Contrasts between Experience and Visual Representations in Photographic Editorial - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: VISUAL CULTURE The female body and the female: Contrasts between experience and visual representations in photographic editorial Class University The female body and the female: Contrasts between experience and visual representations in photographic editorial Introduction The female body has been used in the popular media as a form of sexualized object from which the power of that sexuality is conferred upon the product that is being sold. That product may be an idea in art, a product for commerce, or sex itself. The idea of the female form is considered the way in which to express what identifying factors as they associate with sexuality will be transferred and become meaningful in relations to the ‘product’ that is being sold. The human body has been an object of sexuality that confers power, which in turn has become associated with wealth. The focus of sexuality as it relates to power has become focused in visual culture on the female, the experience of viewing images now easily commuted into messages that can be read by the average viewer. In looking at photographs of female bodies, one can begin to understand the process of transferring messages onto the product that would be the focus of the image. The problem that emerges from this objectification of the female body is that it is often confused with becoming female and living within that gender. The experience of being female sometimes mimics that which has become the use of the female body, but that mimicry is an illusion and being female becomes a separate, often private, experience. In looking at the experience of being female in contrast the image of the female body, the conflict that is prevalent within society among women can be understood and put into context. The female body is an object within popular visual culture that provides meaning on different social concepts. The objectification of the female form is different than the experience of being female, thus the imagery that the visual culture cannot be seen as the same as the concept of gender. The Human Body According to Bryson, Holly, and Moxey (1994) Foucault argued that “every society produces its systems of marriages for the reproduction of bodies and the transmission of money” (p. 33). This argument objectifies the human being, voiding the development of relationships and ascribing to the event of marriage the purposes of both the procreation of more humans and of more money. Foucault focuses on sexuality as it is “tied to the emerging devices of power, that the intensification of the body is linked with the exploitation as an object of knowledge and an element in the relations of power” (Bryson, Holly, & Moxey, 1994, p. 33). Therefore, the development of sexuality is linked to the development of the class system. Power is within the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is only granted the identity of the body as sexualized when it is under the guise of protecting the bourgeoisie, thus creating a classed specification in which the power of sexuality is assigned. In other words, those who do not meet the requirements of the sexualized body are only addressed for that value when it is in the interests of the upper class to protect itself from the sexualizing of the lower class. The connection, then, between money and the sexualized body becomes defined by the creation of class as it is assigned to image. In looking at photographic images of humans, the first most common element is that the male, if he is in the picture, is the frame and the female is the focal point. Therefore, it can be assumed that the female body is the object upon which sexuality is focused. Within that indication of sexuality is found power, whether it is the power to oppress, to own, to buy, or to create. The power of commerce becomes symbolized by the ownership that comes from buying a product as it has conferred through some sense of sensuality upon the female. The power of money and the representation of the female form become connected through advertising, which has then become a part of the social discourse. The Female body The female form is soft, fluid and flexible, her form suggesting progress, life, birth, and emotion. One of the primary changes to that image in the late 20th century that began to show an increase in the use of the female form as an object of commerce is to have stripped her of the curves that represent her power. The female form is an object of procreation, the power to give life giving her a natural ability that men can never hope to conquer. In connecting the image of the female to commerce, her body was stripped of that which made her most feminine. Looking at an image of Marilyn Monroe reveals a naturally beautiful female body, but looking at an image of Twiggy shows a representation of a girl who has been stripped of that which makes her round and curvy. It is the difference between feminine power and femininity as it has been displaced into androgyny without the power of masculine muscle. Marilyn Monroe, Unknown Source (Paul and Paul Collectibles, 2011) Twiggy, Hayden Lee (Lee 2011). The female form as it has been both perfected and mutilated in advertising has become symbolic to the female population and working to try and emulate that perfection has led to an epidemic of self esteem problems amongst women. In winning their freedoms through suffrage and through the women’s movement, they have been re-oppressed under the pressure of the public media to conform to unrealistic expectations. The modern woman “is also depicted as excessively refined; individual body parts are elegantly polished, carefully scrubbed, meticulously sprayed, or, in an astounding variety of ways, cleaned and covered