and walk out of there buddysleeping9

it’s rude for a man and it’s rude for a goat to wake this woman up so you’re wrong twice

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put that hand back

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FIVE MORE MINUTES DUDE 

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what would you even get out of this

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it can wait little dude

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why is everyone being such a dick

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staring counts as touching, don’t touch someone who is sleeping, go look at something awake

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108 Comments

  1. hugpunch +133

    I thought the angel pulling the blanket from beneath the sleeping woman was offering her a pink ice cream cone and wasn’t too upset about her being woken up for ice cream. Thanks, Ice Cream Angel!

    1. paintingthegreyarea +25

      Came here to say this very thing. Fuck the patriarchy! I will damn well sleep whenever I… oooo, ice cweam. Fanks.

    1. MilesofMountain +48

      And maybe he’s trying to warn her about that…thing in the background of the photo. I don’t know what kind of sheep-hippo-dog that is, but if it’s coming near me and I’m sleeping, PLEASE WAKE ME UP SO I CAN RUN

      1. PonyAlong +13

        HAH! That’s what I saw, too! My first thought: “That sheep is waking up, wait a sec, did satyr-dude rudely awake that poor animal as well? Was the sheep thinking, ‘fuuuuuuck, guess imma gotta get going for WHATEVER’. Head-butt that satyr-dude right in his furry arse, sheep, go on, do it. Do it for her”.

        Um…getting way too involved in this painting.

  2. ipomoea +121

    “I was watching you sleep” has always been and will always be SUPER CREEPY and not at all romantic. Leave me the hell alone and do not touch me, I’ll let you know when I’m awake.
    Maybe.

    1. gripyfish +37

      My sister went through a ‘videotape everything’ phase, and I know for a fact there are at least (at least) three videos where she and her best friend sneak into my room late at night and film me sleeping–I think they were trying to catch me talking in my sleep. I plan to find and burn them next time I’m at my parents’ house.

        1. gripyfish +63

          Rereading my comment, I just realized ‘I plan to find and burn them’ is more of an ambiguous statement than I intended–I plan to find and burn the videotapes.

          And anyway, my sister is on the other side of the country and her best friend is in Prague, so.

      1. mirandawmeyer +4

        Somebody once took a picture of me while I was asleep and sick and they put it on fb for some goddamn reason.

    2. literaltrousersnake +33

      there’s an ad campaign for the TV show Stalker up all over Toronto right now and it just says “HE WATCHED YOU SLEEP” and seriously they make me laugh the cold barking laugh every time i see them.

    3. paisleyLo +46

      I had an ex-boyfriend who would frequently watch me sleep. I think he thought it was romantic/sexy, but few things are worse than coming out from REM and getting the sense that someone’s EYES ARE ON YOU. He would also stroke my eyelids, but that’s another story. CREEPSHOW.

    4. mbculver +8

      So at what age does it become creepy for me to take pictures of my sleeping daughter? She’s just so adorable and so like-herself-as-a-baby when she sleeps, I can hardly help myself. She’s 11, so I’m guessing it’s soon.

      (I’m assuming it’ll never be creepy to take pictures of my sleeping dog and post them on Twitter.)

      1. mirandawmeyer +26

        yeah no you have passed that point

        like does imagining your own parent doing that to you not creep you out

    5. robotneedslove +8

      When my boyfriend and my cat sleep all cuddled up, I feel like I have no choice but to watch.

  3. delagar +24

    Though to be fair I think the one with Goat-Boy might actually be bleeding out. Isn’t that a throat wound?

    Or am I imagining things

    1. joools +19

      I thought she looks dead. Her face is so white, and her body position. Also I think she looks pregnant…

      Just the kind of painting I want hanging in my living room.

      1. cowsharky +12

        Which makes him dickish because IIRC, he was trying to rape her and she ran away right into a snake’s fangs. Or I’m thinking of something else. There are so many dicks in Greek mythology, it’s hard to keep up.

  4. si_rosenbaum +30

    Starting to think there was a major “waking up sleeping girls” fetish in antiquity.

    1. Unreadaethel +35

      I think it was more “if women fall asleep in public, they’re practically inviting men to invade their personal space; ladies, lock your doors and make sure your maid sleeps in front of those locked doors in case anybody tries anything. NB: don’t worry about your maid’s personal space, because poor women are even less real than rich women.”

    1. whizzdumb +14

      Someone putting their finger up to such a creepy mouth/face is bad enough, but to immortalize that moment with paint!?!? Ew.

