Filed under: Feminism, History, Photography | Tags: catholicism, christianity, eve, Jesus, Judith slaying Holofernes, Mary Magdalen, photography, St. Catherine of Siena, virgin mary, Women and the bible
I have always been fascinated with the role of women in the Judeo-Christian doctrines. The portrayal of the female throughout religious dogma is misogynistic at best; from the very beginning Eve is created from Adam’s disposable rib (whereas he himself is modeled in the image of God). She is inherently inferior, dependant on man for her very existence, and subsequently becomes the cause of mortality, of pain, and of suffering.
While some may say that this is irrelevant in our largely secularized, supposedly scientifically founded society that religion is merely archaic. I disagree, however. I firmly believe that religion provides a fabric, entwined in the very foundation of our society and our collective opinions. And these misogynistic sentiments have become imbued within our consciousness.
I have attempted to appropriate iconic biblical imagery by borrowing from historical religious works of art. While remaining true to the canonical symbolism, I have tried to subtly contemporize these photos, imbuing them with a current relevancy, while still harnessing the innate power of these icons.
Feminist theorist Naomi Wolf argues that in modern society, the subjugation of the female within religion has been replaced with the equally omnipotent power of the beauty standard which functions in a similar role. She compares beauty regiments to rituals of the church, basing her argument around how advertisers now assign a moral imperative to beauty (for instance sexual abstinence has been replaced with a need to abstain from a new oral pleasure; chocolate is sinful, but salvation can be found in diet products). No longer is a “good” woman a pious one suppressed by her sexual chastity, but rather the feminine value is placed solely in the arena of appearance. In an attempt to pay homage to Wolf’s ideas, and lend this canonical imagery a topical contextualization in modernity, I wanted to make these photographs aesthetically focused, almost as though they could be in fashion magazines (which I suppose could be construed as the contemporaneous master paintings of antiquity). I emphasized the beauty elements of these photographs, contrary to the naturalistic aesthetic of classical paintings. My icons wear meticulous and exaggerated make-up; St. Catherine dons green nail polish and Mother Mary wears harlot red lipstick.
The characters I have chosen resonate with misogyny and themes of subjugation in their pedigrees, many of which I feel are incredibly relevant to contemporary women’s issues. The wayward adulteress, the defiant wife, the pious mother and the starving saint, though antiquated, are all allegories that , in my opinion, correlate with modern perspectives of the female.
While predominantly I have focused on female characters within the Judeo-Christian doctrines, I did attempt to emulate some masculine icons and subsequently played upon the sexual ambiguity of religious paintings. It was my intention that this reversal of gender would further emphasize and put into question the nature of gender roles in religion and the implicit misogyny therein.
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Garden of Eden. Self Portrait. 2011.
Mary Magdalen. Self Portrait. 2011.
St. Catherine of Siena. Self Portrait. 2011.
Judith Slaying Holofernes. Self Portrait. 2011.
Mother Mary. Self Portrait. 2011.
Jesus. Self Portrait. 2011.
St. Agatha. Self Portrait. 2011.
Potipher's Wife. Self Portrait. 2011.
St. Rose of Lima. Self Portrait. 2011.
St. John the Baptist. Self Portrait. 2011.
Filed under: Feminism, History, Photography, Theory | Tags: biblical paintings, catholicism, christianity, eve, misogyny, virgin mary, women in the bible
I’ve often wondered if religious ideology is one of the dominant sources for misogyny. It is without question the bible is entrenched in misogynistic sentiment, adamant that women are the inferior sex and subject to flagrant subjugation. Eve is created from Adam’s disposable rib, whereas he himself is modelled after God; she is innately lesser, dependant on man for her very being. And it is her curiosity that dooms human kind to suffering, mortality, evil. In the opening chapters of Genesis it states, “To the woman he [God] said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” -Genesis 3:16
Now, some may say that this is irrelevant, that in our largely secularized, supposedly scientifically founded society that religion is merely archaic. I disagree, however. I firmly believe that religion provides a fabric, entwined in the very foundation of our society and our collective opinions. And these misogynistic sentiments have become imbued within our consciousness.
