Degree Show Project Proposal

Invisible Women

“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.