'Men look, women are looked at, ' said John Berger in his seminal 1972 documentary series Means of Witnessing, and in that one phrase, Berger summarised the relationship between women and men, and the objectification of women by men. From Susannah being viewed by the Elders, to Manet's Luncheon on the Lawn, women in skill have been regularly portrayed as not only items of desire, but items to be held.
One might like to feel that feminism, and women, attended a long way, not only from the bra-burning times of the '60s and '70s, and the power-suited days of the '80's, that found ladies in positions of electric power in the town, and in politics; even from the times of early suffrage. Yet you have only to take a look at a daily newspaper, a woman's publication, a Hollywood movie, aside from a man's magazine, to realize that the objectification of women is really as rampant (and I use that word intentionally) as it has ever been. Even in the world of 'High Skill', paintings such as Lucien Freud's of the pregnant Kate Moss still portray girl as something that may be viewed, desired, held.
One would most surely like to feel that women have come quite a distance since Rousseau stated, in typically succinct fashion, that 'the doll is the peculiar amusement of the females; from whence we see their style plainly adapted with their destination. ' One presumes Rousseau was discussing baby dolls, litttle lady dolls, to be played with and dressed up in lovely clothes, to take a seat quietly, prettily and well dressed in a part, unobejcting and unobjectionable, good practise not only for motherhood but womanhood; but he could equally as well have been talking about that most modern of dolls, the Barbie - curvaceous, well outfitted and fairly, with a attire of clothes that would enable her to check out any career, from astronaut to veterinarian, sexy but sexless, epitomised by the most recent addition to the sisterhood, Burqa Barbie, so that all girls feel symbolized in a globalised 21st century. All young ladies that are curvaceous and well dressed up, rather and sexless and silent, anyway.
Mary Wollstonecraft, the mom of Western european feminism, thought that as long as men observed women as trophy wives, and needed mistresses, that the oppression of women should continue, yet she didn't solely blame men, believing also that women were complicit in their own objectification, and discussing them as clay statistics to be moulded by men. Girls, Wollstonecraft thought, were enslaved to men through their social training. Using the approaching of post-feminism, you can hope that women had finally cracked this male-oriented patriarchal understanding of them, but it seems in simple fact to be the opposite. Young women expose increasingly more of themselves, stating that they are in control, plus they may show just as much flesh as they wish in this post-feminist world, but one cannot help but think that Wollstonecraft was right - women still starting their worth how much a man values them, and on important little else. Barbie may be a 21st century astronaut, but unless she actually is busty and beautiful, Ken will never be interested, and Barbie will be worthless, both in her own sight and the ones of culture.
In this essay, I propose to explore how feminism and post feminism have affected my development as an designer, and also to question the way the media's continuing portrayal of women as a product has afflicted other contemporary artists, both positively and adversely.
'The goal of feminism, ' said an early on spokeswoman, 'was to change the type of fine art itself, to enhance culture in sweeping and long term ways by introducing into it the heretofore suppressed perspective of women. '
Barbie as a symbol of woman as object are available not only in modern-day skill, but also in modern day literature; she has moved into each day talk as a contemptuous comment on attractive women ('She's only a Barbie doll!' is a derisive criticism aimed at a woman perceived to be beautiful but dumb, ironic when one considers how it is accurately this image that is being sold to us by the marketing!) Mattel may market Barbie as a modern career girl, far more independent than the original 1950s clothes horse, but is she as complicit in the objectification of modern women as Mary Wollstonecraft stated over 200 years ago?
The London established photographer Alex Kliszynski would appear to trust Wollstonecraft, and has immediately questioned such attitudes in a body of work that combines the imagery of pornography with Barbie dolls.
(http://areyoushaved. net/2009/10/art-culture-nude-human-barbie-dolls/)
The instant reaction of the spectator is one of revulsion, a feeling that something is not right. Such an extremely sexualised child's toy is obscene, but maybe that is the designed point of the artwork? Barbie is the ultimate commodified, sexist, male-fantasy view of what women should look like. She has a little waist, long feet, and enormous chest. However, oddly, if you believe about any of it, this highly sexualized body actually lacks intimate parts, or the parts of the body we would decide if she were totally nude. She's no vagina. Her breasts haven't any nipples. In addition, Action Man, an idealized, sexualized male specimen, has no penis no scrotum. By positioning a sexless doll in a lascivious and crude position which should show all the erotic organs but doesn't, Kliszynski is making a comment on the dehumanising of women (and men) by press led objectification; it is his intention to call focus on that disconnection, to help make the viewers alert to the sexualized images of people that Barbie and Action Man dolls trade in.
