Contemporary Issues

Due to a complex field of analysis about how women are represented, power relations, the gaze and objectification/subjectivity, we now have a much wider understanding of our practices. Also, on a personal note, due to this research project, I now have a much wider understanding of this issue.

The feminism revolution has achieved what was probably thought to be impossible before it began. If it wasn't for the people that fought for gender equality in our society, women today might have still been unable to vote, unable to have a higher education and unable to become successful, recognised artists. I am so grateful that I'm currently studying at Art College, and understand that this opportunity may not have been available to me, if history hadn't played out the way in which it has. I actually feel quite selfish for not having significant knowledge of this subject before.

What I wanted to mention, was the fact that women today are still represented as objects, and that I don't feel that this has changed much since feminism began fighting against this. In fact, with the considerable increase in technology and the advancements of digital imaging, I feel that women could be more exploited than previously.

In our contemporary culture, women are used in advertisements and all other aspects of the mass media, which saturate our society. Capitalism and consumerism have dominated the 'developed world', which has in turn, been overridden by marketing. Ads are everywhere we look; television, magazines, billboards, shop windows, buses etc. Using an 'ideal' in advertisements is inevitable, but using women to sell products is something I think we have grown to accept - with not many people questioning or fighting the issue. This means, that the unhealthy images we are shown, that affect our health and wellbeing, are for the sake of profits. To me, this is extremely messed up.

Women are objectified and turned into products. They don't only sell the product to us; they also sell the woman. They sell her happiness, her success, her status, her beauty. They sell ideas of love and ‘ideal’ sexuality. The media dramatically informs us of what it is to be normal and to be desirable, by showing us an extremely limited range of images and sub-consciously manipulating us to believing it. This false perception of women, can account for some of us, but the majority of us who do not fit the criteria, are left feeling unworthy and undesirable.

Women are also dismembered. Only parts of our bodies are shown in adverts. Again, women are seen as an object, and as I have learnt, become subject to someone else’s gaze. We learn that the most important thing for a woman is her looks. In turn, men learn that the most important thing about a woman is her looks. I am not saying that all men and women think this way, but this is certainly the damaging message that is sold to us through popular media.


I am currently making artwork surrounding this idea. I entitled it 'The Illusion of Perfection', in which I am trying to visualise and critique the issue. I believe that the body image that we are surrounded with is a completely untrue perception of women. Images are retouched and digitally manipulated with software such as Photoshop. An extreme example of this is shown in this Dove advertisement below.

This Dove advertisement, allows viewers to visualise just how false the ideal female beauty is. This sadly represents only one of the thousands of image that saturate popular media.

The ‘perfect’ body image is non-existent in my eyes. If we do fall into the trap of believing it, I don’t think anyone can feel they have achieved it. The constant pursuing of something unachievable causes us to feel ashamed of ourselves and can lead people to hating their bodies. Depression and eating disorders can arise from a lack of self-respect and low self-esteem, which is just what the mass media is forcing us to feel. It purges this illusion to everyone, including the vulnerable minds of children. This may be one of the reasons why there has been a large increase in eating disorders and related mental health conditions over recent decades. In 2005, the National Eating Disorder Association stated that there was ‘Significant increase in incidence of anorexia from 1935 to 1989’. I understand that women have been represented unfairly for a very long time, so I am not saying that this is a new issue, but technology increases and our ever-consuming society certainly has increased our exposure to the media, which is a possible trigger for this epidemic.