Woman Series
Piece one of my “Woman” series intentionally coincides with International Woman’s Day.
This collage combines photos of various facial features of multiple women. I was limited by the actual photos I could ¬¬find in the magazines I sourced. This is intentional. The traditional mainstream magazines I have access to feature a specific type of beauty standard…either white, thin and European, or “exotic” in the most tokenizing sense, (especially the older publications I sourced, some of the photo captions were mind-blowing). Our idea of what a woman “should” look like is heavily influenced by narratives the media perpetuates. In this sense, women are both the consumer AND the product.
The dating app message this piece was inspired by “You[re] Gonna Be My Chick” is an example of this idea as women we are not only “ownable”, but that the label given to us (in this case “chick”) and is determined by the consumer and not an autonomous decision. Our form is fluid, but always exists in the plane of the male gaze, malleable only by his desires and expectations.
The fragmented face that is formed from the incongruous angles of facial features, ethnicities, and generations attempts represents all women, but fails miserable at doing so because the photos themselves do not represent the spectrum and breadth of what it means to be a woman. They are just the flattened, gendered expectations preserved by and repurposed by the men who want us to be their “chick.”
IWD2021 is a day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This day of recognition has been acknowledged for over one-hundred years, and I think this year, 2021, it is even more critical we take a moment to reflect on just how necessary initiatives like IWD and, more broadly, feminism are needed to protect, empower and elevate ALL women’s voices.