June 2022 – Yadi Wang

Intervention One

In the first intervention, we conducted an online chat on Teams with a total of 23 people taking part in the discussion (join at different times). Participants can choose their preferred pronouns and this discussion included 17 She/Her, 4 He/Him, 2 They/Them (Age 18-35). I presented the participants with five prepared questions and opened the discussion. To protect the privacy of the participants, I will paraphrase their answers through text and summarise them.

Q1: Are you satisfied with your body?

I was slightly surprised by the answers to this question. All women feel dissatisfied with their bodies for various reasons, such as not being tall enough, not having big enough breasts, not having long enough legs, not enough hair， have too long a waistline and so on. There was even one response about being unhappy with her pinky toe. In summary, the female participants were always dissatisfied with many details of their bodies. Participants of other genders also indicated in this section that they will not find these “imperfect details” described by women in their daily interactions. Only two participants of the other genders were dissatisfied with their bodies, but quite uniformly, they were all dissatisfied with their height.

Q2: What is your relationship to your body?

The answers to this question were more varied. I list below：（SHE+Number, HE+Number, THEY+Number)

SHE 1: Very close female friends who help each other out but occasionally fight.
SHE 2: Competitors. Every time I try to lose weight but my body won’t do what I want.
SHE 3: It might be a bit like parents. I have a poor stomach and whenever I eat spicy food I get sick. But I love spicy food!!
SHE 4: I think the relationship I have with my body just like ice.
SHE 5: I hated my body and even thought about removing my uterus. I am in so damned much pain every time I have a period.
SHE6: My body probably hates me. I had some cosmetic surgery before that left the scar hard to remove.
SHE7: I like my body, but I will wish it could get better.
SHE 8: Sister
SHE 9: Teacher
SHE 10-12: Enemy
SHE 12-15: Friend
HE 1: I’m quite proud of my body, I always keep fit.
HE 2: Friend, I guess
HE 3 & 4: Brother
THEY 1: I love my body a lot. I have a lot of tattoos and most of them my girlfriend tattooed for me.
THEY 2: Couple. We have different opinions and both want to change each other.

Q3: Do you think you dress in a way that others will like?

Most of the answers to this question are YES. Only four answers are NO. I list some answers below (the answers not listed are because only the simple yes or no was answered) :

SHE 1: YES. I’m a buyer and following fashion trends is kind of my daily work. What I wear is also part of the job that I present to my clients.
SHE 2: NO. I’m quite sure what style I fit into and I never change my outfit according to fashion trends. But it’s been in a style so long that sometimes I’m not sure whether I like this style or just used to it.
SHE 3: YES. I was studying at an art school and everyone was dressed up so subconsciously I start dressing up too.
HE 1: YES. My girlfriend will pick out clothes for me.
HE 2: NO. I work out a lot so I mostly wear t-shirts.
THEY 1: NO. I only buy clothes I like.

Q4: What can we do to reject the objectification and sexualization of our bodies by the male gaze?

I list some answers below (Other responses not listed were either no answer or only participated in the discussion) :

SHE 1: It should be difficult. For example, sexy female superheroes in hero movies have been in existence for so long that they become reasonable. I don’t like watching them either if female superheroes aren’t sexy haha.
SHE 2: I also think it’s difficult and can’t think of any useful solutions. There is nothing we can do to stop the male gaze of some people after we post the our photos on social media.
SHE3:There are so many visual products under the male gaze in social media that it’s hard to set a boundary to reduce them.
SHE4:The male gaze has so much impact that I can’t post a photo without photoshopping. I can’t think of any way at the moment to reduce.
HE 1: I think there should be science education so that more people learn to respect women.
THEY1: Popular awareness, let’s say we weren’t sure what the male gaze was before we joined the discussion.

Q5: Are we unconsciously objectifying and sexualising ourselves?

After asking this question the participants thought for a while and asked some questions about themselves to discuss whether they were objectifying themselves. All participants admitted that they had more or less unconsciously sexualised or objectified themselves.

Summary

In the first intervention, the meaning of the male gaze was not very clear to the participants at first. After I explained it, they discovered that there are many situations in everyday life that are a product of the male gaze. Especially in social media, where women are flattened into commodities. The objectification of our selves happens unconsciously under the influence of the wider environment and we have even become accustomed to the presence of the male gaze. Participants from other genders also pointed out that the male gaze also affects them, for example, by comparing the size of men’s genitals or by the LGBT community being ridiculed for being effeminate. Most of the participants found it very difficult to reduce the objectification of women by the male gaze, but they did suggest that presentations or educational outreach activities could be carried out. The first thing to do is to make more people aware of the existence of the male gaze.

