Final Statement.

During the project I had to alter certain parts of it due to problems that i faced, the first problem that i faced was being unable to explore the third gender and the third gender within the media, I did however briefly touch upon it however the research that I did, did no longer have any connection to my project therefore during the elimination/filtering stage of my research I removed it due to it no longer having a place.

 I also found that time management was important and if you were to fall behind early on, it would be difficult to catch up, therefore when i found myself getting to the point of being unable to complete a task i would make sacrifices in the section that i was at for example i would stop researching a certain point and move onto the next or i would no longer do a shoot that i had planned as time was short.

During the project i found that being able to get feedback and to communicated my ideas thoroughly to others was vital to how i progressed onto the next stage, i relied mostly on the feedback from my peers and tutors, however i did also take my ideas and images to a public forum and gained feedback from people that i had hoped to me my target audience, this information was ultimately more important as i gained an idea of what my images looked liked to people that weren’t necessarily directly involved with my final major project or taking part in one themselves.

Coming to the end of the project i found that my ideas and what i could actually present would change quite rapidly due to finding out the size of the space in which i was able to display in, and also getting feedback with what my final image should of become, however the change in the ideas were ones i felt were positive and needed to be taken into account and therefore had a positive result overall.

If i were to restart my final major project again, I would explore the third gender and extend my research at certain points to really solidify my ideas and have a better foundation for development and for my final idea. 

Bibliography

Print. Bell Elizabeth, Hass  Lynda  and  Sells Laura (1995). From Mouse To Mermaid. Indiana: Indiana University press. Gross  Larry  (2002). Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Internet

Campbell, Kaylee. (2012) Gender Roles and Stereotypes Found in Disney Films. [Online] Available at:http://filmandmedia12.wikispaces.com/Gender+Roles+and+Stereotypes+Found+in+Disney+Films.
Last Accessed: 28 March 14.

Harper, Poppy. (2014) Did Piers Morgan 'Sensationalize' Transgender Activist Janet Mock's Story?. [Online Video]. 05 February. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1NR8rHlvXA.
Last accessed: 19 March 2014.

 Lombrozo, Tania Ph.D. (2012). Explaining Gender Differences. [Online] Available at:http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/explananda/201208/explaining-gender-differences.
Last accessed: 28 March 14.

MOTOCORSA. (2013) 1199 MANIGALE DESKTOP WALLPAPERS. [Online] Available at:http://motocorsa.com/featured/ducati-1199-panigale-desktop-wallpapers-manigale.
Last accessed: 04 April 14.

Sabean, Rion. (2013) Men-Ups!. [Online] Available at: http://www.rionsabean.com/men-ups.
Last accessed: 28 April 14.

Siede Caroline. (2014) Scientific analysis reveals there's a crazy gender gap in screen time for this year’s Oscar nominees. [Online] Available: http://www.avclub.com/article/scientific-analysis-reveals-theres-crazy-gender-ga-201612.
Last accessed 01 March 2014.

Whitten, James. (2013) The Portfolio of Jimmy R Whitten. [Online] Available at:http://www.jimmyrwhitten.co.uk/.
Last accessed: 28 March 14.

Zurko, Nikolas. (2013) Gender Inequality in Film. [Online] Available: http://www.nyfa.edu/film-school-blog/gender-inequality-in-film/.
Last accessed 01 March 2014.

Films

Paris is burning. 1990 [DVD] Jennie Libingston, New York: Second Sight

Final Piece/Image - Evaluation

For my final image and getting feedback from my peers, I came to the conclusion that one solo image would be a lot more stronger and pose more questions than two comparing images, 

I chose for my female image for my final piece , as the overall Mise-en-scèn  in the image portrays the right message that i wanted to put across at the end of this project, as the subject is photographed in a lacy top and the hints put across in the body language hopefully poses questions of the gender of the subject.

Final Piece Image/s

Idea 5 - Evaluation

At the first stage of these shoots i wished to keep the idea of comparison in my mind therefore that is why i have a mixture of “male shoots” and “female shoots” overall what i took from the previous shoot was the neutral facial expression and body language however i highlighted small changes in the body language for example the way my subject was sitting i had him slouched over for the male and sitting upright for the female, throughout the shoot  I made sure to have similarities and had pairs of pictures and clothing with would stand ideally side by side together

Idea 5 - Final Shoot

To further my idea I carried on using the same model however what made this shoot different from the first I attempted to make my subject wear more provocative clothing something which if a female were to wear the clothing questions would arise.

I also wanted to keep the idea of comparison so I shot some images with my subject wearing "boy" clothes, and while i was trying to keep the idea of provocative clothing, i decided while boy clothing i still wanted the clothing to be revealing, yet again i went back into magazines and onto the internet to find poses that male models do; and however i felt that the poses were too over the top so i was able to get my subject to tone them down again.

