In my photo, I chose to depict an adolescent girl dealing with the everyday confrontations of who she is supposed to be and what she is supposed to look like. I was majorly influenced by the section titled, “Self-Sustaining Prophecies” in our text book. I choose to show a [teenage] girl who was caught between two separate elements of her life: the smart girl, who enjoys her math and science courses, and the self-conscious girl, who is trying to fit into the appropriate appearance according to general media. Due to our gender stereotypes, girls are not dominantly thought of as being good in math and science classes. The girl in the picture has covered up her math text book with a pop culture magazine, of images of ‘beautiful’ women. The same with her science text book, she is struggling with weighting the importance of the hairspray and her studies. There are other key elements I placed in the photo to hint on key thoughts: she is wearing childlike pajamas, to represent her initial innocence. Obviously she only wears these in her home, so this is a side of her that the general public doesn’t see. The camera angling down on her also shows her inferiority to the world around her. I tried to keep the floor around her as full as possible, to keep the element of chaos in the viewer’s mind. Behind the girl is a box of tampons, that was thrown behind her in a fit of frustration. Ultimately, a girl’s menstrual cycle is not typically a positive experience. Women are often stereotyped as being over emotional and irrational when they are on their menstrual cycle, so this is not a piece of many young girls’ lives that is embraced. In my photo, she is also straightening her hair to change the image of who she naturally is – although she may have natural beauty, she is bombarded by the images of the media around her to have that straight hair, plenty of make-up complex that so many young girls do. With the details of editing my photo, it may be noticed that I nudged up the saturation and clarity – I felt that this gave the photo a softness from the saturation, but then turned harsh by the sharp edges the extra clarity gives.
2 comments:
This was a perfect example of two conflicts that teenage girls face as they grow.In many teens minds that want to focus on schol and get good grades and succeed.But, do to the media which is very conflicting with this the have different views. That want to focus more on their image rather than what matters most.
This is a great example of how teenage girls these days have to struggle to try to fit in. They go to so many different extremes to try to impress other people because the feedback from their peers makes them feel better about themselves. Especially in high school, teenage girls are pressured to do things that they usually would not do..They get put out of their element.
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