Naomi Wolf, one of my absolute favourite feminist theorists argues in her iconic book, The Beauty Myth, that religion has been supplanted by the repressive beauty ideal in contemporary society. She writes, “Society at large no longer places religious importance on women’s virginity or marital chastity, asks them to confess their sins or keep a kitchen that is scrupulously kosher. In the interim after the ‘good’ woman’s pedestal had been destroyed, but before she acquired access to real power and authority, she was bereft the older context in which she had been given the trappings of importance and praise” (91). Wolf draws many parallels between religious terminology and contemporary beauty industries. One in particular I found striking was the connection between food and moral judgement; chocolate is sinful, there is salvation in diet products. Whereas sex for pleasure without the intent of reproduction was seen as sinful through the religious doctrine, after the sexual revolution; it is now oral pleasure of another kind that has become the cardinal sin.
In an attempt to pay homage to Wolf’s ideas, and lend this canonical imagery a contextualization in modernity, I wanted to make these images aesthetically focused, almost as though they could be in fashion magazines (which I suppose are the contemporaneous equivalent of master paintings of the past).
These are the first round of proofs, pardon the dust on my scanner. I’m pretty excited with the prospect.
Self Portrait as St. Catherine of Siena. Polaroid Proof. 2011
Self Portrait as the Virgin. Polaroid Proof. 2011.
Self Portrait as Jesus. Polaroid Proof. 2011.
Filed under: Feminism, Theory, Uncategorized | Tags: beauty myth, discipline and punishment, feminism, foucault, hypocritical, hypocritical feminist, the media, women's bodies
Yes, I identify with the other “F” word. That nasty, stigmatized symbol that evokes images of shaved heads and lone earrings. I am a feminist.
At the same time, I’m a hypocrite. I fall victim to the years of brainwashing; being raised by the television (and subsequently the shiny advertisements therein), the glossy 8″ x 10″ magazines featuring airbrushed bodies of perfection, the girls on the subway made up for Friday night at the club, even though it’s Monday morning. I crunch my abdomen for hours, count every calorie that passes my lips, use sweetener over sugar, make sure I’ve had atleast two hours of cardio daily. I hide the bags under my eyes with a five-step cover-up regime with the precision of a solider dismantling a gun, spend hundreds on skincare, file and paint my nails which render my hands virtually useless in the arena of labor. I pluck my eyebrows, rip the unwanted hair from my skin – brazillian waxing like some Medieval form of torture. Spend thousands of dollars on clothing that hangs like limp bodies in my closet.
Foucault believed the disciplinary power of the institution could be implemented through a series of exercises on the individual body. In his book, Discipline & Punishment, he states that, “The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power. It is easy enough to find signs of the attention then paid to the body- to the body that is manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skillful, and increases its forces” (p. 136). Thus through a series of processes directed at manipulating and homogenizing behaviours, what was, “formed was a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behavior. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down, and rearranges it” (138). And although his argument applied specifically to soldiers, and later students and patients, I feel it effortlessly translates to the contemporary beauty establishment. Through the unrealistic hegemony of media beauty ideals, we are presented with a regime in an attempt to reach the standards applied to us. From hair removal to skin-care regiments, the disciplinary power of the corporation is displayed on nearly every page of women’s magazines, and furthermore, the bathrooms of average women.
And although I see these parallels , I still fall victim to the patriarchal ideals dictated to me. Which leads me to the question; how in the hell do I have the gall to call myself a feminist?
I have read the Feminine Mystique, the Female Eunich, the Beauty Myth. My bookshelves are riddled with contemporary feminist theory. I believe women are suppressed in our society. We’re subjugated, we’re tortured, we do not have equal opportunity in a patriarchal dominated world. And I live the proof daily. But years of conditioning have rendered me without the courage to defy it. Perhaps it is on account of the fact that we, as women, are bombarded with the fact that our sole value is dependant on appearance, thus creating a deviance that is instantly observable. To deny the beauty regiment is to be under constant, omnipotent scrutiny (unlike other arenas such as politics or religion, in which converse or abnormal opinions or beliefs are not immediate to the public eye).
I find it depressing that despite my vehemence in my convictions, I feel powerless to defy the standards set forth by patriarchal institutions. I wonder if the contemporary lack of momentum within the feminist movement is on account of the fact that defiance is instantly observable. Humans are creatures that long for a sense of belonging, thus I feel the incessant urge to buy into these normalized practices of discipline, and abnormal to defy under the constant glare of the crowd.
I would love to hear other opinions on this matter.
