"What is it that makes a woman? Or for that matter a man? Gender is often argued to be a social construction, free of the constraints of biological sex, with the result being that the term ‘woman’ may just as easily be applied to a feminine male subject as it is to a female one. This project seeks to highlight how, through imagery, notions of an essential gender are created and normalised in our society. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in pinup imagery, in which the gender performances of the subjects/objects portrayed are exaggerated to such a degree as to produce images of hyperfemininity/masculinity. Men become towering blocks of muscle, whilst women become overtly sexualised and impossibly curvy. By appropriating this style of image making I am seeking to produce images that draw attention to the constructed gender portrayals not only in these images, but in all mass media imagery.
Does the sultry temptress in the pinup images have to be female? I would argue no, and thus these images are not only used to highlight how the feminine gender is often portrayed (the homemaker, the cook, the sexual object) but also that gender roles are entirely mutable. Within this project a male subject inhabits the feminine role in the photographic image, thus calling in to question the rigidity of socially accepted notions of the gender binary: not only do these images seek to challenge representations of the feminine gender but also those of the male subject.
Images made for my final year degree show at London South Bank University "
The Woman As Sexual Object originaly posted by Digisnapr