SMILE
Smile /
You'd Look Prettier if You Smiled
mixed media collage
2023
About:
As someone who was born female and identifies as female, I wanted to make a piece of art that portrays what it is like to be a woman in society, which isn’t always pretty. I embrace being a woman but living in a patriarchal society makes it very difficult to do so. We are often treated like objects, as something shiny, as something to control. We are expected to smile, apologize, shut up, and tolerate it. To have the perfect body and get married and have children. A lot of women internalize this sort of sexism unconsciously which further feeds into how society views women. When your body and gender are consistently being judged and taken advantage of, when you have to apologize for your mere existence, it's hard to feel comfortable in your own skin. With this project, I hoped to convey how social gender constantly dehumanizes women and enforces conformity.
Medium(s):
paper, printed images, acrylic paint, watercolor, marker, pen