The female body and society
Today, I created a set of collages using images from magazines (fashion and porn) and catwalks. I placed these images together to show how society sees women as sexual objects. They are seen under the Laura Mulvey's Male gaze.
I want to explore how women are fetishised and seen as simply erotic beings instead of human. Even with clothes they are seen as whats under them.
I used images from vintage porn to collage of fashion shoots and catwalk images. This was to show what a woman looks like from a traditional males perspective.
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger uses quite upfront imagery but in the form of text. Her work is very graphics based and uses bold phrases to confront controversial issues around the body, such as abortion and gender representation. She uses dramatic, bold statements over her images to display the messages she feels strongly about. Some examples of the text she places over the photos are: “you are not yourself”, which was placed over a photo of a woman looking into a mirror shattered by a bullet, and “your body is a battleground” which is one of her more illustrious uses of text. When she first created the piece of work, “your body is a battleground”, Kruger was thinking about the objectification of the female body and how males and female fight for the right to own it. Some men often thinking they can tell a woman how to look or treat her body.
Bodies of Modernity
James Tissot's 'Parisienne' and the Making of the Modern Woman
"What does a man look like beside his wife? He, black, plain, dull, smelling of cigars. She, pink, elegant, sparkling"
The 'modern woman' is, in this book, described as youthful and beautiful. This being their "capital". They were to be the thing that fantasies where made of. The fantasies of men; to be desired. The male counterpart's wealth and status was judged on their female companions looks and beauty.
This infers that a woman worth only comes from her appearance, made as an object of pleasure to be peered and leered at by men. This is an example of the male gaze. A "woman's appearance was crucial to her perceived value"
Women are "eroticised" by men. Fetishised for there "fashionable body" and "female figure". Something that even a layer of clothes doesn't stop society thinking of.
Linder Sterling
Sterling is known for her collages and montages of images, usually that come from pornographic magazines and 'woman' domestic magazines that advertise cleaning equipment and flowers etc. She makes a point about the cultural expectations of women and the treatment of their body as a artefact.
My work mirrors Sterling's, as I use similar materials and themes. Instead of censoring the body, which is what is expected of the female body, I am exposing the female body. Using the shock factor of the naked body.
There is a massive contrast of views and mindset towards the female body. Society wants women to cover up so that they are respected and taken seriously but, society is also asking them to dress down to satisfy males sexual appetites. Its this difference in mindset that I want to explore.