Tailor Made For The Male Gaze
Tailor made for the male gaze explores and ironically critiques the use of hyper-sexualised imagery and language in modern advertising. Throughout my final year of study I looked at advertisements that have elements of nostalgia and replicated that imagery in a series of self-portraits. Through this process I grappled with a self-reflective design practise that has prompted me to reconsider the complexities surrounding the male gaze and the utilisation of it in advertising, as well as the role that graphic designers play within it.
"open for business" is based off a 90s GAP advert accompanied by the slogan "the right shape"
This black and white series plays more to the male gaze literally. I am staring to the camera searching for my photographic identity based around the idea of the camera being a males gaze. For these images I looked to famous Calvin Klein campaigns featuring a teenage Kate Moss as the model and a perfume advert depicting a young Miranda Kerr posed suggestively. Likewise, I looked to a Twiggy editorial from the late 1960s to illustrate the longevity of the male gaze and chose to go sans slogans to give the images more of an innocent and open ended feel.
This series I heavily relied on old American Apparel adverts that have been known to be controversial and banned in many countries because of the way the young girls are posed next to sexualising slogans. Here I have accompanied my self portraits with a very poignant quote from John Berger's "Ways of seeing" to describe and visualise, in its plainest form what the male gaze in advertising is. The typographic element is also based off how American Apparel typeset these particular campaigns.