Idea 4 - Evaluation

This shoot is my favourite and strongest out of all the ones that i have done so far and it is an idea that i wish to carry on; therefore for my next shoot i will need to work on making sure that the clothing i pick are more feminine to pose more questions to the viewer, to further more questions by having small body language hints within the poses that the subject can do (e.g a small pinky up) and to rework the overal photography aspect (e.g lighting, DOF etc..)

Idea 4 - Male Vs Female Clothing

This idea is based around transforming and how ones image can be manipulated to certain genders and pose questions such as nature vs nurture and if these ideas of gender swapping start at a young age.

I chose a young-ish person to photograph, and captured them in certain clothing within both genders; i aimed for the poses to be mannequin like and repetitive so therefore the subject seems to be ignoring which clothes they are wearing.  The faces and body positions remain neutral.

Idea 3B - Evaluation

Decided to not use or further this idea as i felt that it was cliche and that as a basic starting point there isn't really much room for development or room to further the idea therefore i chose not to progress any further.

Idea 3B - Lipstick

I did this shoot alongside the previous shoot and the idea that i tried to put across was to juxtapose the lipstick and the idea of a burly big jawed man wearing iconic bright red lipstick which was made iconic by female icons such as Marilyn Monroe.

Idea 3 - Evaluation

While shooting these images the further i pushed them the more clichéd an idea i thought it was, a man putting on lipstick and nail varnish was too direct and was too obvious of a result. Therefore it wasn’t worth furthering as the results would be too alike and still overly obvious for an end result that i did not want.

Idea 3 - Rings/Nails

For the next series of images I took inspiration from magazine images and adverts which are trying to sell products to women and try to mimic those poses in a series of images using a male model and female items.

I used items such as rings, lip gloss and nail varnish; I purposefully took them in my younger brothers room which is painted a royal blue with very menacing posters and such in the backdrop, therefore when these images were taken the backdrop connoted a male environment and added even more to the juxtaposition of the photos. 

Idea 2 - Evaluation

This shoot unlike the one previously was not successful as overall the idea is not strong nor is it one i wish to develop further during this project.
The failure of this project comes from the objects that i was photographing and the fact that  i was simply recording the outcome, if i were to push this idea further i would photograph young children with the toys and their reactions that they have while playing them.

Idea 2 - Toys

Following on from my collaboration I took it upon myself to create items and do exactly the same process, of turning girly things into boy things and visa versa.

Idea 1 - Collaboration with local artist

On Thursday the 17th of April, I was fortunate enough to be able to work with a local artist who was interesting in collaborating with me for the idea generation of my project.

While working with him, I gave him a simple brief which was to turn the barbie doll into something butch and something that a boy or man would play with, the first thing he did was cut the blonde hair off and the breasts which can be seen as the two main feminine things which the barbie has.

Next he thickened out the waist, hips and legs and then added brown hair and male genitals, in the area where he cut the breasts away he chose to incorporate a ribcage and lungs and then the doll was complete.

The way he changed and morphed the doll were very harsh and heavy, he would burn the hair and cut parts off and reattach them elsewhere all very stereotypical male ways to act, during the process his younger daughter came into the work space and questioned to her farther what he did to the barbie, he proceeded with saying barbie isnt here anymore its barry now.

Idea 1 - Jimmy R Whitten

Jimmy.R.Whitten is a local artist based in Beckenham/Peckham focusing in the genre of outsider art and he uses pyography, sculpture and mixed media are his main methods of art.

He uses real life memories and events to influence his work.

Idea Generation

When doing idea generation i found that i could split my ideas for shoots around this subject into two categories: How Gender affects the young and Gender stereotypes.

The ideas that i came up with for Gender were:
- Manly features taken with make up and the opposite for a women.
- anti – stereotypes that go against the Disney ideals of how people should be
- handbag contents of males and females
- photographing a woman selling a male product and a male selling a female product.
- male pising like high fashion models

The ideas i came up with for how gender affects the young were:
-Photographing children in the wrong gender clothing
-Creating male toys to appear like female toys, and visa versa
-bedroom shots of what the childrens rooms look like
-photographing the reactions of a child when they are playing with toys of the opposite sex.
-hair cuts; boys with long hair and short hair and girls with long hair and short hair and what they place in their hairs.

Research - Women in male advertising.

Alike to the  Men Ups these images these images highlight the poses and situations female models are pictured in, however with these images they are shown with a comparison image of a male doing the same poses.

By comparing the two genders it highlights the flaws in the images shows as the male doing the poses is seen as abnormal to a viewer yet us seeing the women in the same pose is normal.

