Gender Scale?

For my second Gender Collage, I wanted to focus on an individual’s personal point of view on “gender” and what it means. My image illustrates a female individual in her house. She looks into a mirror and recognizes her reflection of that of a man. For me, this is an interesting phenomenon, and one that I believe happens on multiple levels to many people at any given moment.

Now, in order to better explain my work here, I suppose we need to consider the definition of “gender”, so that we can purpose our interpretations of it. Dictionary.com defines “gender” as: “one class of such a set”. From this, we chose to use the work “gender” to distinguish between male and female. So, according to the definition, by using gender to distinguish between male and female, we must see them as clearly separate and distinguished items.

Personally, I regard gender as a sliding scale, especially when we put into account the impact that our commercial and social world has on our perception of “what a man should be”, or “what a woman should be”. At any given moment, I for instance, will feel more masculine then feminine, and vice versa. Of course, modern culture has a term for this too – “tom boy”.

The point of my work is it possible that we all may have a little essence of the opposite gender in us, and it is our struggle to deal with each side as it presents itself. Should we struggle, or should we except? I chose to take myself as I am every day.

(my magazine images were taken from:
woman – Women’s Health – 12/09; p.120
man – U.S. Weekly – 01/11/10; p.35)