However, I think you can find another, yet more sinister, way of reading Kliszynski's fine art. The dolls are a monstrous blend of human being and plastic; even the title of the task is 'Human being Barbie Dolls', suggesting an abnormal combination of the two. It is possible to understand Kliszynski's piece as a comment on the present day phenomena of body dysmorphia, a problem that causes a person to trust there is something terribly wrong with an element of their face or body, and which frequently leads them into some cosmetic surgeries. Kliszynski's human Barbies symbolise this body dysmorphic inclination prevalent in so much of (western) world, this desire to turn our body into a masterpiece of design, a efficiency of flesh and plastic material to complement the abnormal belief of idealised beauty inspired by the mass media.
In her poem, Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy makes much the same point:
This girlchild was created as usual
and presented dolls that have pee-pee
and smaller GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the colour of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nostril and fat thighs.
She was healthy, analyzed intelligent,
possessed strong hands and back again,
abundant erotic drive and manual dexterity.
She visited and fro apologizing.
Everyone found a fat nose on thick hip and legs.
She was encouraged to learn coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, giggle and wheedle.
Her good character wore out
like a enthusiast belt.
So she cut off her nasal and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetic makeup products decorated on,
a turned-up putty nasal,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look really? everyone said.
Consummation finally.
To every woman a happy stopping.
Both Kliszynski and Piercy have recognised the detrimental effect on the mental and physical health of women (and men) of society's objectification of our body. By constantly portraying an idealised myth of not only the body but the very role of ladies in society, the mass media (and sections of the art world) have created a culture which views the body in it's natural real human express as somehow wrong and unnatural.
Equally, both Kliszynski and Piercy have recognised the complicity of ladies in this culture; the girl in the poem is healthy and intelligent, born 'as typical', presumably 'normal' in every respect, and yet she accepts the truth of her low value in society because she actually is not regarded as literally perfect. Only in loss of life, with her nostril take off and a cosmetically improved 'putty' nose set up instead, can she be observed as 'rather'. Her value as a strong and useful member of society is non-existent in a global that won't see past her face.
Kliszynski himself has said that 'the main body of might work is lots of human-dolls that try to increase questions about the numerous images of the objectified and idealised body that people see in the mass pressI arrived to get this to are a reaction to the lowest-common-denominator approach to masculinity considered by the multimedia which functions and perpetuates the 'lad' or 'raunch' elements of our culture. Curiously this 'lad/raunch' culture seems also to be embraced by many young women; a sensation which seems contrary to a properly intensifying understanding of gender and identification in a post-feminist time. ' (http://lostinasupermarket. com/2010/09/barbie-porn-seriously/)
'Lad mags' such as Maxim, Stuff and various other UK-based magazines designed for teenage young boys and teenagers are notorious for endorsing a highly commodified view of the world - men and children are encouraged to buy lots of 'bling' like automobiles, stereo system components and expensive suits etc. By their very positioning in such journals, in 'gorgeous' soft-porn poses, female models become all the goods as the gadgets featured in the articles; as the audience 'must' own the right cellphone to attain status, so he must have the 'right' female.
Yet this frame of mind of the body as commodity is ironically trapping men around women, and both sexes are in an emergency of identification. Men are found on a regular basis with conflicting images of themselves, from the traditional Action Man role of partner, father, company, patriarch, to the greater sensitive, metro sexual Ken, whose status, like this of Barbie, is described by how he looks and what he is the owner of. This crisis is as very important to men as for women; reports show that young guy suicides are increasing, there's a high go up in circumstances of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in guys, crime information are rising, divorce rates are going through the roof covering, and with moms routinely given guardianship of the kids even the role of fatherhood itself has come into question, exacerbated by the rising variety of fertility clinics and the ability for ladies to so easily be solo parents.
Role models such as Ken and Action Man are unquestionably as harmful to young men as a role model such as Barbie is usually to young women. No longer viewed as breadwinners, or the head of the family in a patriarchal contemporary society, men are generally symbolized in the mass media by personas such as Homer Simpson, a chauvinistic, ignorant man who's depicted as very lazy and obsessed with food; his kid Bart, often cruel to his sister, is discourteous and sick behaved. He solution is often portrayed as Ken, an idealized, de-sexualized man with only the acquisition of materials items his goal, fast autos and fashion his only passions. Even tv shows like Love-making and the town imply that men are just there for the erotic gratification of women. It portrays men as tactless, stupid beings that are just there for feminine entertainment and pleasure. These negative portrayals are as harmful to both genders as the comparative attitudes to women, rooted because they are in gender objectification and the denial of identification. On the other hand, could we welcome this shake-up of traditional gender images? Could it not be that multiplicities of roles are now establishing themselves in modern society?