Filed under: Feminism, History, Photography, Theory | Tags: advertising, baulldriard, beauty standards, diet industries, eating disorders, feminism, foucault, history of advertising, media theory, the media, women's bodies
Since its mass inception in the mid eighteen hundreds, advertising has been inextricably bound to the reproducible image, particularly with regards to the photograph. From the invention of colour printing (Stein 155) to the development of computer-oriented post-production software (Kilborne 122), marketing has been a propellant force behind the advancement of photographic technology. However, advertising is not merely just a medium for consumerist advancement. Jean Baulldriard argues that the process of socialization can, “be measured by the exposure of media messages” (80). That is to say, the Western sense of cultural identity and social interaction is built upon the objectives of advertising and predominant media. There is no sector that asserts the notion of social manipulation through advertising as well as that of women’s media. Not only does it define and consequently transform the nature of gender roles (as seen in War-time advertisements) but also the very shape of the physical feminine body. A historical analysis of the progressive nature of advertising provides shocking insight into the psychological power it holds over the female, and in turn, its omniscient manifestations on the physical body.
Without question the reproducible image was responsible for creating a widespread, hegemonic ideal of beauty. Feminist Naomi Wolf asserts this point in her book, The Beauty Myth, stating, “For the first time new technologies could reproduce- in fashion plates, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and rotogravures – images of how women should look” (15). Prior to the invention of photography, the circulation of images remained relatively limited, and subsequently a universal standardized ideal of the feminine figure could not be promoted. Dr. Michael Levine and Dr. Linda Smolak comment that the seemingly benign media images superficially, “both promote and reflect body shapes, styles of clothing”, however, psychologically they, “symbolize complex themes of gender, race, class, beauty, identity, desire, success and self-control in post-industrial societies” (236). Thus, the imagery that has come to permeate every facet of society becomes a signifier for cultural values and ideologies as dictated by the constructers of advertisements and other mass mediums.
No example is more indicative of the power of advertising influence over the dictation of the feminine role than that of the transformative advertising
that arose during and after the Second World War. For the first time, women were welcomed into the male arena of physical labor under the solidarity of the war effort, and convinced to do so largely through advertising (see Fig. 1). War Historian and gender analysist, John Costello, asserts the reliance on advertising in his book Virtue Under Fire, explaining that “massive Ministry of Labor advertising campaigns launched in 1941 persuade[d] British women to leave the clean comfort of their homes for the production battle” (164), and in America, “the War Manpower Commission then turned to…Madison Avenue to boost its national campaign to attract first-time women workers” (181). According to estimates by the Ministry of Labor, over 80% of all single women between the ages of fourteen and forty-five joined the labor force
(Costello 157), transforming the stereotypical housewife into a denim- clad, machine-wielding heroine. However, once the war had ended, the media returned to old conventions. Former writer for the Ladies’ HomeJournal, Betty Freidan explains that the transition from workingwoman back to domesticated housewife was, “reflected in the pages of women’s magazines [and] was sharply visible in 1949 and progressive through the fifties”(92). The stark contrast between the powerful Wartime heroine to housewife is beautifully demonstrated by an advertisement for Pep Vitamins (Fig. 2), appearing only two years after the war had ended. It is testament to the exaggerated push for both patriarchy and domesticity that was widely circulated contemporaneously.
The late 1960s saw a sudden shift in the beauty canon- which had previously valued curvaceousness as an appealing female sexual characteristic- as waif-like models like Twiggy began to dominate the world of fashion (Bordo 102). Foucauldian Feminist, Dr. Susan Bordo, asserts that the, “emergence of such rigid and highly moralized restrictions on female appetite and eating are, arguably, part of a 19th century cultural ideological counter-offensive against the new woman and her challenge to prevailing gender arrangement and their constraints on women” (115-116). Empirical data from psychological studies have supported this notion, as studies by Levine and Smolak have demonstrated that, “historical changes in direct and indirect media messages about the importance of slenderness in the definition of ideal femininity during the 20th century reveal a strong positive correlation between periods of message intensification following women’s political activism (eg., during the 1920s and in the 1970s and 1980s) and an increased incidence in eating disorders” (238).
