Hungry Girls‏

From: Heather

Early in the semester, we viewed a documentary about role reversal. Two males and two females volunteered to learn what really goes into being a member of the opposite sex. While their outer appearances were drastically changed to fit society’s norm, they were also taught to manipulate their behavior in order to be able to pass as the opposite sex. What interested me particularly in this film was the practice of the women learning how to walk like men. They were told to literally crouch down and growl like animals. They were told that they needed to take up more space. What interested me was the fact that I am so familiar with this every day. I’ve learned through negative reinforcement from my peers that there is a certain way that girls are expected to act in public. You see it frequently in these events called “debutante balls” where young girls are taught exactly how to behave around food and drink. They are taught that if they don’t know their table manners, they will be looked at as unfeminine or “unladylike”, a term that I personally despise. In this photo, I told the subject, a young girl, to act like an animal. I told her to enjoy her food. I told her to “really act like a guy”. The result was similar to what we saw in the role reversal film. When the volunteer women were told to act more like men, they began to display animalistic and angry characteristics. The subject in my photo began to lose her feminine posture. She put her elbows on the table and chowed down, which is behavior we rarely are able to catch a glimpse of in women. I chose an angle where the subject was eye level with the camera in order to establish the dominance that many people attribute with males. While the subject wanted to keep the blinds closed, I asked her to keep them open. I felt this was important in conveying the idea that when it comes to food, men aren’t taught to hide. There is no social stigma with men enjoying a meal, but in our culture, women are taught by peers and by the media to be dainty and cute and it’s a little hard to be either of those while shoving pizza in your mouth. One last element I focused on was how the subject was dressed. I wanted the work to be in the same vein as the projects I’ve seen of boyfriends and girlfriends trading clothes. I wanted it to be very apparent that the subject is a girl and has no problem identifying as such, and more importantly that she really doesn’t care what you think is “ladylike”.