For me, when it comes to choosing topics/ideas I want to represent or portray, I always tend to look at myself and the things in my life that I feel need to be talked about more or that I haven't seen be represented as much as other things. When it came to this brief and thinking about what I wanted to do, I remembered something that happened to me while playing a game. Now, I am in no way a religious person but some biblical ideas (like angels and sin) are very interesting to me and was one day faced with a transphobic comment that got me thinking. The person said to me, "why would you destroy your body, gods gift to you, made in his image of perfection, for sin" (it wasn't actually said to me this way but I thought I should put it in a more nice way). I thought about what that person said and what it actually meant to me as a non-religious person and came to two conclusions, that
1. There's no hate like christian love
2. That if I was religious, and god gave me this body in his image of perfection, why am I not perfect?
By this random guys logic, god made me the way I am, flaws and all which made me realise that society and social pressures push this idea of "perfection" and to be the "perfect version of yourself", but no one person is perfect. We all have our imperfects and dislikes for parts of us. This idea that to make it in a modern day world, you need to be perfect is a toxic and harmful ideal, and is only made worse by the consumption of social media content. Have you ever heard of the term "Looksmaxxing"? It's rooted in incel ideas and because of the social pressures to look a certain way to attract a partner causes people to fall into this idea. But you know what's a better, more general and widespread name for looksmaxxing, Body Dysmorphia.
Body dysmorphia is a mental health condition in which one feels insecure about their appearance and is obsessed with the idea of "getting better", "working out more" or "changing" themselves to be their idea of "perfect". At one point in your life, you would have or will have suffered from a more minor version of Body Dysmorphia, however there is a difference between this more smaller version and BDD as a disorder. It's common for people, especially around puberty and your teenage - early 20's to suffer from a Body Dysmorphia of some kind. There is a more extreme side to the BDD though, including eating disorders like Anorexia or Bulimia, Gender Dysphoria, Depression and/or Anxiety, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
For me, I have seen people in my life suffer from various types of Body Dysmorphia. From myself and my trans/non-binary friends with the more gendered side, to my Cis-women friends and family feeling the pressures of being "to fat" or "to skinny" or "wearing to much makeup" while also being told that its "their fault for dressing like a slut" if something was to happen to them. I feel very passionately about this topic and have seen from first hand experience how it can crush a persons self-confidence and trust in themselves.
The way I plan on portraying my message is through art, more specifically I want to create a series of posters or prints that convey the feeling of Body Dysmorphia (gendered, food/weight and physical imperfections) in a primarily Photography and illustration (both digital and practical) way. Another medium would be interesting in portraying my idea through, is music and a visualiser. However things are subject to change.
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