Ike Mazzard’s drawings symbolize the stereotypical male fantasy of unrealistic, flawless women. Joanna is familiar with Ike’s work before she moves to Stepford, since he’s a well-known magazine illustrator famous for his drawings of beautiful women with perfect features and large breasts. When Ike comes to Joanna’s house with some of the other members of the Men’s Association, he starts drawing her without asking permission. This makes Joanna deeply uncomfortable, but he just tells her to relax, condescendingly looking back and forth at her and his notepad. In this way, he objectifies Joanna and makes her feel self-conscious—after all, he’s carefully scrutinizing her every feature. To make matters worse, she knows that he always draws overly sexualized women that satisfy a certain male fantasy about what women should look like. She therefore feels as if he’s comparing her to an unrealistic ideal of feminine beauty, and the drawing itself comes to represent just how willing the men in Stepford are to subject women to unrealistic expectations.
Ike Mazzard’s Drawings Quotes in The Stepford Wives
“Hey,” she said, shifting uncomfortably and smiling, “I’m no Ike Mazzard girl.”
“Every girl’s an Ike Mazzard girl,” Mazzard said, and smiled at her and smiled at his pecking.
She looked to Walter; he smiled embarrassedly and shrugged.
She was wrong, she knew it. She was wrong and frozen and wet and tired and hungry, and pulled eighteen ways by conflicting demands. Including to pee.
If they were killers, they’d have killed her then. The branch wouldn’t’ have stopped them, three men facing one woman.
[…]
Bobbie would bleed. It was coincidence that Dale Coba had worked on robots at Disneyland, that Claude Axhelm thought he was Henry Higgins, that Ike Mazzard drew his flattering sketches. Coincidence, that she had spun into—into madness. Yes, madness.
Ike Mazzard’s Drawings Symbol Timeline in The Stepford Wives
