From: Sydney:
My photo was inspired by an Instagram post I saw where a clothing reseller took a collection of jeans that were all “Size 10” and laid them out on top of each other. When looking at all of these supposedly size-identical jeans, you could see that there were noticeable differences among the waistlines. The point was to show that sizing is so varied between clothing companies that aligning your identity to your size is not just damaging – it’s impractical. The way I chose to alter that original photo was to take all the pants I have held onto over the years and lay them out with the pants that fit me now. I arranged the pants from smallest to biggest, and then back to smallest again.
I remember holding onto clothes in high school that didn’t fit me anymore because I told myself that I should work hard to fit into them again. I kept those clothes as an incentive for me to get thinner, hence the title of my photo: “Incentive Jeans”. Instead of accepting how my body was changing, I created feelings of shame in myself because I could no longer fit in my smaller clothes. What hurts more is that I have looked back at pictures of myself from when I was younger and thought: “Why was I so self-conscious? I look totally healthy.” I have also held onto pants that are several sizes too big for me now. I don’t want to get rid of them because my insecurities make me feel like I will probably need those pants again.
The creative element that is most clearly represented in my photo is symbolism. The arrangement of the pants is meant to communicate to the viewer how my weight has fluctuated throughout my life. The photo can also symbolize how many body types exist among all women. There is not one size of pants that will fit every woman, and there is nothing wrong with that. What makes the media depiction of women so damaging, particularly to the socialization of adolescent girls, is that there seems to be only one type of body represented: thin. In Reviving Ophelia, there are two statistics mentioned that compare the average height and weight of models to the average height and weight of women in general. The average height/weight of a model was 5’10”/110lbs, while the average height/weight of the average woman was 5’4”/145lbs (Pipher 01:57-02:04). In 2021, the average weight of women appears to have increased to 170lbs while the average height has stayed the same. This means the disparity between models and “normal” women has increased even further.
By inundating the media with photos of models who do not represent the body types of most women, young girls are conditioned to associate beauty with thinness, even when attaining such thinness might be physically unachievable for most girls. That doesn’t mean girls won’t try, because as Pipher mentions in Reviving Ophelia, “When we define beauty in such an unnatural way, young girls do very unnatural things to be thin” (Pipher 02:12-02:20).
This dedication to achieving thinness is spurred on by the media through advertising that is designed to make consumers feel anxious and insecure, as noted by Dr. Jean Kilbourne in Miss Representation. Highlighting thin women in advertising helps companies sell more products to women who are trying to be more like the models they see. Messages from the media, advertising, and people of influence (parents, coaches, siblings, etc.) combine a way that is “eating disorder producing” for adolescent and teen girls (Pipher 02:36-02:42). Beauty standards and the harms they incur are endured by young girls to an extent that young boys will likely never experience, which lends further support to Rudman’s theory that there are “two cultures” of childhood.
Another creative element that I utilized in my photo was line. The jeans are arranged in a way that creates a path for the viewer’s eyes to follow. The line starts at the bottom of the photo with one of the smallest pairs of jeans and peaks at the largest pair of jeans. The line ends towards the top of the photo with the waistline of the brown pants. Utilizing line in this way helps the viewer understand that the point of the photograph is the difference in the waistlines of the pants. The viewer could also make the interpretation that what is to be desired is the smallest pair of jeans, because the smallest pairs of jeans are shown as the starting point and ending point in the arrangement.
Building on the idea that being thin is the ultimate goal, there are times during which young girls may find themselves in situations that serve to reinforce feelings of shame towards non-thin bodies. In Lauren Greenfield’s “Girl Culture” photo essay, there is a photo of several thirteen-year-olds at a final weigh-in at weight loss camp. This photo is especially painful because of the way the anxiety of those girls radiates out of the photo. In my photo, there are no faces to communicate anxiety, but the “small-big-small” line created by the arrangement of the jeans/pants helps the reader understand that the person who owned the pants has probably felt that same weight-related anxiety.
Works Cited
Greenfield, Lauren. “Girl Culture.” GIRL CULTURE - Lauren Greenfield, 2001, v1.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/girlcult/index.html.
Newsom, Jennifer Siebel, et al. Miss Representation. 90 min. version; customized educational footage. [Sausalito, Calif.]: Ro*co Films Educational, 2011.
Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. Media Education Foundation, 2002, https://youtu.be/OrRtJY28ps8. Accessed 31 October 2021.
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.
2 comments:
From: Savannah
Wow Sydney your photo and the message behind it is so powerful! When I first looked at the photo I noticed how the sizes shifted from small to bigger, to small again representing how the “same size” is portrayed in fashion and media. I think this representation/ symbolism feeds into the points made in the Girl Culture photo essay and Reviving Ophelia, where both creators brought to light the damaging affects of representing skinny bodies as normal bodies. These body types solely being the ones represented in media, and then further being used to judge clothing sizes (such as jeans) create a toxic environment for young girls because they feel like they’re not small enough. I also picked up on how you mentioned the anxiety that comes with looking at these different jean sizes. For me personally I have always been taller and on the heavier side so my clothes, especially my jeans, were constantly and are still constantly larger then those of my friends. Although I have come to terms with it now, as a girl growing up I felt ashamed to have to continuously move up in size because my jeans weren’t long enough, or they weren’t big enough to fit my thighs, like the models on the walls of American Eagle or Abercrombie and Finch. I can’t even recall how many times I cried alone in those stores dressing rooms because the jeans that I picked out didn’t fit. Because of these images of girls and women around me who were so much thinner than I was, I felt less than and too fat when I was a literal child. I’m sure many young girls shared this feeling with me and you did an outstanding job of portraying it in your photo.
From Jordan
Hey Sydney I really like this photo and the meaning behind it. And it’s absolutely true. I literally have a pair of size 3 pair of pants and they fit perfectly and I also have a size 8 that fit just as great. It’s really damaging to a woman’s self esteem when they thing they are one size in one brand but a completely different size from another brand.
I’ve mentioned in class that I’ve been both sides of the scale so I too kept on to jeans that were too small when I had gained weight because I told myself I was going to loose the weight. But when I did loose the weight I kept on to my bigger clothes because of my own body dysmorphia I liked the baggy clothes and didn’t want people to see that I had started to loose the weight. But when I started to loose weight I became obsessed with it. So I like how you included Reviving Ophelia and even Miss Representation on eating disorders and how the media creates the image of thinness is more beautiful and how it turns young girls and early adolescence to harming themselves with having eating disorders, something I’ve also experienced in my early adulthood. I’m 5’4 and I currently 120lbs. At my heaviest weight I was 200lbs at my lowest weight I was 102lbs. When I look back at pictures of myself when I was bigger, I didn’t look big but when I was at my lowest weight, I looked like a skeleton. Overall I really like this representation of your photo!
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