  5. perianwen +170

    I’m slightly concerned that these men appear incapable of finding their own blankets in the linen cupboard and instead feel the need to steal from sleeping ladies. Maybe if you were helping with the laundry on a regular basis you’d know where they were!

    1. tinypaperme +14

      I keep thinking that if the angel yanks on the pink blanket hard enough, she’ll go spinning off her rock like some kind of horizontal top.

    1. extrayarn +19

      My kid pulled all 5 out of the hat I was making FOR HER last week. She’s going to have cold ears a little longer than she wants.

    2. threerings +41

      This is what I came here to say. The crime is not waking her up, it’s FUCKING WITH THE KNITTING.

    3. seasleepy +15

      (For the internet glossary: “X is going to get murdered” = “X is mildly deserving of a scolding”)

    4. jeanne +4

      My little tiny niece did that once when I’d left the room for two minutes TO PEE – wharglebargle!!!!!!!

    5. Paula Akin +3

      so right you are! and it looks like a third dpn has already been removed from the stitches of that sock. no court would convict her of murder. . . no jury of knitters, that is.

  6. ramina +23

    But really, what IS that guy getting out of tickling her with some hay? Other than a swift slap to the face?

      1. cowsharky +6

        You’ve just created a new fetish. Women pretending to be asleep and slapping the crap out of the man when he wakes her up with hay.

  7. blushingflower +21

    I am more charitable than most; I see this as the men pulling the blankets AROUND the sleeping women to cover them while they sleep. But I might be biased because my sweetheart often tucks me in/makes the bed with me in it.

  8. balefulregards +82

    Not just in Art, but my experience is that men will wake you up at ALL TIMES.

    “Hon? Are you asleep? No? Well then! Let me regale you with my dumb idea and/or suggest we have sex because you are now awake and clearly not so tired as to be asleep.”

    This is *seriously* why my spouse and I have separate bedrooms.

    I also have the “no launching of intense discussions needing immediate decisions at 10:50 p.m. when I am about to start watching The Daily Show and relaxing” rule.

    1. whizzdumb +27

      Even when we men are getting ready and leaving for work, we can’t resist to wake you women up with a kiss goodbye. Off to work, acknowledge me semi unconsciously really quick!

    2. threerings +23

      Separate bedroom solidarity! It’s not the reason, but my husband would INSIST on sharing his every thought as we were trying to get to sleep. Like, I’m almost asleep and what was that about what band? DUDE SHUT UP.

      We have separate bedrooms because we just like it. And we have very different schedules.

      1. hussified +26

        We are redoing our basement rec room to include a sleeping area, ostensibly for guests but really because I need to fucking STARFISH at night sometimes without worrying about waking up my bedmate.

      2. Ethylbenzene +23

        Oh nooooo I think I might be an “every thought sharer right before bed” person……

      3. Unreadaethel +20

        Sometimes I’d go off to sleep on the (large, comfortable) couch while my ex was snoring, and then wake up an hour later and go back to bed, because falling back asleep is easier than falling asleep in the first place. Sometimes, he’d wake up and find me gone, then wander into the living room to complain about my leaving. Dude, shut up, I just needed to sleep, be glad I didn’t make you go sleep on the couch.

      4. ljndawson +10

        Me and mine do on a temporary basis while I get through hot flashes, asthma, and a sprained hip. Among all of these factors, any bed I sleep in is going to look like spaghetti when I wake up.

        1. threerings +11

          Yeah he started sleeping in the guest room when he was very ill with ulcerative colitis and I was working and needed to sleep. Then it just had been months and months and we finally admitted we both preferred it and slept better alone.

          1. ljndawson +7

            Yeah, I kind of miss him at night, but the alternative is me keeping him up with my constant spinning and flailing. No bueno.

        2. tinypaperme +6

          Spaghetti! When I visit my parents, mom says it looks like I spent the night wrestling with the sheets. I’m going to tell her I was twirling my noodles instead.

    1. blushingflower +25

      Probably for Art History Reasons, but in real life I have definitely gone to bed wearing a night gown or a tank top and woken up with one or both boobs out. I move around a lot in my sleep and they fall out if the top is not appropriately constructed to contain them.

    2. Jameela_Jay +13

      I know and half of them aren’t even in bed, just randomly sleeping naked in a field or something!

    3. V_Hardapple +14

      Because their doonas are too warm and cold exposed boobs balances out overly hot legs; it’s maths.

      ……just me?

