Found Objects - SEXY (2021)
My inquiry for this projects involves ideas of bodies, specifically bodies assigned female at birth. These people, from the time that they are born, are taught to maintain or change their bodies to appeal to the male gaze. With the body positive movement of recent years, there is more acceptance of different body types, body hair, acne, etc. However, many of these traits have only been able to be accepted because they are sexuallized, or they have to be viewed as beautiful. For example, a woman cannot exist with stretch marks, they have to be coined “tiger stripes” to be accepted by society. This idea perpetuates the male gaze in a new way, where specific body traits and func- tions have to be seen as beautiful by men in order to be accepted by society as a whole. In order to illustrate this idea, I collected images of “unaccepted” body features (ie. body hair, fat rolls, acne, etc.) and combined them through collage in the shape of the word “sexy.”