Toys such as Action Man often stereotype men in hostile roles, which convention has been questioned in the work of Susan Hiller, who explores cultural conditioning and behaviour to years as a child in her work Punch and Judy.
Punch and Judy appears carefully at the brutality of slapstick funny. First filming segments of live Punch and Judy shows the artist then transposed these images on the walls of a square room appealing the viewer to stand in the area with the puppets' images looming over them, the puppets acting out violently as so often observed in their shows. Hiller examines how such stereotypical role-play in playthings reinforces the assumptions put on guys and men and exactly how they should react in world.
Where feminism fought against such patriarchal, capitalist opinion systems, post-feminism seems to be buying right into the 'raunch culture' that Kliszynski features.
I would determine 'Raunch culture' as the whole juvenile, 'laddish' culture that includes the lads' newspapers as well as strip clubs, prostitution and the party of prostitution, highly sexualized adverts and a general attitude that what's best about female empowerment is the fact more men reach see more women naked. Berger referred to it as 'the male gaze', Kliszynski as 'raunch culture', but I believe they are extremely similar, and it appears to be embraced by many young women, who accept whole-heartedly the entire condescending nonsense of 'girl power'. Regarding to Wollstonecraft, men have widened what should be only a biological gap of physical differences into a sociological difference: 'But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, just to render us alluring items for as soon as. ' Women, it employs, cannot help but be 'intoxicated by the adoration which men, consuming their senses, pay them. '
Has Barbie, in representing the most materialistic areas of present day culture, stimulating a stereotypical image of womanhood, become a remorseless goddess of modern society? A doll with no social conscience (or conscious), reliant exclusively on material items to bring her contentment, worshipped by millions, consultant of a culture that objectifies and vilifies women, no aspect of her suggests any form of spirituality, or higher morality.
When Mary Wollstonecraft accused women of their own complicity in this stereotypical view with their gender she caused ripples of anger and irritation down the hundreds of years. How could a 'so-called' feminist start her own love-making with such accusations? And yet, when one calls for the time to take into account it, one can see how right she was. Ladies play with Barbie dolls bought for the coffee lover by mothers and aunts, and can, to echo Rousseau, develop up to provide Barbie dolls with their daughters, thus rewarding their 'future. ' They may be complicit in the encouragement of stereotypical beliefs. But what's the alternative? A woman may play with the 'stereotypical' toys of girlhood such as dollies and prams, all green and sparkly, mass marketed products imposed on them by way of a performative oriented world, or she may play with the male version of such consumer items, Action Man, cars, trains, guns. . . But what concept is really being delivered? If a woman performs with Barbie dolls, she is viewed with contempt to be a 'typical' female; if she takes on with stereotypical young boys toys, she attains value in the sight of society, for being more like a boy. No matter what she does indeed, Barbie girl can never achieve social value by being a woman, and post-feminism has been complicit in such interpersonal values.
Consuming Passions was printed in the '80s, creator Judith Williamson's theory is scarcely common knowledge, probably because it is intimidating. She deduces that, unlike the perfect posed by Mattel and Barbie, "the advisable shape for a female. . . is that of a guy. "
The highly idealised Barbie is not without challengers, however. In 1998, Anita Roddick began an Anti-Barbie marketing campaign, under the guise of home -esteem.
Roddick started marketing posters of the doll called 'Ruby: The Real Deal, ' with posters in the UK shops she held, all depicting images of the generously proportioned doll with the fastened slogan: 'There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels in support of 8 who do. '
With the intent of challenging stereotypes of beauty and countering the pervasive impact of the makeup products industry, and with a tongue in cheek methodology, the underlying concept was a lot more serious and could easily be applied to the stereotypical image of female and the way european culture objectifies women. 'Ruby' started a worldwide argument about body image and self-esteem, but she was not universally loved. In the United States, the toy company Mattel directed a cease-and-desist order, demanding the images of Ruby were taken off American shop glass windows because she was making Barbie look bad, an admission surely, that Barbie's impossible to attain figure was harmful to girls in comparison to the more natural Ruby? In Hong Kong, posters of Ruby were restricted on the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) because the government bodies were concerned they would offend passengers. Like Barbie, Ruby was a de-sexualised toy, having no nipples, genitalia or pubic wild hair; other advertising on the MTR which proved surgically enhanced, partially dressed girl models, were allowed to stay. It is hard not to jump to the final outcome that it was the genuine portrayal of the female body that was unpleasant (also to whom? the male commuters?); in a global where the feminine body is identified to be a purchasable status symbol, the male customers were presumably offended by the depreciation in value of the idealised fantasy.
