“A
women must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by
her own image of herself” (Berger, 1972, p.40). If a women’s self and her
self-image are separate then is the vision of the women hindering our view of
her real individuality. Is the visible making women invisible? I aim to find
this out.
One could have approached this topic in
various different ways by looking at different types of women, age groups and
social classes. The central thesis of my dissertation “Invisible Women” focussed
on women’s visibility in media and how this is used as a control method.
Throughout the dissertation it is evident that the over use of the constructed
‘Ideal Woman’ figure, has led to a real loss of the representation of
individuality of actual women. It is perceived by some that society has now
entered an age of Post-Feminism in which some young women are actively undoing
all that has been achieved by women over the last 100 years (McRobbie, 2004).
Thus the narrowing of media representation of the feminine means that 99% of
actual women are being excluded from media representation and young women are
conforming to the ideal set out for them by society, as a means to be visible.
What is also evident is that actual
women are being made invisible, not only in the media, but in reality. How is
this affecting the lives of women who aren’t represented or mis-represented?
Proposal
Within this project I propose to
explore the themes discussed and directly address the questions that arose from
the dissertation, i.e. whether actual women are truly being affected by their
invisibility in the media. Another avenue to this project could have been to
examine young women, who are conforming to the hyper sexuality created by the
media, as an ideal. However, following the route of ‘invisible’ women and the
impact of this on the female gender comprises the completion of 2 years of challenging
but totally rewarding research.
Previously my photography focussed on
examining human nature and particular issues surrounding the ‘feminine’. The
development of this project will bring together current thinking and the
results of critical research in an attempt to fully address the issue of how
contemporary media is directly impacting upon modern women.
Essentially this project is comprised
of documentary portraiture that illustrates real women’s views on the issues
raised by the dissertation. In effect it
will be a test, using visualisations, of the accuracy of the themes explored in
the study, in order to focus on the reliability of the thesis.
BERGER, J., 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.
MCROBBIE, A. 2004. Post-Feminism and
Popular Culture. Feminist Media Studies. 4(3),
pp255-264.
