About a month ago, my friend Bridget described me as a chameleon. I don't think anybody has ever seen me so clearly. I've always known that adaptability is my only chance at survival. Since I was young, it was clear who people wanted me to be. At first I rejected it and rebelled as every teenager does, but one day it clicked. Suddenly, it was easy to keep parts of myself hidden. I knew what I wanted and I knew what people wanted from me. A part of me likes it. A perfectly curated deck of personalities that I can put on whenever necessary.
My project goes against my created “perfect masks/personas”. I’m being vulnerable with these photographs. I’m letting you guys into a little corner of my inner world. Every photograph has parts of myself that I don’t like. Things I’ve learned to not like by internalizing everyone’s opinions. My body hair, feet, natural face, and my chubby body.
The female gaze represents every part of myself I reject. The female gaze is real and raw. It shines a light on what nobody wants to look at. Every part of ourselves that we reject suddenly is in the spotlight. In Nina Siegal’s article “Art That Looks at What Women See”, she defines the female gaze and explains why paintings done by women are revolutionary. Siegal wrote, “They created a shift, a change in perspective, from being the model, the person a painter is looking at, to being the painter herself.” (Siegal, 12). For centuries, women were painted in favor of the male gaze. Rarely, did paintings reflect how women actually felt or looked. Siegal described how paintings changed once women created artwork based on their real lives, “The shift was mirrored in an evolution in portraiture from domestic, intimate subject matter to images that reflected societal issues more broadly.” (Siegal, 9). Artists began to tackle feminism, beauty standards, and misogyny in their work.
My photographs were done in my image, and they definitely challenge beauty standards.
Cindy Sherman created characters that challenged the male gaze. In Parul Sehgal’s article “The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies”, Parul analyzes Cindy Sherman’s artwork and explains her creative process. Cindy Sherman created her characters to protect herself. When Cindy first moved to New York she was afraid to walk the streets. So, she resorted to spending all of her time in her apartment. In complete isolation, her creativity blossomed, and these characters were born. Sehgal describes her as an enchantress, "Desire for survival alone couldn’t account for the freakishness of camouflage…nature playing “a game of intricate enchantment and deception.” (Sehgal, 1). Sherman completely embodies the characters she models; they all have a part of her. We’ve mentioned in class that “Cindy Sherman doesn’t like people”. She specifically doesn’t like the people that inspire her characters. My theory is that the characters are merely a reflection of things she doesn’t like about herself.
I connect with Cindy Sherman on some level subconsciously. Even though I don’t agree with certain things she’s done.
Works Cited
Sehgal, Parul. “The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/05/magazine/instagram-cindy-sherman-ugly-beauty.html.
Siegal, Nina. “Art That Looks at What Women See.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/arts/women-artists.html.
UGLY & GORDITA
I printed out an uncensored version of the last image for class. I just don't want an image like that existing forever on the blog.
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