I began my project on how media affects our identities by flicking through magazines and newspapers with a critical eye. I was struck by the amount of ridiculous and shallow sayings that thoroughly encouraged the thought that happiness is achieved through the right clothes and the accepted body weight. I put some quick images together, as I found that by singling out the quotes made their patronising meaning so much more obvious.
This image reflects how an article on the Nairobi Mall attack that happened no more than a week previously was swamped by other images and articles that included the world's smallest man. I really felt that this said something about the attention span and interests of a lot of modern society, that something so serious could even be put on the same page as something so insignificant.
Obsession with celebrity and body weight. We look to celebrities for what to look like.
I created this by painting acrylic over images out of a magazine. This expresses my boredom and almost anger how page after page of a women's magazine just shows these same perfect, skinny girls - each one practically a clone of the one before.
Jean Campbell - 16 years old. Why is there such an obsession with looking as young as possible? I thought this model was much younger than even 16, yet here she was leaning against a car with a disturbing air of a mature woman about her, and on top of this posing with a distinctly older looking male. Why is this okay in the fashion world yet there is such a moral panic on the subject of paedophilia? If we want kids to be left alone, leave kids alone.
Both of these images test the idea of where our focus lies. Without the presence of a model in the image above, does our attention move to the headlines behind? If this is the case, is the identity of the model the only reason we're so interested in the clothes she wears? Is it the clothes we're buying, or her?