It is easily concluded that the introduction of a widespread contemporary zeitgeist for thinness is not accidental, but a calculated strategy to control the female body, and in turn, her mind. It is estimated that over the past thirty years the weight of the average model has plummeted from 8% thinner than the average female to a staggering 23% (Kilborne 129). In seeming contradiction, rates of obesity in North America have sky rocketed (Garner DM et al 47), creating an ever-increasing discrepancy between the weight that is idealized and that which is common. However, though opposing, the two are not mutually exclusive. Media theorist, Jean Kilborne explains stating that the diet and so-called “junk food” industries, “depend on each
other … in order to be profitable, both these industries require that people be hooked on unhealthy and mostly unsatisfying food; high in fat and sugar. In addition, the diet industry depends upon a rigid cultural mandate for women to be thin” (122). Weight Watchers, one of North America’s leadingweight-loss firms, for instance, often depicts decadent food, devoid of nutritional value, filled with calories and fat, and glaringly in contradiction to their apparent doctrine (see Fig. 3). The subsequent internal struggle that arises from these opposing forces creates a perpetual cycle between weight gain and weight loss; creating the ideal consumer who buys the highly processed food, and then pays in an attempt to lose the weight (Kilborne 123). One need only look at the burgeoning diet industry, which has more than tripled in recent years (Kilborne 123) to see evidence of the desperation of the modern woman to control her body. Consequently, fat becomes not merely about weight, shape or size, but is considered deviant, abnormal and becomes deeply imbued with morality. Further, it incubates an environment for self-hatred and body-dissatisfaction in the individual body.
It is semantic knowledge that images featured in advertising and magazines in contemporaneity are highly mediated and manipulated in post-production, through digital programs such as Photoshop in which the body can be completely transformed and perfected. However, it is not the production we experience, but rather the final result: the image itself. Bordo comments that the spectator is “unable to cast a shadow of doubt over the dazzling, compelling, authoritative images”(104), she continues that it, “is the created image that has the hold on our most vibrant, immediate sense of what is, what matters, of what we must pursue for ourselves”(104). Jean Baudrillard explains the notion that contrary to representation, which, “stems from the principle of the sign and the real” (6), simulations (that is, mediated imagery), “stem from the utopia … from the radical negation of the sign as a value, from the sign as 
the revision, and [become the] death sentence of every reference” (6). As a result, the mediated, constructed image is, “artificially resurrected under the auspices of the real” (Baudrillard 8), and deceptively experienced as an objective reality. The perception of the simulation as reality has startling physical repercussions, for as Baudrillard explains, the manipulated medium subsequently, “transforms the real” (82), creating a dangerous index for the individual body to strive to attain (see Fig. 4). The contemporary standard for body shape is a veritable fun-house mirror; there is little semblance to reality left in the exaggerated images the media bombards us with on a daily basis. Jean Kilborne draws correlations between the manipulated images depicted in the media and “resulting eating problems, which range from bulimia to compulsive overeating to simply being obsessed with controlling one’s appetite” (135). Prior to the nineteen-seventies, eating disorders were virtually unheard of, however, today have reached epidemic proportions (Bordo 168). Certainly there are biological predispositions and genetic characteristics that influence the development of eating disorders (Levine and Smolak 248), however, the sociocultural factors such as the current media climate and its narrow range of representation play a pivotal role.
The effects of advertising on the female are blatantly demonstrated through its historical incarnations and the subsequent transformation of contemporaneous gender roles. The emergence of a hegemonic mandate for slenderness has created warfare against the feminine body. With technological advancements, simulations have helped create a dangerous, unattainable standard for weight and shape; breeding body-contempt in the individual and consequently assisting in the creation of a cultural environment in which fatal eating disorders- ranging from obesity to Anorexia Nervosa- can flourish.
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Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight. Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1995.
Costello, John. Virtue Under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1987.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.
Garner DM, Garfinkel P, Schwartz D, Thompson M. Cultural expectations of thinness in women. Psychological Reports, 1980. 484–491.
Kilborne, Jean. Can’t Buy My Love. New York: Touchstone, 1999.
Levine, Michael P. and Linda Smolak. “Media as a Context of Disordered Eating,” The Developmental Psychopathology of Eating Disorders: Implications for Research, Prevention and Treatment. New Jersey: Lawrence Eribaumm and Associates, 1996. 235- 257.
Stein, Sally. “The Graphic Ordering of Desire: Modernization of a Middle Class Housewife, 1914-1939,” The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, Ed. Richard Bolton Boston: Massacheusits Institute of Technology, 1992. 141-162.
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Toronto: Random House Canada, 1990.