Revision of Questions after tutorial with Sasha

After discussing with Sasha, I revised my questions and added a discussion on whether fashion trends/advertising on social media affects women in the supplementary section. I hope the end result will help me to be more aware of how to help women express themselves freely.

1.Are you satisfied with your body? (in social media/fashion trends)

2. What is your relationship to your body? （Are you proud of your body or happy with it? Or maybe you feel a little disappointed with your body and can you share with us the reasons? Or do you sometimes feel that a part of your body changes as a result of your thoughts/emotions? For example, experiencing chest pains during times of stress. If you could use one word to describe your relationship with your body, what would it be? Is it enemy, friend, teacher or?）

3. Do you think you dress in a way that others will like? (Do the various outfits shared on social media, the seasonal fashion trends and other factors influence your outfit? Does the clothing hurt your body, such as fishbone corsets?)

4. What can we do to reject the objectification and sexualization of our bodies by the male gaze? (Explain to the audience the meaning of the male gaze. Is there any relevant experience you can share or ways you can imagine how to deal with it?）

5. Are we unconsciously objectifying and sexualising ourselves? (For example, weight loss or breast enlargement to keep up with fashion trends)

Final Planning for Intervention One

The activity will run online and I will be sharing the link of Teams on social media.
In the room of the Teams, everyone will cover their faces and change their voices. I hope this conversation without gender, age or other objective factors.
Firstly audiences who want to share can share what they have encountered on the internet about sexualising their bodies under the male gaze. Everyone can discuss how to deal with such a situation.
Next I have prepared some questions for the audience：

Are you unsatisfied with your body?
Do you think you will now dress in a way that men will like?
Do you think some women look at other women with a male gaze?
Do you think the effects of the male gaze can be harmful to men themselves？
What exactly do we do to to reject the objectification and sexualisation of our bodies by the male gaze?

There are no final answers to every question and I’m looking forward to the answers I can get. I will use the text to record the whole activity and reflect on improvements.

5. Poster

Research and Reflections on Related Campaigns and Artworks

I conducted more research on relevant campaign and artists, trying to find out how they started the campaign/created the artworks.

1.The #freethenipple campaign

Founded by artist and activist Lina Esco in 2013, the Free The Nipple campaign addresses the sexualisation and censorship of women’s breasts. The campaign aims to achieve the right for women to bare their chests in Western nations where going topless is largely discouraged and criminalised, unless in a “sexual environment” such as a strip club. Thus, the campaign seeks to interrupt patriarchal framings of the breast as inherently sexual and the associated practices of concealment and censorship. The organisers describe the movement as “a mission to empower women across the world” (Free the Nipple 2016).

However, the movement’s potency was seen to be subsumed by a culture of objectification and sexualisation, and the imagery and mechanisms of the movement were argued to in fact fuel objectification and male gaze rather than subvert it. The concern in this line of thought was not necessarily that the desexualisation of women’s breasts is impossible, but that it is not possible in the society at this time or in this way. This was particularly evident in one comment from a user in a thread about Free The Nipple in a feminist discussion group;

I support the movement in principle, but the fine line it treads between liberation and titillation makes me really uncomfortable … I can’t help but feel like the disrespectful objectification of women’s bodies is part of a much grander system of oppression towards women and if we want to genuinely #freethenipple, first we have to #freethewoman

It became clear that a lot of the people in the group shared this belief and regrettable concern that the movement is premature in a society in which women’s bodies are so heavily objectified. Whilst it was agreed that objectification is a great concern for feminists, the Free The Nipple movement was not seen as effective in tackling this issue.

This image symbolises concerns held by a range of users over the possibility that the Free The Nipple movement may reinforce the male gaze rather than subvert or disrupt it. Another user nuances the debate by introducing the concept of “male entitlement”:

There are many reasons why women as of now, don’t wish to free our nipples, probably [because] you haven’t even gotten to the core problem which is that men feel entitled to and find women’s bodies inherently sexual, why would you tell women to free their nipples when you know most men aren’t even close to being at the level of respect and progress in which the average women can ‘free her nipple’ without some type of harassment or unwanted attention from annoying men … women’s nipples are consistently still going to be in a sexualised format due to porn and adverts

2. Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas, Unmasked: From Perverse to Profound - The New York Times

Sarah Lucas is a visual artist born in England in 1962 and a member of YBAS. Her work combines eroticism and humour, using photographs, collages and ready-made installations to express bodies and organs in a frank and crude way, deliberately challenging existing sexual and gender stereotypes. Lucas often uses critical humour in her work to question conventions and highlight the absurdity of everyday life. Her famous series of self-portraits explores androgynous temperaments, yet her work is never autobiographical, but presents a perspective influenced by post-Freudian social theory and feminism.

