Here are my original images, both ads found for luxury products targeting women in different fashion magazines. I chose them because of their dramatical tone but also because of a disturbing element in each. I felt that both ads misrepresented me as a woman but I also thought of how common this type of imagery is and how immune we become to it.
The black and white image is for Yves Saint Laurent, a high end fashion brand. The woman looks desperate and obsessed with the product, a purse. She also looks weak, powerless, vulnerable and unhealthy and pale.
The second image was one of a series of imagery in a print ad for Rolex. I thought this was extremely disturbing. The female is beautiful and looks young. However, she too looks not only vulnerable and weak, but dead. The scene resembles an eerie crime scene under water. I could imagine the tragic story...clearly not an emotion that Rolex intends to elicit from a viewer.
I remixed the ads to play on their weaknesses and disturbing elements. I tried to tell the stories that were really being told in each ad. One of a woman obsessed with her weight to achieve the unrealistic waif-like shape which models portray. The other, how women are portrayed as weak and vulnerable (because apparently it is supposedly sexy to the opposite sex?) and how this unhealthy image of the body and self are dangerous and detrimental to women.
Filiz