Feminist artist Helen Chadwick (1954-1996) made many works that dealt directly with the role and image of women in society. In 'Ego Geometria Sum:The Laborers X' created in 1984, she acquired large replicas of children's solid wood bricks transposed with images of her naked home. One may read many meanings into this artwork: is Chadwick fighting the weight of her own image? By superimposing her naked image onto a child's brick, is she recommending that she actually is nothing but a plaything, a toy? She appears to compare herself to a troll doll, placed by the mane in a disembodied fist with an inane grin on its face. The troll doll is unpleasant and deformed looking, and Chadwick is implying that is how population views her, and womanhood in general, from child years onwards, if one will not conform to how society wishes one to be. All is not without expectation though; Chadwick also portrays a door on one aspect of the brick, suggestive not only of closure, but also of the to open, to permit something in, or something out; a way of escape. To be a Jungian archetype, the door also is rep of the feminine, with all the current implications of your symbolic opening. With this artwork, is Chadwick checking out issues of entrapment and break free?
Several of her works addresses the role and image of women in society using an array of materials, such as blossoms, chocolate and meat. She questioned the role of the feminine body in fine art as a ornamental object; just like decorative and visual ideas about fine art themselves have been questioned in the 20th century. In 1990, she worked again on topics of sexual personality and gender with her Cibachrome transparencies entitled 'Eroticism' which depict two brains side by side.
On the surface, this is yet another evidently simple, if stunning, piece of work, but like the mind itself, this piece includes a multiplicity of levels, hanging around to be explored and teased out. The work shows two brains, side by side, mirroring each other. On the sides adjoining, the brains are enlivened with what is apparently blue sparks, or flashes, suggesting brain activity. Based on the Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism, blue is the colour of the intellect, and of spirituality; it is the medium of real truth. In Eroticism, Chadwick is playing with the thought of 'a getting together with of two heads', an fascination predicated on the intellect and the feelings. Yet we also associate the color blue with something a bit naughty, a bit risque, just like a 'blue movie', and I recommend that Chadwick was also considering the idea that the mind is also known as the largest erotic organ in the torso. For Chadwick, in this piece at least, it's the attraction of two people based on a meeting of intellect and commonality that is important, not the outward appearance so vital to world.
In the 1790s, when Mary Wollstonecraft was writing A Vindication in the Protection under the law of Women, she argued for the need for further civil rights for ladies, a cause which she believed could only be performed by permitting women a much better education. She argued that a woman was capable of any intellectual feat a man was given which her early training should not brainwash her into deference to men. Wollstonecraft assumed that men discourage women from achieving the same education that they acquire routinely, and as long as women are rejected this education, they can't ever desire to achieve equality with men. She builds on this insufficient equal education for women in her discussion adding that men (modern day to her) have a general lack of admiration.
Two hundred years later, in the 1970s, women were still struggling to achieve this basic degree of esteem and equality in the educational and artistic worlds, and it was the 1970s that noticed the origins of a fresh art motion, the Contemporary Feminist Art Motion. The motion was encouraged by needs for social, monetary and political change and by the desire of feminine artists to force free galleries and museums to establish a fair representation of these work; there were very few feminine art teachers at that time, though the most students were feminine. It was common and generally accepted for artwork exhibitions to contain the works of men only, women being discriminated against openly, with some having to face the two times discriminatory blow of also being dark-colored. Trust Ringgold (b. 1930), an American designer, was advised she could only exhibit in the museums devoted to African American art work after all the black male artists had acquired their shows.
By the 1970s, feminists and painters had started building consciousness awareness teams that demonstrated at galleries and museums to expose a few of these sexist techniques, and opened galleries together for further exposure with their works.
With feminist performers attempting to go further than equal representation, their works were often full of political and communal content crying out for politics change. The women's motion in America got one such artist by the name of Judy Chicago. Created in 1939, Chicago often shown on issues associated with having less feminine representation in her work, declaring 'Because we have been denied knowledge of our history, we have been deprived of standing after each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. '
Many female artists voiced these thoughts in those days, wishing to transform traditional fine art and sculpture to include feminist awareness, with many exploring the feminine body with the intention of reclaiming the sexualised images that had been created by the male musician that preceded them. Chicago's piece 'Dinner Get together' called out for both artwork critics and establishments (and the Establishment?) To readdress the actual fact that so many female artists have been and were being excluded from art work history texts used to teach the (largely female) artwork students currently attending the art education. This large work depicts a banquet, the configurations embroidered representations of the vulva in a method appropriate to the women being represented, women Chicago wanted to honour, with an additional 999 women etched in gold on the floor tiles. The geometric condition of this piece is attractive, with the desk laid out at a triangle, representing the tri-partite character of women, the maiden, the mom and the crone. Indeed, an upside down triangle is definitely used in paganism to signify the female.
