Get This Look!

From: Carrie

For this photo, I chose the subtopics of unrealistic beauty standards for adolescent girls. I wanted to bring attention to how isolating fashion can be for gender nonconforming girls or tomboys to adjust to adolescence and later adulthood.  Magazines for children often celebrate tomboys, but once they become teenagers they are bombarded by media to be as feminine as possible or they're "doing girl" wrong. For myself, one thing that stood out to me more than anything else were the "Get this look" page of magazines, where they show a picture of a celebrity or a popular television character and show how you can look like they do, only I never wanted to look like they do. I felt isolated because I "didn't dress well" and I didn't have any role models for how to look like a grown-up tomboy.

So with this project I wanted this to be a reflection of a young adolescent girl arranging an outfit on her bed, mimicking the fashion magazines but with a more inclusive wardrobe. It shows a mix of men and women's clothes, and underwear made specifically for gender nonconforming women. I included these to drive home the idea that this is something for girls. The characters are from a popular Cartoon Network show called Adventure Time.

I purposefully used the bed and left part of the floor in the frame to indicate that this is not meant to be a professional production, but a girl's attempt to make her identity mesh with her peers. I hope that this picture shows how tomboys struggle in adolescence.

"The 'Two Cultures' of Childhood" explains how gender segregation in childhood effects how children interact with the world around them. It says "over time, the more boys play with boys and girls with girls, the more gender typed the play activities become... This suggests a socialization by peers concerning which activities are appropriate for members of each gender" (Two Cultures 1). I believe this applies beyond just play, however, and includes dress. It creates a complicated mixed message for girls who were encouraged to be active at a young age, but who are expected to conform to play and dress rules that never applied to them before once they reach adolescence.

                  This photo seeks to show what could be a healthy model for children of either gender who don’t want to be encapsulated my gender dress codes. Perhaps we can teach our children that, as they reach the age where appearance becomes more important, that beauty can modeled in many different ways, and with the tools we already have at our disposal.

Works Cited

Rudman, Laurie A., et al. "The Two Cultures of Childhood." The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations. The Guilford Press, 2015, 59-63.