Research - Men Ups

I chose to look at the work of Rion Sabean due to me wanting to see how artists and photographers have responded to the way that women and men are viewed differently. 

I enjoyed these images as they highlight the over sexualised poses and view that women are often seen in, also it shows how long these stereotypes and routine of over sexualising women has been involved in every day life.

Research - Catalog

going though a random catalog i tried to find what ideals and what patterns appeared in both male and female items, what shocked me was that however there were very huge differences between both items in either sex, there was however a crossover of one material; polka dots, polka dots could be seen on either side however the colours of the back ground changed (blue for boys and pink for the girls ) Also they had sectioned off animals for boys for example even a toy stuffed monkey was clearly in the boys section. From this and alike to my previous post is just another real world  example to the stereo types.

Research - Women In Film

I chose to look at this article to see how women are seen in the real professional world, something which stood out to me while reading over each point wa that “inspiring female roles” all are characters which don’t really fall into the specific Disney ideals of what a perfect female character some of them even have what are seen to be MALE traits.


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Research - Gender Stereotypes in Disney

From this article I went onto exploring how gender roles are seen through media which is aimed for children, the main one I looked at was something which everyone has watched at some point in their life Disney films, what made this different from everything else i had read was that, this article stressed how Disney also affects  how males are viewed.

Disney Princesses are seen as over sexualised, and that "young girls are hounded with images of princesses, who tell them that the key to happiness is being fashionable, beautiful and that you need to find a prince to save you, this also teaches young boys in order to be successful you must be manipulative.

The male stereotypes within Disney are focused on being strong and powerful and overall being smarter than the women they are trying to claim as their own, and within Disney films when a male sings a song they are signing about how to be a man, a good example of this is in Mulan and beauty and the beast.

Research - YouTube Video

Next i watched a youtube video "What would you do Halloween "You Can't  Be A Princess" which is a hidden camera youtube show which records the reactions of the public most agree with the mum that both the boy and the girl cannot wear the costumes of the opposite gender.

•  one mum tries to convince the boy to be manly things such as a fireman, policeman all of which women can be.
• one mum tries to find a happy medium of "spider girl" for the young girl"
• even children would talk to the children being against the children wanting the costume saying things like "that's a girl costume" 
• "try to beat it out of them early in case it isn't a phase"
  
  However one mum admits to accepting to the idea that even though she says that the Spiderman costume means that the child wants to be a strong woman but does not ignore the fact that the mum is closed minded.

Research - Gender Neutral Advertising

Next i explored gender neutral advertising and how even though it says it is neutral some stereotypes slip through.

Research - Explaining Gender

For my first article I read was The media shameless role in peddling gender stereotypes to children by Lori Day. the first sentence highlights the differences of how we see girls and boys. "pink vs. blue; passive vs. aggressive; sedentary vs. active; pretty vs. smart; girls vs. boys." 

The whole article reiterated that now in a time where media is everywhere and in almost every home whereas 100 years ago, even though the telephones and the radio had been invented they were not widely available and that now we are saturated by every type of screen, and how those screens act like a third parents and how we need to rebel against this third parent by not passively accepting corporate definitions of boyhood and girlhood.

 "Media shapes perception and perception becomes reality."

After reading that i went onto reading into the science behind the whole gender idea, and most articles and pages stressed the importance of nature vs nurture and that even though hormones do play a part it did come down to the nature vs nurture idea.

Final Major Project - Questionnaire results.

From these results I have a basis of the ideas of a mixed audience and how they view gender.

Final Major Project overview.

For my final major project I am exploring how the media helps to shape and form gender/sexual ideologies, I plan to start my research focusing on gender and how we as an audience passively accept gender roles and stereotypes without blinking an eye towards it.

I will start my research by doing a questionnaire with a basic easy answerable question "what do you see as being a stereotypical 'girl' thing and what do you see as a stereotypical 'boy' thing, please name one from each"  looking at articles and reports from a range of people, psychologists and media critics to get a range of opinions from people in different places.

Once I have explored the gender side of my exploration i will then go on to finding out about how sexual ideologies are represented and looking into both the GLB community and the TRANS community looking at films such as Paris is Burning and the aftermath which followed the film and more modern media such as RuPauls Drag Race and how there is now a debate forming from their use of  "She-Male" in a segment and also using the same methods from the gender research i will explore opinions from a range of people and therefore by using a range of opinions my research will be more varied and this will enable me to deconstruct the issues surrounding my topic and be able to draw up a varied view of ideas.

LBM - Project 8 SELF PROMOTION - Promotional Proof

LBM - Project 8 SELF PROMOTION - Final Images