This work has truly gone a long way in encouraging women music artists to reclaim their individuality in representing the feminine form, and readdress the repeated degradation of female genitalia previously displayed in male-created skill.
The Dutch artist Christina Camphausen (b. 1953) is another example of a female artist intent on reclaiming for ladies the representation of the feminine genitalia, submitting a booklet of her use the vulva as exclusive subject matter. Entitled 'Yoni Portraits', it is filled up with delicate drawings uncovering the vulva in every it's beauty and variety, images that are occasionally reasonable and sometimes symbolic.
Taken from historical Sanskrit, the word Yoni identifies the vulva and womb and better describes femininity than its specialized medical counterpart (vagina) or its crude pornographic variants (cunt); in India's sacred terms it holds an inherent respect for this romantic part of a woman's body which is without English. In the book's accompanying texts, the musician makes clear that there is nothing at all about the Yoni to be ashamed of. Alternatively, it is a body-part which in many civilizations has had completely different connotations of vitality, beauty, fertility and delight.
Of her determination, Christina says:
With might work, I endeavour to assist in restoring the Yoni to her
rightful and original host to honour, and stimulate everyone to
regard her with respect, to recognize her beauty and magical power.
Though the last ages make it seem to be our modern societies are
sexually liberated, there still rests a taboo upon this personal part of our
bodies. In general, women enjoy more flexibility than they used to have,
yet it surely is no advance in self-determination that lots of contemporary women have their romantic, lower lips corrected in order to conform
to some unnatural standard approved by cosmetic surgeons or
professional nude models in polished magazines.
To make artwork with the vagina as your subject is still an extremely brave function, as it is a subject that is often considered inappropriate and generally considered within the framework of pornography, and, in virtually all conditions, for the exclusive pleasure of men. Many feminists have attempted to remove these prurient connotations by pushing us to consider vaginas, something not to be ashamed of, but as powerful and expressive components to be proudly guarded as an assertive and positive manifestation of the being. Exhibitions are actually needs to show that this has changed drastically lately, with many painters who have contained imagery of the Vagina in their works exhibiting together.
One such exhibition, planned by Francis M. Naumann and David Nolan, and entitled 'The Visible Vagina' occurred on January 28, 2010 at the David Nolan Gallery in NY and included artworks by people which range from Judy Chicago and Nancy Grossman to Robert Mapplethorpe and Pablo Picasso. By far the most interesting aspect for me personally is that there was such a solid male existence in the exhibition, and even it was organized by men, a effective signal of how things have advanced.
The most stunning work in the exhibition for myself should be the task of Sarah Davis and the part 'Britney (Notorious), ' for amongst over one hundred artworks, hardly any of which objectify women or suggest a salacious use of imagery, this piece, a painting equivalent to a paparazzi-type photograph taken of the music celebrity, hovers between art and porn; indeed, in its representation of both, it beggars the question of how art work and porn can be dealt with within feminist issues.
If we agree to that art is supposed to activate the spectator on many levels, academically and psychologically, and that porn is required to stimulate on a purely erotic level, I think about how this change from paparazzi picture and all the connotations of furtiveness, spying and secretiveness to painting can transform ones belief.
I would like to think that the musician who views Britney Spears as a strong, confident, self-made woman is a feminist that has staged the original photograph to "reclaim" her personal information by revealing her vagina just as in 'Yoni Portraits', believing there is little or nothing to be ashamed of by displaying the energy, beauty, fertility and delight this body part symbolizes. Often in the multimedia gaze, Spears is utilized as an example to criticise young women today, only a Barbie doll. Her skills as a mom, her profession and public life are generally held up to public scrutiny. Men that are in the public gaze however, may be criticised for their affairs, heir medicine dependency, their fights etc. , yet rarely because of their dress code or indeed for his or her roles or capabilities as fathers. This is a gender bias that has been commonplace and widely accepted.
