Here is all of the experimentation that I have done towards making my fashion magazine. I have changed my mind on what I want to create for the fashion magazine but I still wanted to add in this experimentation as creating all of the different personas has really helped me to create a better final outcome and to really get into character.
These images are parodying those young women that get lip fillers and work done on their bodies. I find this so trivial and something that young women shouldn’t even have to worry about. But that is the society we live in. We ridicule women publicly in magazines, on TV shows and to one another that it becomes hard for any woman to ever feel good about herself. The ideal of being the perfect woman is constantly drilled into young women’s minds making them feel that if they do not look a certain way then they aren’t good enough or that no one could ever love them. This ideal is so stupid and I wanted to make that clear in these images showing clearly how silly it makes young women look and that they should just embrace themselves and stop dwelling on the physical unimportant things. I do have to mention that I am nowhere near body confidence and I do see myself in a negative light, like most women. This is because we are constantly bombarded with celebrities and their flaws so if a celeb is flawed what does that make me? We forget that we are all human and that there are times where we aren’t going to look our best but there is nothing wrong with that, it’s what makes us human.
Above is an experimentation that I originally wanted to use as the front cover of my fashion magazine. The words written across my face are words that I’ve either been called or seen other women being called online and in person. I wanted to impact my spectator straight away and show them few derogatory words that are thrown at women daily. I came up with the idea and took inspiration from a past shoot that I did on femme fatales and found as many derogatory terms aimed at women as I possibly could. This research and previous experimentation has really helped me with this experiment. I also took inspiration from a video that I watched of a feminist activist group called the Pussy Riots. I came across such words in the comments that people had written anonymously. These comments were so offensive and vulgar. It really made me think about what those words meant and how someone can just through such words around as if they don’t hold much meaning or aren’t that offensive. Some of the language used to define women is absolutely disgusting and really belittles women is such a way that cannot really be defended. So in this shoot I am taking back those words, I wear them on my skin to show that the words that those people use to define me do not change who I am and they are just words. The term ‘feminazi’ came from a comment I saw and it really stood out to me. The fact that feminists, people that want equality, are compared to that of the Nazi’s that killed millions upon millions of innocent men, women and children is absolutely wrong and unjust. I find the word extremely offensive and something that shouldn’t have even been thought of. It really does show to me that the people who make these comments don’t know what they are talking about and they aren’t worth it. Those people who use words as if they are part of the english dictionary really make me wonder. How can people be so blinded by pure hatred and how can they be so stuck in their ways that they don’t even want to think about the idea of equality and won’t even try to understand what the word feminism actually means.
Some of my experimentation’s are incomplete but this is purely because I changed my mind on the whole magazine idea. I think that what I was working towards was good work and I feel that I have been able to portray both the male and female characters well. I chose to become both male and female in my shoots as I took inspiration from Claude Cahun and her work challenging the norms of how men and women should be. I wanted my work to stand out and to make sense to a wide variety of spectator. This experiment was fun to do and has helped me with the process of choosing appropriate props and settings for my final outcomes. The above image is the start of a magazine layout idea that I had and acts as a double page spread. I wanted to show the differences in male and female style as well as the idea of being masculine and feminine. I wanted to mimic existing model’s style and the way magazine photographers want their models to look and how to be positioned. I do like these images as I do think that I look like a male in the images and think that I was able to successfully portray a stereotypical masculine physique by the positions that I am standing/sitting in.
For this shoot I made a t-shirt that I got inspiration for while watching a feminist campaign online. I saw a sign that stated ‘Feminism. Back By Popular Demand’ and thought it was great and wanted to take that and bring it into my own work. I decided to paint it free-hand on the back of a plain white t-shirt that I had and on the front I decided to free-hand the symbol of female. I thought that this would work well and be a clear indication to my spectator that it was a step towards supporting feminism. For my characters I created a male and female. The male is wearing the front of the shirt with the female showing off the back of it. I thought it would also be a good idea for them to be holding paint brushes to show that they created the shirts together and are unified together. I really wanted this to be a clear message and easy for my spectator to understand. I think that this worked out well and the images came out successfully. The reason I decided against this idea of creating a magazine was because there would be so much editing to do and the lighting wasn’t right in the images as well as the fact that I came up with a new better idea. These ideas went well at the time but I did not want to develop them further.
