from: Rebekah
This picture talks about the gender socialization of females. The angle at which I took the photo was from to the sideabove to show, the powerlessness of Barbie. Her image in the mirror is also gray to show the distortion of the way she views her body, with her true image covered up behind her, but still slightly visible. I tried to make the contrast of her image and her reflection serve to show the powerful differences of the two realities. The one she believes to be real her image that is gray, and the one that is real which is only barely visible under the gray image. They are one the same plane but do not appear to be. The lines in the background are all over the place and not aligned in order to show the havoc that society puts into little girls about how they should present themselves.
2 comments:
First off, I think this picture is extremely influential. I think the message behind this photograph is no matter what a woman looks like in our society, she still never feels good enough. Everyone knows that Barbie is supposed to be the “ideal” woman, which is why I think the photographer chose this as her subject. Barbie has long blonde hair, large breasts, a nearly invisible waist, and small curved hips. Barbie is even wearing hot pink mini-shorts that is indicative of her being viewed as a sex symbol. In this picture Barbie is looking at herself and see’s something completely different than an amazing physique. First of all, the camera angle allows Barbie’s reflection to be somewhat larger than her actual size. This indicates that Barbie see’s herself as being larger, maybe fatter than what she really is. This really digs down into a new phenomenon of distorted body image disorders. I think the photographer used a gray color reflection to represent a depressed mood or a self-loathing. Interesting enough, the background of this picture is very chaotic which does tell us a lot about the mood and picture as well. This young girl is lost in a culture where ‘ideal’ is never realistic and good is never good enough. I think it is interesting that the reflection Barbie is smiling as if to say just keep smiling, act as if nothing is wrong.
Yes, I too believe that this picture says a lot of how one views themself. Although Barbie has the perfect figure she sees maybe the underlying feelings that make her feel that she is too fat. Maybe within her is that hunger that she feels she hasn't fullfilled on being perfect so she robs herself of food because being perfect came be overwhelming and that can be taxing for the individual who wishes to live her potential and be liked by herself and her peers.
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