In addition, when Spears chose to wear a revealing dress and decorate her body with piercings and tattoos, the tabloids turned on her viciously, and accused her of mental health issues when she publicly shaved her hair off. Personally i think though, that Spears was mailing a message, via the press, about her sense of personal information and her value as a female. By shaving her scalp off Spears was questioning the male perception of femaleness and femininity; she was a Rapunzel caught by her beauty in a tower created by the male gaze. The only way to take control of the situation and also to get away from, was, like Rapunzel, to chop off all her hair and reassert her own identification away from public targets and the media's critical portrayal of women. WITH TECHNIQUES of Experiencing, John Berger explores the difference between nudity and nakedness, suggesting that when is nude, the spectator (and there has to be one) merely recognizes our body unclothed. When you are naked, the spectator (even if that is only oneself) sees the real essence of the individual. Nakedness is a lot more personal than nudity. When Spears take off all her mane it was as though she had removed a disguise, and confirmed herself to the world fully naked, expressing her interior self. It really is this aspect that Davis has found on in her artwork: Britney Spears as a style of sex positive feminism, the un-Barbie goddess of post-feminism.
Sex positive feminism, also called sexually liberal feminism or sex-radical feminism commenced as a motion in the 1980s. Many women became involved in a direct reaction to the efforts of anti-porn feminists such as Andrea Dworkin, as they argued that pornography was the centre of feminist theory for women's oppression.
This period is recognized as the 'feminist gender wars, ' a time of heated question between anti-porn feminists and sex-positive feminists, between the notions of the making love industry as an abusive and violent environment for ladies and the beliefs in women's capability to choose to be highly sexual beings - and boosts the question of who is exploiting who?
When Spears posed for a statue by American sculptor Daniel Edwards (b. 1965) for the pro-life activity, she was once more steeped in the controversy of 'is it art work or is
it porn?' Entitled 'Monument to Pro-Life' this work is a complete size sculpture of any naked Britney Spears in childbirth. The sculpture shows Spears on all fours on the bearskin rug, her oral cavity slightly available and her eyelids heavy, looking as if she is about to cry out. There is no sign of pain or pleasure; it is not whatsoever indicative of sexual provocation or pornography. Her hands lay twisted around either part of the head of the keep, as if she actually is using it to act as a medium to the nature world communicating with the animalistic urges childbirth conjures up. Yet the multimedia has criticised this piece, stating that: 'Britney's in a position that most would sooner connect with getting pregnant than with giving birth. '
I believe that in some ways things have deteriorated rather than advanced: the beauty industry and the porn industry, in their own sometimes-converging ways, have brought on a lot of this. Heading back to the first '70s, as women commenced to enter into the labor force in larger figures, some of that earning power was used against them by hostile beauty product marketing. The effect has been an increasing focus within the last three ages on diet, an explosion in both sexes of bulimic and anorexic eating disorders and body dysmorphia. . These body image issues are sometimes fatal. The plastic surgery industry has strengthened these behaviour by encouraging people to act on these dysmorphic tendencies and, as in Piercy's poem, take off the offending body parts. The overwhelming majority (about 98%) of these clients are women. (I'd like to differentiate here between cosmetic surgery, used to change looks, and plastic surgery, used to repair people).
In addition, pornography is a multi-billion money global industry. Almost all of the porngraphy out there aimed at heterosexual men and is extremely degrading to women. Women are often depicted as passive, as secretly always wanting to be dominated sexually, and tend to be referred to as 'bitches', 'whores' and 'cunts'. Men are depicted as aggressors who've an insatiable desire for food for intimacy, and whose manhood is described insurance firms repeated rapacious making love with women. The porn industry has damaged the fashion industry in conditions of both style (just how models are posed) and content (thongs used to be worn by only strippers and porn personalities).
Women are really under-represented in positions of real electricity in the press - there are very few place managers and program directors who are women. Putting it all alongside one another, it means women are much more likely than ever to be judged on appearances, to be seen as passive, also to generally be objectified, and also have less ability to mitigate that through dynamic control of the media. Raunch culture is an outgrowth of this and fuels the routine.
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One example of that convergence in the wonder industry and the porn industry can be seen in the work of Cindy Sherman (1954- ), with her use of shop mannequins and dolls. Store mannequins often created to be sexy, gender sells, in the end, but Sherman pushes this concept to depict dolls in explicitly erotic situations that are unsettling to view, calling in your thoughts a doll's (unadvertised) work as a child's tool to explore sexuality.
