Photo Assignment

From: Gabby

I took inspiration from the documentary we watched on the gendering of advertising and what that tells us about in our society. I wanted to show the hypocrisy of how women a treated in my photo/cake. Children are made to look older and more mature and women are made to be childlike, weak and naive. The writing on the cake reads “Welcome to Woman-hood”. I made the cake to fit society’s norms as much as possible. The cake itself is pink with pink frosting in different layers and with several more layers of different sprinkles. Pink and purple unicorns, hearts, etc, all bathed in pink lighting. Behind the cake, I placed a pink stuffed rabbit. As for the composition of my photo, I made the cake look big and looming. It the physical representation of the rules and girls and women are to face to be accepted in our society.

I took notes from the documentary “The Codes of Gender”. The most interesting sections for me, were how women were depicted: lying down, letting their environment control them. They didn't have a hand in their future, this cake, candles lit is stagnant and I didn't want there to be much movement in the photo.

Another inspiration for this cake were some of the photos on the Girl Culture Blog. Specifically, the one depicting 4 girls 13 years old dressed up for a dance. Their makeup, dresses, and pose were all meant to suggest that they were older. In the caption it explains how they’d be mistaken for being older, and that it was scary. But they weren’t dressing in ways that were different than other girls their age. Society has shown them that they should dress this way, and told men to look at them. They said it was scary. But once they “become women” they are brought back down to this childlike state. As if the most desirable state for women to be is in childhood, where they are taught to be helpless.

The phrase I wrote welcome to womanhood represents a welcoming to a society that tells you to look younger. We can see that from the advertisements in The Codes of Gender and from the photos in Girl Culture, children try to look older and women younger. Whether that’s thinner, hairless, flawless. This welcome is a formality to a reality that is not a choice. An ever-present need to change oneself.