“Inspired by feminist Andrea Dworkin and books on pornography and sexuality, Lucas tackles the objectification of the female body by men and how women’s ‘sexual liberation’ encourages their unintentional submissiveness. By appropriating masculine metaphors and gender constructs, she confronts and dissects them. sculptures do not portray women as beautiful, as Cindy Sherman did before her. portrays women as beautiful, but rather uses the casual misogyny of everyday life as fuel to construct visual puns to counter stereotypes of women”Reflection

3. Conclusion

I think I need to be very aware of the ‘boundaries’ in the next interventions that I am planning. Sarah’s work has inspired me to perhaps focus less on the body and more on the female ideology.Although as women we have the same body parts, each woman has her own different individuality, talents and abilities. As mentioned earlier, more important than the freedom of the female body is the freedom of the female mind.

Reference：

1. #freethenipple – digital activism and embodiment in the contemporary feminist movement

Reflection after the tutorial with Sasha and New Change

The problem Sasha thought there might be with organising an online campaign is that in general we need an actual event to start a social movement, but I didn’t. So Sasha suggested that I could try to start a conversation around the workshops on social media firstly and see how things would develop. After that, I could adjust the intervention based on the feedback. Following the tutorial, and based on my reflections, I made the following changes：

The Change of the Workshop

1.Theme of the workshop：Exploring the cultural suppression of female’s objectification in the online environment. Audiences can attend the workshop’s occasional events and discussion to think about how to reduce the objectification of women in the current online environment

2.All activities in the studio will be videoed and recorded, and consideration needs to be given to how to protect the privacy of the audience.

3.I will be using pink as the main element in the creation of the poster. After finishing poster, I will upload it on social medias.

The Change of the Research Question

How can I help women freely express their bodies online without being objectified by the male gaze?

Reflection after the tutorial with David and New Workshop Design

After the coaching session with David, I began to think about whether the symbols I had created individually were really representative of the group in general. In this way, I also seem to be objectifying and unifying women. I decided directly that the symbol of the campaign is undesirable.At the suggestion of the tutor, I can set up a workshop and invite people related to my project to attend the workshop and create symbol together.

Other groups, such as men and LGBT, should also be taken into consideration. I need to find a balance. Follow-up research and questionnaires are essential, and different groups need to be taken into account when designing the game for the workshop.

Workshop Design（Optional）

1.A4 sheets with the female body on them were handed out to the audience. Have the audience use brushes, paints, scissors and other tools to change.

2. Invite stakeholders to give speeches and discussions based on different topics.

3. Random interviews to collect people’s first responses to male gaze and measures to improve it by using a quick question and answer format.

Artist and Technical Research

In the plan for the intervention I envisaged the possibility of producing the final jewellery in reality to help women in terms of craftsmanship or materials, for example by providing jobs or supporting traditional handicraft women makers.I found some relevant artists and studied their concepts and techniques in depth.

1) Heng Lee, a young talented Taiwanese jeweller and in her works the enamel is replaced by embroidery. Heng’s work is a mixture between computer assisted digital patterns and traditional crafts skills. In the “Floral Embroidery Series” he takes inspiration from the Chinese embroidery, which is a very old fine traditional craft. When you see his work you obviously thinking of pixels. It’s actually what he does: playing with photoshop in order to create a pixel mosaic. Then the shapes are cutting with a laser cutter. After using softwares, computer engineering and new technologies, Heng goes back to the traditional skills by using hand-embroidery to give colour and details to his pieces.

2) Zoe Lulu/ Xiangling Lu

Rice is very important in Asian culture and China is the world’s largest producer and seller of rice. In Lu Xiangling’s work, one can see how precious metals have been replaced by rice, to which she has added resin in order to make the rice stronger. Her work makes us ask ourselves about food consumption and waste and materialistic society. It’s not just about making beautiful jewellery out of unusual materials!

3) Ziju Chen

In 2006, American jeweller Ziju Chen researched and experienced a lost technique following her Master of Fine Arts degree. The jeweller is an artist in residence at Xiamen University in Fujian Province, China, and a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China.
In the series ‘China, Silhouettes of Memory’, Ziju Chen uses the famous bright blue feathers alongside Chinese banknotes, coral, turquoise and old photographs of Chinese families. Layers of banknotes with thin lines drawn by the feathers. Colour and technique are used to link and set the different parts and materials together. ziju Chen melts monofilament (used in fishing) to tie beads etc. Every detail tells us a story about China, its traditions and beliefs.