"Untitled Film Still #255
The doll in "Untitled Film Still #255 (1992) has been equipped with genuine (if hairless) genitalia and is also surrounded by typical household things (hairbrush, rope) that, in the framework of the doll's doggy-style position, become S&M items of torture and pleasure. Known on her behalf transforming home portraiture, Sherman has experimented wildly with mannequins and dolls through picture taking. The bones of her mannequins are pronounced, calling focus on their inanimate-ness, they are often fixed with exaggerated or hyper-realistic erotic and reproductive organs, wrinkles and body hair, which normally you'll not see or correlate with Barbie or action man or dolls in general.
Just as Kliszynski, s highly provocative photographic art work with his use of Barbie, Cindy Sharmen has been examining those guidelines of suitable pornographic content going back 30yrs. Her work has caused much controversy due to the fact that Sherman herself is a captivating part of her work, and also that the viewers of her art work "are given no hint of what to think or feel. " ( 20)Sherman, p. 8) giving her artwork frequently open to debate. Given birth to in NJ and the youngest of five children, she put in her childhood as many other girls did, painting, playing "decorate", and as much in her era were she was ingested with the new technology of television. This fascination of this new technology is seen shown throughout her profession and her many artworks are established around the press of film. Sherman received her Bachelor's degree in Picture taking from the College of Skill at the State College School of New York in Buffalo. And her first exhibition was of seventy Untitled Film Stills used between 1977 and 1980. (20)Sherman, p. 193)
A lot of the criticism Sherman will get is due to her "self-portraits", because she dresses up as heroes in arranged photos, often producing a difficulty of separating her image from the underlying content and themes dealt with in her work. Yet in her work Untitled Film Stills # 66-77 she herself appears to address this problem directly. She shows up without halloween costumes, make-up, and wearing only a bathrobe, and in her next series Untitled Film Stills #79-89 she appears as the complete opposite. Heavily staged, she is wearing different halloween costumes and make-up in an almost theatrical strategy. In a comparison of these two exhibitions, she actually is saying to the audience, this is I, this is who I am "dressing" as though a character. Almost endeavoring to validate that her skill is not a "self-portrait". ( 200 Sherman p. 8-9)
Sherman has already established many recurring styles in her work including the male gaze, female vulnerability, and gender personality, with a lot of her Untitled Film Stills handling gender and stereotype issues. Often pushing the viewer to examine their own perceptions of such, which is in her Untitled Film Stills that she frequently analyzes gender id, with "lessons in femininity" often portrayed through "cinema about the dominant culture's preferred worth and behaviours. "( (22) Mauer, p. 94) Yet Sherman's work frequently criticized for attacking "male-gaze" and the voyeuristic fetish of female vulnerability. Amelia Jones claims this straight in Indications, " Cindy Sherman's self-portrait untitled film stills from around 1980, in their intense flirtation with simulation and shortage, plainly play on the framework of the gaze and its own capacity to fetishize (to freeze or task as thing) what is based on its purview. "
A large number of of Sherman's Untitled Film Stills show feminine weakness (generate Mary Wollstonecraft ) with her strategy of specific camera perspectives boosting the "male-gaze" she actually is able to produce within the viewer a mixture of dread and eroticism.
Yet with the example image, "Untitled Film Still #255 (1992) she has received much criticism for the work being pornographic, unlike previous Untitled Film Stills Sherman is not physically part of the work, using mannequins instead. Mannequins and Barbie dolls that she positions and periods with unmistakably false backgrounds.
It would be quite easy to believe that Sherman might have been influenced by the task of Helmut Newton (1920-2004) particularly in her work dealing with the male gaze. Newton was a German born Australian photographer, his work often used mannequins to highlight the falseness of the style industry and there absurd ideology of beauty,
The two Violetta's in bed, Paris, 1991
Violetta (above) confronts her reflection image, questioning what has more value in the style world, flesh or plastic material? Newton often experimented with the assignments of mannequins and living models, often pairing life like dummies and women alongside one another (as above) or posing mannequins in public areas and models in interior settings to create simple disorientation. He frequently places real human models in stiff, uncomfortable positions as if their bodies had limited flexibility like mannequins. Even in his recent work "vogue Sept 2003" Newton has used the Actress Nicole Kidman in a questionable pose, drawing an uncomfortable parallel between mannequins, the female, actress, and doll, she initially appears to be void of genitalia, a present that might be suitable as some kind of "Super Barbie"
Nicole Kidman vogue Sept 2003
Many of Newton's works depict dolls and mannequins in erotic situations, just as in Sherman's work, they could be questioning a doll's (unadvertised) work as a child's tool to explore sexuality. They doubtlessly question the media's ongoing portrayal of women as a product, and the 'raunch culture' that Kliszynski highlights in his work, but could one question how small this division between discovering a child's sexuality and exploiting it is now ? These images of Barbie as seen so frequently in many of the painters work could be recognized as resembling "Sex dolls" rather than childrens playthings, and as 'The goal of feminism, ' said an early on spokeswoman, 'was to improve the nature of art work itself, to transform culture in sweeping and long term ways by presenting involved with it the heretofore suppressed point of view of women.
