Key Text - Ways of Seeing, John Berger

Notes from Text

• 'the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependant upon the promise of power which he embodies' - Roles.
• 'Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste...' - Aesthetics.
• 'A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself' - Judged by appearance.
• 'Men act and women appear'.
• 'Thus she turns herself into an object and most particularly an object of vision: a sight' - Objectification.
• 'Physical emanation'.

Technologies of Gender - Teresa De Lauretis

Notes from Text

• 'Mulvey would not relinquish the political commitment of movement and the need to construct other representations of woman... feminine aesthetic'.
• 'The idea that a film may address the spectator as female, rather than portray women positively or negatively, seems very important to me in the critical endeavour to characterise women's cinema as a cinema for, not only by, women' - Interesting idea relating to the conclusion of my essay, what can we do to change the way women are portrayed in cinema.

In the Culture Society - Art, Fashion and Popular Music, Angela McRobbie

Notes from Text

• Chapter 3 - Feminism, Fashion and Consumption.
• 'Fashion is of course an almost wholly feminised industry' - Arguable.
• 'It has been a female sphere of production and consumption'.
• 'Fashion is a feminist issue'.
• Chapter 4... 'the magazines promoted romance as the means by which women should interpret and practice their sexuality'.

Film - Female fashion icons, examples

• Patricia Arquette
• Sienna Miller - Factory girl
• Natalie Portman - Leon the professional
• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Brigitte Bardot
• Katharine Hepburn
• Meryl Streep

Body Image Campaigns

Dove - Real Bodies

This ad focuses on the idea that every body is beautiful, no matter the size or shape. There is no 'perfect' body, or one body to define what a 'good' body is, we are all different and that's okay. In my opinion there aren't enough adverts that depict this kind of attitude towards our bodies and the way in which we look at ourselves.

Fashion Illustration

I found this image really effective. The fashion industry is seen as one of the main culprits for people comparing themselves to unrealistic and unattainable standards, and this style of transcends into the fashion illustration too. People are always sketched to be extremely slim and tall, however the reality is that models for high fashion spend their lives trying to look like these images, 'normal' people couldn't possibly keep up and frankly, shouldn't have to.

 

The Body Shop - Body Confidence

I love the message behind this campaign, a doll is used to illustrate the different issues people face due to the the pressures of western society. The left image reads 'There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only 8 who do', in my opinion this succeeds in making women feel less alone and points out that the expectations of looking like a supermodel are completely unattainable and unrealistic. Similarly, the right image embodies this idea of female empowerment by portraying ageing as an achievement rather than a hindrance on our physical bodies.

He for She Campaign - Gender Equality

When thinking about gender roles, I wanted to look at ways in which people now are trying to tackle the issues by making people aware of prejudice in society. HeForShe (UN Women) immediately came to mind as a campaign everyone heard about, and stuck in my mind as something people paid attention to. 

Equality is the main goal, and the the issues of inequality, highlighting things that are accepted in our daily lives that really shouldn't be. The issues are separated in to categories - Education, Health, Identity, Work, Violence and Politics. Identity is one I am particularly interested in exploring.

Celebrity and Power - Fame in Contemporary Culture, P. David Marshall

Notes from Text

• Part 1... 'Conceptualising the collective: The mob, the crowd, the mass, and the audience'.
• Preface... 'The media themselves have often been perceived as powerful in their capacity to shape and frame the messages and representations of particular cultures'.
• 'Celebrity status operates at the very centre of the culture as it resonates with conceptions of individuality'.
• 'The celebrity sign is entirely image' - No substance.
• 'Constructs and deconstructs the social world in terms of temporal and transforming audiences'.
• Films... 'the heroes they portray are fixed images'.
• 'fixed conceptions of their identity can be made' - Not real.

Aesthetics - Observations

Women are constantly bombarded with the idea that in order to be happy you must first look acceptable, that beauty and happiness live simultaneously together and a disruption of one leads to the limitation of the other. In Western culture, from an early age young girls are influenced by family members, the media and friends to wear makeup and get rid of body hair. It is abnormal if you are a woman to not wear makeup, in order to be 'normal' you must conform to society by changing the way you look every morning, usually starting as an early teenager. From this young age women are made to feel unworthy for public view unless they are 'ready'.

Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West

edited by Liu Yuedi, Curtis L. Carter

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an interesting way of categorising the human need to appear a certain way aesthetically and why this may pose as such an important aspect in someone's life. The idea of self-actualisation is something I may want to explore and talk about within my essay. Changing your appearance is something some may argue as being concerned with Esteem, as many people undergo procedures etc. on their body when they are emotionally and psychologically affected by something they are not happy with. Some may argue that in a western society, because we are so comfortable with our physiological needs being met, the other stages become the things we are more concerned with.