For this body image project I wanted to focus on the female body and how that is represented within the media. The theory that I based my whole project around was the female gaze, an alternate to the mal gaze theory where instead of being sexualized and objectified women are empowered. This new feminist movement has brought a change to the way in which women are being represented in the media. Big brands such as Fenty by Rihanna and Dove are doing campaigns featuring more diversity than ever. Within this project I wanted to represent this new movement and create a hyper feminine zine to celebrate women of all body types.
I started off the project by researching and looking into different celebrities that’s body image have defined an era. This lead me to look into celebrities such as Kate Moss who defined the 90s era, named heroin chic, for her small figure and grunge aesthetic. Over the decades the ‘perfect’ body image has changed with different types of figures and assesst’s being in fashion, going from the hourglass figure with Marilyn Monroe being the image of this era, to the twiggy era where the desirable figure was petite and boylike. Even before the rise in the internet and social media there was still pressures on women to look a certain way and always a figure to aspire to.
From here I decided to do a photoshoot with my flatmate Imogen which was inspired by an iconic shot from Petra Collins of two girls in their underwear behind a glitter material. For this shoot I wanted to recreate the pastel, dreamlike world that Petra does in her shoots but instead of focusing on the underwear I wanted to focus on imogen’s body hair. Body hair on women is a natural thing but in the media it is shunned and a taboo subject that you never see and I feel that it is something that needs to be spoken about. This is why I wanted to include an interview with Imogen about her body hair as I feel like she had a lot of important points to make. I was inspired by Mayan Toledano’s shoot for the razor campaign Billie where it was the first campaign to feature female body hair. The results for this shoot came out exactly how I wanted to and when I edited and added more pink tones the photos were perfect. From this shoot I was able to create a video of Imogen narrating the Rupi Kaur’s powerful poem Woman. I feel this video came out perfectly and conveyed the message that I wanted it to, that woman are powerful and to be a woman is something to be proud of.
Once I had figured out the front and back cover from the shoot I then went into illustrating different images. I wanted to illustrate some of the photos from the artists that I had researched, using images that featured different body types, but also keep the style minimalistic as I felt this would be most effective. After this I put my time into illustrating different images and producing different typography filled pages to fill up my zine. Alongside this I also did Instagram polls and questions to get an insight into what the media thought on body image. The final zine included two interviews, two brand/artists, 3 instagram polls alongside other filler type and illustration pages.
I think that overall the final zine came out exactly how I intended it too and I feel that it has a clear theme throughout. My main goal was to create a zine that empowered and celebrated women and I feel that this zine is exactly that, a feminist piece that uplifts women of all body types.