so that lips, teeth, mouth, hair, skin, armpits, legs, and vagina are all stylishly produced” (Weinbaum, 2008, p. 31). The female form has been perfected beyond realism and reproduced in imagery that has influenced the image and identity of the gender in ways that are beyond realistic imitation. Commidification and Manipulation Woman are a focus of advertising in that “The explanation for the critical focus on sex-role portrayal in advertising lies in the close relationship which exists between advertising, the consumer goods industry and the crucial economic role of women as consumers” (Crixdiana, 2011). While women have power as consumers, the approach that is taken towards turning their buying power towards products is to manipulate the consumer into believing they have needs that only purchase power can fulfill. Advertising has created their power through their “effectiveness largely depends on the manipulation of the consumer’s self image. Since women are perceived as the major consumers, advertising manipulates the female image in order to persuade women to buy” (Crixdiana, 2011). As a result of this manipulation and the need to ever increase the number of needs that the consumer perceives will fulfill them as the perfected identity, the post-modern discourse on the female body involves the reproduction of the body as an object of production arrived at through product. The female body is no longer subject to nature but to the power of human ingenuity to find ways to eliminate what nature has ‘burdened’ the female with in the process of creating a form in which creation of life can take place. The widened hips and padded belly that supports healthy childbirth has been replaced by methods of reduction that include, but are not limited to medical procedural change. The natural female form is almost shocking when it is revealed as beautiful as social acceptance of the emaciated form has become a part of the belief system of Western society. According to Hargreaves and Vertinsky (2007), “it is clealy impossible to separate bodily experiences from cultural meanings and it is the dialectic between the two that results in the shaping of the body by the social world and vice versa” (p. 20). Through the objectification of the female form in order to bleed the power of the female form for its sexuality, no matter what form that takes, and to confer it into a product has resulted in a public perception about the female form that has affected women through self identity and female identity. In creating a concept of the female form as a commoditized property, the image of the female has become an object, but the target of the objectified image is the female gender, the experiences of being female manipulated by a cultural set of beliefs on how the physical representation of being female is performed. The idea of being female has become centered on how she is presented visually, her substance based upon the idea that if she is to be a valuable female, she will conform to the media centered accepted transformations that are expected Smooth lines of the female body, Vladimir Cat (Cat, 2007) Conclusion As shown by Vladimir Cat, the female form is round and curvaceous, intended to be so in order to facilitate healthy procreation. As the female form has become a commodity, its transformation has separated the body from the experience of being female, her natural attributes superseded by a set of ideas that have been infused into the social structure which require a series of remedies for all that is wrong with her natural body. The female becomes separated into two beings; one that is mental and one that is a representation created by exterior applications in order to transform her body. All of her internal flaws can mean nothing if her external flaws have been fixed by the production of her beauty, but her external flaws can overwhelm any perfection that might exist in her internal being. Being a woman is a battle with two identities, her objectified self having one identity as her humanity is the example of her other self. Visual culture is a part of creating the imagery that informs the objectified identity about how to be produced. Being female is not the same as the representation of the female form that has been used within the various forms of media. Photographic images of women are processed as much as the intension of implying that real women need to be processed. In creating the female, visual culture has separated a part of the identity of women from their own control, the need to re-create themselves taking on the post-modern aesthetics that are based upon the believe that life is a result of its manufacture. The Western culture has evolved into a set of beliefs that are based upon the photographic image of the female body and this has caused the re-oppression of women, as well as an epidemic of self esteem issues that continue to dampen the genuine nature of the female spirit. References Bryson, N., Holly, M. A., & Moxey, K. P. F. (1994). Visual culture: Images and interpretations. Hanover: University Press of New England [for] Wesleyan University Press. Cat, V. (2007). Smooth lines of the female body. Eyefetch. Retrieved from http://www.eyefetch.com/image.aspx?ID=490102 Crizdiana. (2011). The image of women in media. Crizdiana’s Blog. Retrieved from http://crizdiana.wordpress.com/under-represented-groups-within-the-media/ Hargreaves, J. & Vertinsky, P. A. (2007). Physical culture, power, and the body. New York: Routledge. Lee, Hayden. (2011). Twiggy. Retrieved from http://haydenlees.com/cornice-1960-s-beehive- twiggy/ Paul and Paul Collectibles (2011) Unknown source. Retrieved from http://www.paul-n- paul.com/entertainment.html Weinbaum, A. E., (2008). The modern girl around the world: Consumption, modernity, and globalization. Durham: Duke University Press. Read More