The idea of not being ‘perfect’ does stick in many young peoples heads and I find that young women often face such challenges of being beautiful and having an amazing body. I want my spectator to stop and think ‘whoah, what?’ and be intrigued enough to read on and want to find out more and more about what it means. I decided that this would be a good shoot as it shows the problems we have within our society and how judgmental we as a society and community really are. There is constant body shaming in magazines that people actually buy and young people will actually listen to and start to think that if they don’t look a certain way then they aren’t good enough. I think that this is important to focus on as we tend to overlook these kinds of things and never think about how damaging our comments on celebrities posts could actually be on young people, both boys and girls. I came up with the idea for this shoot when I saw a video about an 18 year old girl who got lip fillers and a nose job. I find that nowadays it’s almost common for a young girl to get work done because we as women never seem to feel good enough for anyone and the only way that we can improve ourselves is if we change ourselves and remold our natural look and beauty. I think that it is sad because young women so often feel insecure and as if things need to change and if we don’t look a certain way then we are not good enough and no one will ever love you which is untrue.
Linked to this I have taken inspiration from Cindy Sherman and will make a photograph of myself barefaced and then a photograph where I have ‘work done’ and so I will over draw my lips dramatically and somehow change my nose etc with a full face of makeup and changing my body too by adding pillows in certain areas. I think that this will be a fun shoot that will bring in more concepts to my main project of feminism and the rights and expectations of women. From this shoot I want to be able to add these images into my fashion magazine as one of the ad campaigns on one side will be the natural woman and in her natural form while on the other page next to it I will have an image of myself wearing a full face of makeup with overdrawn lips and everything will be exaggerated including my hips and breasts. I want this message to be clear and to the point so that my spectator can clearly see what the message is. I find that we live in a world where it is more acceptable to get plastic surgery than to actually embrace your natural beauty.
My Response | Experimentation
I like the images that I have chosen as my final ones and think that they work well. These images will work well in my magazine and I will be able to add advertisements next to the final chosen image so that it blends well with the magazine. I found this shoot really fun to do as it was something different and I was able to parody women who look this way and make a light-hearted joke at how they present themselves and what women that have gone through plastic surgery will often present themselves like. This will work well in the whole sarcastic aspect of my magazine and will really make each image look individual. The reason I wanted to add this in was because I find so many young women are bombarded with images of how they are expected to be and what they are expected to look like physically which is totally unfair and ultimately unrealistic as women are born with different body shapes and what looks good on one woman might not look the same on another, that is just part of who we are. It makes me sad to see young women getting lip fillers and boob implants because they are so insecure of how they look. I feel that as a society we focus way too much on feminine beauty and not enough on education, rights and the actual treatment of women. I wanted this shoot to be obviously staged and sarcastic to give my spectator a clear understanding of the message that I am trying to get across.