  9. Hannah +17

    Ugh, even the ones that aren’t classical are giving me THE WORST Ovid flashbacks. LEAVE THEM ALONE. JUST. IT’S BETTER THAT WAY.

  10. Unreadaethel +30

    Ok, the first “man tickling a woman with a feather” is clearly a 60-year old man bothering a teenage girl while she’s trying to sleep. The hell, creepy old dude?

  11. mkpatter +36

    I like how so many of them fall asleep with JUST their tits out. Like, did they fall asleep in the middle of undressing? Did their boobs just really need to breathe? What is going on there?

    1. MmeSiniichulok +23

      My guesses are either the artist was showing off his/her painting skills (as in, “I can paint ALL of the parts!”), or else it was naughty pictures masquerading as “Classical” because people apparently hung around with their boobs out back then.

  12. demisemiquaver

    I'm absurdly glad that this includes two (two!) iterations of my favorite moment from the Ring Cycle. "DAS IST KEIN MANN!" No shit, Siegfried.

  13. Girl Detective +12

    This reminds me distinctly of Nately’s whore from Catch-22, a character I’ve always strongly related to. All she needed was a good night’s sleep.

    1. tinypaperme +37

      That’s, like, a classical selfie, or something. You know that “angel” posted it to Facebook and all his bros are like, ‘YAH BRAH HOPE U PORKED HER” in the comments.

      I especially like how it looks like he wrapped his wang in the blanket for the occasion while leaving her naked.

    2. Unreadaethel +18

      I’m trying to figure out what it is about his physical form that’s so unsettling, and I just can’t pin it down. Is it the eye contact? The smile that’s not quite smug and not quite winsome? The fact that he’s half getting up, and half posing? I’m not sure, but there’s something wigging me out here.

      1. Gzortenplatz +21

        Could it be the weird positioning of her right arm between his legs? What with that and the bow, we’re getting a lot of “nudge nudge, wink wink” about phallic length here. In a Serious Classical Artistic Way, of course.

      2. Touchstone +10

        I’m guessing here, but I think we can agree it’s Amor and Psyche, and if so, maybe the painter’s caught him in the act of sneaking away before dawn? (Because like, obviously, you wouldn’t want your actual wife to know what you look like, regular boning in the dark is much to be preferred). So the weird pose could be that — I feel it has the distinctly dirtbag look of ‘hey man you got me. just gonna disentangle myself here and slip off.’

      3. Voland +7

        Could be the fact that they are adolescents and it’s a creepy borderline-pedo porn picture. The boy’s face looks like a portrait of someone specific.

    3. Yllejord +6

      I think they just had consesual sex and she fell asleep with her arm casually between his legs, as in ”MINE!”.

    4. Werebeagle +2

      Looks like she fell asleep on his left wing, and he’s like “Heh, heh, I’m stuck.”

  14. Sean Demory +17

    Hey.
    Hey, Brunhilde.
    Brunhilde.
    Hey.

    Admittedly, “Heil, dir Sonne” is beautiful… but it probably would’ve been even more beautiful with a couple of slaps of the snooze bar.

  15. ljndawson +12

    Yes. I think this is the only appropriate response.

    Some were never meant to sleep with others. My partner and I were discussing this very conversation and he offered to go to Century21 for a supergreat comforter & pillow set for as long as I am feeling this way. And I nearly wept. He’s so wonderful. He also doesn’t want a bed made of noodles. (His daughter – my stepdaughter – is profoundly autistic, so he needs his sleep. We both grok each other hard, which is why we’re a Unit.)

  16. Yllejord +9

    The Roman guy looks like he has some really important news that can’t wait, I’d let him get away with it.

    1. froder +18

      Yeah, it looks like he’s thinking, ‘I don’t want to wake her up because she’s had a really long day, but on the other hand there are quite a lot of Carthaginians round the corner. Shit. I hate being the intern’.

      1. R. W. Hawkes +2

        Especially with the way the other guy is staring down the street its clear its a case of @someone/ something important is coming and she needs to be ready

  17. Kriss +4

    I’ve never looked at pre 20th century art the same way since my mum (a painter) told me that a lot of women in art were drawn from male models

  18. jo! +2

    western art: confusion and frustration for every viewer.

    PS: the goat-man is more than likely meant to be Pan, or (as we’d more commonly know him) the devil/Satan.

  19. lucyfairweather +5

    Separate bedrooms…BLISS! I would settle for separate beds, like an early sitcom…*sigh*