Big Daddy Paper Doll

May Stevens (1924-2019) asserted the value of art as a medium for social justice. She was active in the feminist, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements. Big Daddy, an image based on her father, was featured in many paintings, drawings, and prints produced during the late 1960s and early 1970s that depicted America as a chauvinistic and racist patriarchy. In the center is Big Daddy Paper Doll, naked, pudgy and White. A mean squinty smile decorates his phallic head, while an arm and the panting bulldog conceal his primary male attribute. The moral authority of the patriarchy, Stevens suggests, resembles that of the legendary unclothed emperor. Executioner, soldier, policeman, or butcher; these are Big Daddy’s costume choices. Paper or not, the bulldog, like Churchill’s famous companion, represents the tenacity of established power.

–Dr. Leslie Luebbers, Director