Newton's image of Nicole Kidman assumes a eye-catching resemblance compared to that of the task of sculptor Allen Jones (1937-) His work is fused with Mannequins posing as humans depicting forniphilia (erotic objectification is manifested in a submissive partner acting as a bit of furniture) The ladies "mannequins" have well endowed voluptuous proportions and resemble a inflate doll rather than store mannequin, yet they may be put in the role of your "domestic" subject, they identify with the have difficulty women have determining themselves from such stereotyping:
"Couch, " "Desk, " and "Head wear stand, " 1969
Jones' work has been frequently referred to as misogynistic. Yet his work is surely similar to that of Sherman and Newton in the way it shows the oppression of women, finding them as objects.
For anyone to read the work in any other way is surely to take on a purely "Literal" reading. Jones himself mentioned, "I got reflecting on and commenting on a similar situation that was the source of the feminist movement. It was regrettable for me that we produced the perfect image for them to show how women were being objectified. " If one, was to take this "literal" reading and have the question of why Jones hasn't made a guy equivalent for example? Surely, that is the point, that there is nothing, as men aren't ever viewed in this way by society. Furthermore, as for dolls, playthings, men/young boys are surrounded by gadgets that encourage building, logic and competition, yet girls are given playthings that encourage medical/nurturing, beauty, creativeness related and feeling based. Toys have never been more polarized with regards to genders that may surely be one aspect each one of these works have drawn attention to.
Mary F. Rogers says in her article "Hetero Barbie" that "Barbie illustrates what feminists and culture critics have been saying for a few years. In no uncertain conditions Barbie demonstrates that femininity is a manufactured reality. It requires a lot of artifice, a lot of clothes, a great deal of props such as cuddly poodles and shopping totes, and lots of effort, however satisfying sometimes" (Rogers 95).
Rogers, Mary F. "Hetero Barbie?" Gender, Race, and Class in Press: a Text message Reader 2: 94-97
In addition, that "manufactured certainty" may possibly also been observed in Jones' work as the ladies themselves become those things of produce. Resonating with those prices and ideologies they as young girls have been created too, so that adults quickly accepted. With Kliszynski handling the 'raunch culture' and mass media, and the ideologies that are displayed in gadgets, constantly digested by children, it brings to mind what Wayne Lull composed in his article "Hegemony" where he says "The media help create an impression that even society's roughest sides ultimately must comply with the conventional curves of prominent ideologies" (Lull 64).
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Contemporary Feminist Art work Movement. The movement was influenced by needs for social, monetary and politics change and by the desire of female artists to try and force free galleries and museums to establish a fair representation with their work
Chapter V
ROLAND BARTHES: THE UNCULTURE OF IDEOLOGY
Language can either help or impede a person professional
the contradictions of his environment. In saying that art work
does the first, ideology, the next, and that how it can it
is through framework, this thesis has purposely left open
the details about mass culture. So how exactly does mass culture
reorient conception and through perception behavior? Until
now, the question has been responded to by warring edges. Adorno
maintained that this anesthetized followers; Benjamin and Brecht,
that it helped bring the masses into their own.
Roland Barthes signifies something of any compromise
between these positions. To Benjamin, he concedes that
mechanical culture is completely objective; to Adorno, that
secondary meanings nestle in this objectivity (although the
deception that goes on is through vocabulary, never hypnotherapy).
With Brecht, he's of one head that aesthetics unlock the
limits of ideology. In the final analysis, he will agree
with Adorno, but also for reasons that are steady with Benja-
min and Brecht.
Roland Barthes' writings on skill and ideology, while
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Barbie is the Art World's Muse
is a unique ICON for the 21st Century
In order of appearance:
Barbie in "Venus by Milo"; Barbie in "Female Along with the Pearl Earring, " by Vermeer.
Barbie in "Mona Lisa", by Leonardo Davinci; Barbie within an Erwin Blumenfeld-shot Vogue cover.
Barbie as Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel; Barbie as the Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi.
Barbie in a Helmut Newton photograph; Barbie as Nefertiti.
Barbie in Man Ray picture; Barbie in The Beatles' Yellow Submarine Record Cover.
Barbie in "Dora Maar", by Picasso; Barbie in "The Family portrait of Sylvia von Harden", by Otto Dixx.
