"The danger of unreflexively ‘realist’ art is that it enforces established categories, irrespective of the political end to which it is put. This can be suffocating for those who might wish to move beyond the reality that has been, as Smith puts it, ‘given’ to them. Anyone familiar with the publishing industry or art market will know that the ‘realism’ of a young female author is expected to conform to the tropes of ‘women’s fiction’, that the ‘realism’ of the working-class artist should aestheticize deprivation, and so on."