Over Spring Break

Hey! April Vacation is over and if I'm being totally honest, I'm behind on the paper section of my SYP. Other than that (though I am working on it right now as well...) I've been pretty productive. I've borrowed my dad's pretty sweet D70 and last Thursday, I dressed up (haha... irony) and went down to good ole' Newton North and stood in front of the biggest brick wall I could find. Right in front of the bus lane, right there. And I had a home written sign that read "I am not an object" and then on my stomach I wrote (with great difficulty, trust me,) I am a woman. 

I will be going to Morris's photolab tomorrow (if he's there, I hope so!) and uploading them to Photoshop. My computers at home don't have Photoshop and the software we have now is pretty lame when it comes to pictures. Best not to chance it. Come to think of it, I don't even think we have an appropriate card reader.. you get the picture. Ha!! That was totally unintentional... at first... Either way, I have to crop out the very bottom corner of my jeans and potentially fiddle with the exposure to make my sign more readable (white in the sun, a tad overexposed, but just a tad).

Anyways, my first real jaunt for SYP photo was awesome. It was pretty weird "standing there in a bandeau taking selfies" I will admit, but I also got to talk to a lot of curious passersby about my project. I'm thinking I should get little business cards with my blog and googlesites urls on them. I think that'd get the word out there, or at least provide a resource for strangers who are interested.

Other than the photography, I hung out with a friend on Friday. Her name is Cora and I have such a profound level of respect for her it's actually nuts. Anyways, she consented to being interviewed for my project (she is an enormous wealth of opinion and information!!) and I am so incredible happy she said yes! She is a very active member of a social justice program called Sub/Urban Justice which works in the Boston area on all kinds of issues (race, sexual orientation, jobs for teens, occupy Boston, you name it), so she has a very interesting spin on things when it comes to advertising and America's current image of beauty. My impromptu interview ended up lasting about 18 minutes so I am working on transcribing that as well.

Tomorrow I shall also go see Ms. Carpino (spelling?) about "interviewing" the little Plowshares kids. It seems that every single time I go, she is busy. Maybe I just really have a knack for going at bad times =P It's totally possible. But that's in the next post.

"A Ha ha. No. I'm totally messing with you."

“But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

I find this absolutely fascinating. And of course it's made infinitely more poignant because it comes from Tina Fey. It's hysterical... But also the cold truth. While I am incredible happy that women who aren't stick-figures are winding their way into the media on a grander scale, there is no denying that there is a reciprocation-- because it's novel and hot, everyone else is expected to have those attributes as well as everything else! You want sexy boobs, a teeny tiny waist, narrow hips, long legs, slender arms, not too big feet... Hardly any of those proportions show up at the same time on any given body. Ever. What I found really had an impact was how Tina Fey used the nationalities and regions associated with particular physical attributes. It emphasizes how impossible looking that perfect would be. And that definition of perfect is just an opinion anyways... It's not real naturally for the masses. If that body type is possible (which I'm not saying it's not), statistically it is shared by about 5% of the female population. Does that mean that the other 95% is worthless? Or automatically ugly? I'm not sure. But it does, to some extent (in America at least) contribute to a sense of emptiness that you want to fill... And what can you fill it with? Adverts say-- products! And we're back to my project.

I remain amped to the max.