Objectification Zoo: Embodying Prescriptive Feminine Body Ideals

As my video documentation will show, my final demonstration as a culmination of weeks of brainstorming, theorizing, and planning underwent dramatic changes from what I originally described in my project proposal. Previously titled “Gaze-Challenging Body Suit/Skin,” this project evolved from a staged, static demonstration of “Gaze backlash” (I would define this as the act of displaying oneself as an object while frustrating or troubling that status as an object by returning the Gaze to the spectator/voyeur) and reflexivity (with this term I refer to the irony of being covered with images of objectified, fetishized women/sex objects from fashion magazines while at the same time objectifying oneself in a similar manner—on display, posing for onlookers), into something involving these elements but executed quite differently.
Gradually, my project began to form around a particular narrative I had been considering during the brainstorming process: a two-stage transformation of a character. I was advised by my professor that performing my demonstration as a narrative would give more meaning to the duration of time that I was to be performing, and would also provide a more interesting documentation of the performance.
In the first stage of the demonstration, I portrayed a human female—presumably a young adult, which is an age I both resemble and inhabit—performing the mundane, identifiable ritual of flipping through popular fashion magazines and cutting out images, but in a store window. The store window was necessary in that it is a space in which stationary objects are displayed in order to entice potential customers so that they will consume the items. By situating my living body into the space of a store display window, it was my intention to suggest the association between consumable store items and consumable female bodies as objects of the Gaze. The images I cut out of the magazines were images of female body parts that my character desired to embody (for example, an image of perfectly toned thighs, or beautifully make-up eyes, or a thinner waist—any body part that my character admired, envied, and/or desired). Finally, I glued the cut-out images of ideal feminine body parts to my own body, thus literally “embodying” the images. The act of gluing the magazine clippings to my skin demonstrated a transformation, which I will discuss further.
Prior to the actual demonstration, I created a “body suit” of magazine images by taping the clippings to a black leotard. This was essential to the demonstration because I wanted to appear as if I had covered the entire surface area of my skin with the images so that no part of my body appeared to be safe from the invasion of these images. Ideally, I would have preferred to conduct my performance in the nude, but I was concerned for my safety and did not wish to break any laws. Interestingly, the image-laden leotard became a tangible relic of the demonstration; after I removed it, I found that it resembled a shell, or a discarded cocoon, or even a corset that could be re-fastened to the body.
The emergence of a “creature,” a character separate from the human female character in the first stage, distinguishes the second stage of the demonstration, the “transformation stage.” At this point in the demonstration, I had covered my bare skin with multiple images of female body parts cut out of magazines. I then performed a creature that had evolved from the first character. What I wanted to demonstrate was that the human female character who had applied idealized images of body parts to her own body had transformed into something clearly non-human, a creature representing what I see as the result of our beauty ideal-saturated culture and the effects these ideals have on girls and women. In order to perform a “creature” I simply crawled around the window display on all fours, alternating between moods of aggression (in which case I growled, hissed, and clawed through the window at passers-by), or sometimes bewildered shyness, as if I did not understand why I was being looked at. Crawling around inside a glass box made me feel as if I were in a zoo, and the way spectators looked at me and interacted with me certainly made me feel that I was indeed an exotic specimen.
It is important to note that during the first stage, my performance bears a significant resemblance to theatrical realism: I performed in a box with a (literally) transparent fourth wall and utilized the conventions of realistic acting such as ignoring the audience, pretending to be alone and unwatched, and not making any eye contact whatsoever with those looking in. As a performer, I invited and allowed the Gaze of my spectators without challenging it. In the second stage, my performance demonstrated the opposite. I not only made eye-contact, thus challenging their Gaze, I also actively engaged my spectators and sometimes attempted to interact with them. As a result, I found that people were much more willing to stop and stare at me while I was performing in a realistic sense—when I ignored them and did not look up at them. When I actively tried to engage passers-by, I found that people were more likely to exude a quick reaction (usually surprise, amusement, or confusion), then become (seemingly) self-conscious and continue walking.
My project deals with personal space in that my “personal space” in the store window interacts with the “public space” beyond the glass. The glass window being permeable to Gaze, these boundaries were blurred when passers-by had the opportunity to be voyeurs and look in on me performing. The glass provides, in my opinion, the justification that some of the spectators seemed to experience once they saw that I was not going to challenge their gaze; I was doing something alone and secretive, and they had the opportunity to watch. Personal space was again troubled when I, as the creature, returned the Gaze. I was soliciting for responses and reactions, but I was still “safe” behind my glass wall, in my personal space. Even so, many people appeared to be uncomfortable, as if my demonstration in a store window were invading their space, though physically this was not the case. Another way in which my demonstration deals with personal space is the application of magazine clippings to my skin; my personal space was literally invaded by the images of fetishized body parts. This was the performed representation of how fashion images can alter one’s body.