#usingwords

Mental Maps, is an ongoing study of the experience of women living in a cyber-driven world. Despite the media, particularly advertising being increasingly diverse in the selection of models in terms of appearance, gender, sexuality, religion etc; women of today are still bound to the pressure of comparison. Today the use of social media, specifically Instagram has become the key ingredient for women to use in order to project themselves, compare themselves and judge (themselves and each other). The work also speaks to personal histories, where the conventions are placed upon young girls reflect our mothers and grandmothers, their stories, their homes and their rituals. This project is collecting information that is evidential on the expression of the female experience. 

Social media enhances users’ preoccupation of physical beauty and identity, particularly for women. This theory is as old as time, reflecting back to a category in the history of art of fifteenth century European nude oil painting where women were an ever-recurring subject which set the criteria and conventions by which women have been seen and judged as a vision (Berger, 1972: 47). Unrealistic beauty standards enforced by advertisements has moved on further to the influence of social media where the pursuit of the perfect appearance and desired identity has now become an online exhibition where the comparison doesn’t fall between you and simply a celebrity model or actress but in fact lies between you and your friends, class peers, family, colleagues and a whole other bunch of strangers.