Filed under: Feminism, History | Tags: body image, corsetting, female nude, feminism, peter paul rubens, reclining odalesque, twiggy
It isn’t difficult to see that the ideal feminine beauty is entirely a construct of culture, and as such, constantly wavering. Theres no such clearer way of proving this assertion than through the study of visual culture, for the objectified female seems to be in contention with only religion as far as subject matter goes. A Professor of mine once remarked that “the history of art rested upon the back of the reclining female nude”.
Venus of Willendorf. c. 22,000 BCE
It is commonly known that within the spectrum of history the so-called feminine ideal has predominantly been voluptuous; fat meant fertility, it alluded to wealth and health. And so, the objectification of the female body began with the Venus of Willendorf, obese by contemporary definition. Faceless. Voiceless. Pardon my colloquialism, but a pre-historic effigy of a “piece of ass”.
Well throughout the Renaissance and into the 17th century, the ideal of the female remained full-figured.
Peter Paul Rubens. Leda and The Swan. 1599.
Glorified by Finnish painter Peter Paul Rubens, the “Rubenesque” body type remained idolized through the Baroque era until, that is, the invention of the corset. Suddenly, women were restrained in the name of aesthetics. Their ribs realigned or broken, their bodies disfigured, tortured and contorted in the name of fashion, and so the fixation on thinness began.
Corseting reached it’s pinnacle in Victorian times when an incredibly tiny waist and exaggerated hips (a flagrant sign of fertility) became the hegemonic ideal with regards to the female body. It is interesting that this time period also saw the beginnings of female mental disorders such as hysteria and anorexic. Not only was the docile woman physically suppressed and constrained, but they were also locked in solitude in dark rooms in the name of insanity.
When women won the vote, the post-suffragette ideal changed yet again. The roaring twenties saw the idolization of the boyish figure, perhaps mimicking masculinity (while still maintaing a certain subjugation with youthfulness). Streamline, with very little discrepancy between hip to waist ratio, the thin ideal continued to be perpetuated until wartimes which saw a resurgence of
Marilyn Monroe, who wore a size 14
voluptuousness, perhaps in contrast to the devastation that had just occured. Concurrent with the baby boom, icons like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield sexualized and popularized the fertile fleshy female within mainstream culture.
But that was shortlived. The sixties brought Twiggy, a waif of a girl, whose measurements (32-23-32) by today’s standards would be anorectic. And as women advanced in the workplace, the focus on their bodies continued to be propagated. The seventies brought icons like Jane Fonda, who not only compulsively excercised, but threw up off camera to maintain her svelte image. The diet and exercise industries boomed, and women became more and more fixated with their bodies. Interestingly, this is also the era that Anorexia Nervosa came under prolific media scrutiny, predominantly on account of the death of Karen Carpenter.
Kate Moss. 1991.
The nineteen nineties brought visionary Calvin Klein’s heroin chic, and suddenly eating disorders became idealized within the fashion industry. Models became far thinner than the general population creating a vast discrepancy between what was idealized and what was attainable for the individual. Technological advancements like Photoshop, increased this impossible, fictional standard and exasperated the “average” woman even further. And, concurrent with this trend came the rise of instance plastic surgery: if one is not born perfect, one can attain it through money. The American dream at its finest.
Today, the diet industries account for $40 billion dollars of the grosse domestic income. It is commonly understood that images in the media are heavily doctored, but still, more than 65% of American women have reported disordered eating behaviors (Science Daily, 2008). According to Naomi Wolf in her book The Beauty Myth, as many as one in five girls on American college campuses suffer from either Anorexia or Bulimia. Just as woman progresses and participates in formalized education, she is curtailed into obsessing over her weight. One might say it almost seems strategic.
It’s contradictory to me in a time when calorically high foods are in abundance and the predominant population is, in fact, overweight, that the ideal continues to shrink. Perhaps it shows the shift from survival to leisure. No longer is beauty about health, but control.
I once read a study on the island of Fiji. When introduced to American television in 1995, their incidence of bulimia rose abruptly from 3% to 15%, a staggering five percent within the course of a year. Dieting had been virtually unheard of on the island, who tended more towards a fuller-framed woman, however, after the introduction of shows like 90210, this number rose to an inordinate 62% (Dimensions Magazine, 1998).If this doesn’t definitively assert the power which the media holds in determining the hegemonic ideal, then I don’t know what does.
