From: Nyla
The title of this piece is “Are we Contrived?” and it represents the unrealistic beauty standards in young adolescent girls and women. I wanted to demonstrate how ridiculous those standards are and how they are formed through symbolism, gaze, and background/foreground. Taking inspiration from The Codes of Gender by Sut Jhally, the man in my picture is holding a very unnatural and unrealistic pose, much like the women from the magazine examples given by the documentary. In the documentary, women were holding these poses to show their femininity and delicacy, but most poses were odd, and if you looked too long, it would make you uncomfortable because they were uncomfortable. (Jhally, Sut. 14:57) Therefore, for my picture to show the ridiculous beauty standard for women, I had the man in the photo hold all his body weight up against the wall while also keeping a straight face. For the gaze, I had a woman take a leisurely picture of the man while holding a cigarette. I wanted it to represent what the reverse of the “male gaze” would look like and how the woman is just expecting the man to be able to hold the pose for as long as she needs him to.
After looking through Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture Photo Essay, I wanted to incorporate the idea of foreground and background into my picture to represent the reverse power struggle between a man and a woman. In this case, the back of the woman is in the foreground to represent the dominating power, while the man is in the background and his face is even slightly covered by the woman to show the submissive power. I wanted the difference in power and roles to be apparent between the two models. Looking into “The ‘Two Cultures’ of Childhood,” it explains how boys and girls from a young age are taught how to be boys and how to be girls. And how part of this learning process is that boys are more aggressive while girls just aren't. As stated in the text “Sex differences in aggression tend to appear about 3 years of age. At 3-4 years of age girls become less likely to engage in physical aggression whereas boys are more likely to do so.” (The “Two Cultures” of Childhood, pg. 62). I wanted to showcase the dominating appearance of a woman over a man in this picture because aggression can be seen in many forms other than purely physical. In this photo, it is the woman forcing the man to hold the unrealistic standard just because she wants him to, and it’s what she thinks he should do. Seeing this with adult models is also important when you realize that if this is making you uncomfortable, then the beauty standards we see for young girls should be too.
1 comment:
From: Emma
This photo does a great job at capturing the learning objective surrounding unrealistic beauty standards imposed on young girls. The composition of the photo highlights the absurdity of these expectations when viewed through a broader, more critical lens. The dark lighting adds an unsettling tone, reflecting the anxiety and pressure young girls often feel under society’s constant scrutiny, always made to believe they are not enough. The way the male model is posed similarly to women in high fashion magazines, in an uncomfortable “feminizing” pose draws attention to how unnatural and uncomfortable these beauty ideals can be. The gender reversal of the model and photographer emphasizes the distortion women are expected to undergo to be deemed conventionally attractive as we are not accustomed to seeing men in such poses the way we so commonly do with women. The model's strained attempt to hold the pose works as a metaphor for how women often feel compelled to mentally and physically contort themselves to meet society’s impossible beauty standards. The casual nature of the female model in the foreground of the photo, smoking and nonchalant, while the male model is actively struggling to hold the pose for her is a good way of capturing the standards in our society that make young girls and women feel compelled to make themselves uncomfortable in an effort to satisfy the male gaze, whether that be through painful beauty practices such as waxing or by exposing more skin than they feel comfortable with so they will be seen as more desirable.
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