An abundant amount of importance is placed on beauty in our society and culture, which often overshadows real women and important issues. A woman’s worth is based on her face and body, and not her mind, abilities, or who she is as a person. A woman may feel like a failure if she is not beautiful. According to Germaine Greer many women feel that they can never be beautiful enough. Although this emphasis on beauty varies from culture to culture, and has existed for ages, it seems like our unhealthy obsession with it has become an epidemic because of the media driven world we live in. Advertisements limit views of women’s lives and capabilities and portray women in one of two ways- as sexual objects or housewives.
My work examines these issues by exploring the roles of women in media and culture. I believe the extreme tactics used in many ads that objectify women are so absurd they can be humorous, and I want to expose that. I do this is by using slogans from actual advertisements and recreating existing ads. I also use fifties housewife and pin-up imagery in my work because it was originally used in advertisements and shows some of the ridiculousness that still exists in ads today. Images of “beauty” we see in the media give women conflicting feelings; feelings of admiration towards the perfect bodies and flawless faces they see and insecurities about their own bodies and faces. My work has this contradiction in it as well; I want the work to be visually pleasing, but give the viewer a feeling that something about it is unacceptable. I want to exaggerate the inaccurate way that women are portrayed in our media to point out their negative implications. The inundation of women overtly demeaned as sex objects desensitizes us. We see this over and over in movies, magazines, and television, like a pattern. I use patterning and printed fabric along with painting, embroidery, beading, and ironing in my work to simultaneously connect it with the fashion industry and domestic life