This theory follows the concern of how women are often represented in many artist and photographic works. Women such as; Cindy Sherman explored this further. This act suggests that women have more than just their physical appearance. To me feminism is the act of an equal life, respect and opportunity for both men and women. It shows how women are often labelled with derogatory terms and are ignored as intellectual individuals. In the past I have done quite a few pieces in photography based on how women are faced with all these negative connotations and objectifications which are unfair and we don’t deserve. Throughout history women have struggled to gain equal rights to men, starting simply with the right to vote. Women weren’t seen as intelligent enough or able to vote as they weren’t educated. In 1918 women in Britain finally got the right to vote only if they were over the age of 30, with women of the age of 21+ had to wait until 1928 to be able to vote. Feminism is more than this though.
Often when people hear the word feminist they think of anti-men and man haters when in fact this is completely wrong and untrue. A feminist can be a woman or a man, it is the equality of the sexes that we stand for and the equality of life too. Women are often faced with negative looks or derogatory names. I think that feminism has really come to light in the past few years as many more celebrities are becoming aware of this a spreading the word. Influential celebrities include; Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Katy Perry, Hillary Clinton, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and many more.

Cindy Sherman is a famous feminist photographer who came up with a series of film stills in 1977. These took her years to create and she is the subject of each of her photographs. These film stills reflect on the cliched stereotypes women were faced with back in 1977 and that they are still very much faced with today.

My own work on the role women are often faced with in society. This is work which I have already done during my photography course during the AS year.

This image represents the pressure put on women in our modern society of being perfect and slim. The measuring tape around the subjects face and neck portrays a indexical sign of how a lot of women feel about themselves and the strain it is on their own mental health to be this ideal woman, to be something that all men want or all people desire to have. I find as a woman there is an immense amount of pressure put on us in society to look a certain way and to be a certain body type/shape.
I also did another shoot later in my AS year and decided to expand on the idea of the measuring tape and how women feel in our modern society.

This shoot was an array of different types of photographs focusing on the way young women see themselves and how they try to change themselves in modern society. These photographs show the spectator how often young girls will look at themselves in the mirror and only see imperfections and that they need to change and be skinnier. It shows the spectator how most young girls will wear makeup to try and cover up, hiding any imperfections that they think they have. Along with some of the photographs showing how young women should love themselves and not care about what society thinks they should look like, this is in the photos of my model posing outside and being happy with who she is.

For shooting with this model I decided to do quite a few different set ups and props. I did this so I could get a nice range of photographs. In this  shoot I wanted people to really focus on how women feel they should look like due to the harsh comments of our modern society. These shoots symbolize what are expected of women still in our society and how there is still this stigma in the air that women should be doing the work at home and are there to look pretty while the men go out to work and bring the money into the home. It shows feminism in a negative light to me because this old way of thinking is so cliché and wrong. I think women should be able to go down whatever career path they choose and should be paid the same amount as men.

This photo represents how a lot of young women are seen as ‘catty’. It shows two ‘friends’ are laughing but will actually stab each other in the back to get what they want. In this photo I give a visual representation of the metaphor ‘stabbing someone in the back’.