16 december 2025
I had a completely different idea but i was having a hard time really connecting to it because it wasn’t specific enough and it was more about the fact that i wanted to do narrative based work. transformation – a topic i have chosen many times but never been able to quite get into. I do still want to think abt that and use some of the ideas i had but in a more interesting way (because it will be about a topic i actually care about)
i’ve realised if i want to do that it has to be around something niche that i know i am knowledgable about or want to be. pop culture adjacent. so i’m thinking about how the industry hates women. specifically starting with body image.
topics including:
2000s magazines and their effects on young women – the way women are talked about is circular. the iliad, the bible, philosophy books, history books, poetry, newspapers, magazines, blogs, twitter. its all the same again and again.
the branding of britney spears and how she was celebrated then ostracised when she became a real woman.
plastic surgery and how it has escalated so much in recent years.
the popularisation of a ‘stripper’ aesthetic – pleasers being worn by every celeb now.
PLASTIC SURGERY – THEATRE
greek masks being used in tragedies
shakespearean plays with the women played by men
04 january 2026
my views on plastic surgery overall links to this massive subject of the patriarchy. the rise in choice feminism after the METOO movement has made it seem like less of a patriarchy issue and more people wanting to attack women on their looks. both can be true but when the former is so strong and is the original reason for women wanting to get work done we often miss the fact that making the choice to get plastic surgery is not a feminist choice. just because we live in a post METOO society doesn’t mean that every choice a women makes is feminist. we see this, where it is rightfully more criticised, with the new generation of trad wives. firstly women are normally able to spot the cognitive dissonance of choice feminism when it comes to more right leaning women because ultimately the things the right hold dear will never be seen as feminist or include any other intersection of identity the left wants to protect. even with this there are still people that see the illusion of their choice to be tradwives as feminist adjacent. it is not. it is a choice but not a feminist choice. it is a choice only given to them due to feminism, which is where people get confused and how the people who see themselves as tradwives live with it.
07 january
women self monitoring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1e0DFYpegQ instead of focusing on the bad thats happening around them (government/online – the trad wife of it all, religion and the wars going on). looking inwards to have a semblance of control
08 january
regarding the topic of britney spears treatment. i wanna look further in the past and also currently
rachel zegler and millie bobby brown having hateful misogynistic smear campaigns (when millie was VERY young) throughout their fast rises to fame really all based on the fact that they are very talented young women who have always been authentically themselves
09 january
project name
PERSONA!!!!!
persona definition via wiki
A PERSONA (plural personae or personas) is a strategic mask of identity in public, the public image of one’s personality, the social role that one adopts, or simply a fictional character. It is also considered “an intermediary between the individual and the institution.”
The word persona derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.
i think the definition of persona links very well to the topics discussing the way women are discusses among the masses.
the myth of feminine identity by hannah razay – https://medium.com/@hannah.razay/the-myth-of-feminine-identity-2d1b87082e4b
‘ The all-encompassing goddess was fragmented, and her aspects were confined to stereotypes. She became Aphrodite goddess of love, Athena Goddess of wisdom, Hera the wife, Demeter the mother, Persephone the daughter, Artemis the virgin huntress, and Hecate the goddess of death. The great goddess was seen in each of these separate goddesses but never again embodied all. Similarly, women are often expected to fall into the categories of maiden, temptress, wife, mother, or warrior, but in the eyes of society, it is impossible to be all of these things at once. ‘
Botticelli’s Judgement of Paris ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Botticelli-Juicio-de-Paris.jpg ) is a bright colourful version of events. also the only version of this story in a painting where all the goddesses are fully clothed
https://classicalwisdomkids.substack.com/p/the-judgement-of-paris
16 january
i’ve had some time to think because I’ve just really been yapping about the topic but i haven’t set out how i’m going to communicate my project PERSONA.
I think for the DPS i need a smaller umbrella topic and use the main PERSONA topic for third year.
FIRST – new film camera. i wanna use my new film cam to take picks of my girls just being girls or like around the house. to start off the project with no PERSONA
for this is need to 1. learn my cam (almost have) and load it 2. take the pics. this is an easy starting point to just get me into taking and developing pics again
secondly i wanna fully figure out the topic of PERSONA with a essay title.
I’ve been looking online at some examples:
- Study on Gender Fluidity and Visual
Representation in Editorial Photography - Research on the Gaze in Male Versus
Female-Captured Portraiture - Systematic Review of Gender Representation in
Commercial Photography Campaigns - Viewer Interpretation of Power and
Vulnerability in Gendered Posing
none of them quite capture the PERSONA project properly but i can work from it.
19 january
sent my tutors an email just to help me go in the right direction for my dissertation:
(from D)
the unit is called the research project, because there isn’t a classic written dissertation on our course. Students will be expected to create a research question and present their work in a multi-media visual essay or in an audio visual piece (podcast etc). This will respond to one of three themes:
1. The Future Of Industry
2. Creative Employability
3. Image Making and Social Change
(Working Titles – Subject To Change)
3. Image Making and Social Change – is the best theme considering my overarching theme is the persona women put on and are forced into between media and real life. i don’t have a strict idea on how to conclude but its gonna to be to do with how we can photograph differently bc thats my degree so i kinda have to
image making has always been within the eye of the beholder however the control the often male photographers have had over how their often young female subject is shot has more of a lasting effect. whilst people talk about the male and female gaze they’re not actually very different because the how people perceive women has always been bringing one up by shoving others down rather than celebrating them equally. also female photographers and filmmakers have only in the last 20 years really been able to make a name for themselves and to get big enough to break barriers you have to somewhat cater to the male gaze. To combat this rather than changing how we take pictures we need to change how we view women. giving elder women the empathy and grace so that they feel they can grow into their older years without ridicule. appreciating poc features in the mainstream in a way thats not just sexualised, where white women feel if they inject their lips it will make them seem like more of a ‘women’ to men, or mocked and caricatured so much that poc feel the need to get more eurocentric features. this all being under the guise that once they get the surgery done they’ll feel better about themselves, which is unfortunately not true.
new points of interest
- female & male gaze and the disproportionate uses
- the real dangers of plastic surgery and how it is a bigger deal that it gets advertised.
BOOK 1 – BAD TASTE by natalie olah
10 febuary
had a rough couple weeks and forgot abt this. i talked about this project with my dps tutor (oliver) and he kinda freaked out that i wanted it to be my third year project for some reason and said i was putting too much pressure on myself. so naturally i haven’t looked at anything to do with it for 2 weeks.
March 12th
last week thurs i did the riso printing induction and i then went to the v&a to use my film camera.
i want to experiment with riso printing by collaging my own pieces and then printing them. im inspired by Ramisha Sattar (chappell roan’s creative director) dolly parton prints. i want to explore female beauty through collaging beautiful women of the past (icons). im starting with shelley duvall
went to the v&a with my film camera and focused mainly on taking pictures of statues of women. there were lots of different statues from different eras and for different reasons. lots of madonna and jesus’s which i only took a couple of photos of because im not waisting my film on a million versions of the same thing. my favourite were the ones in the sculpture gallery on the ground floor. there’s a variety of different statues from various eras but my favs were of course the greeks. i feel like the statues of women from past decades really show how the constantly changing the beauty standard is and that it isn’t a new phenomenon but a long standing one that reinvents itself every century. everytime a new body standard happens there are the body types that win (they’re finally the standard) and body types that loose (opposite of the standard). however since this is a cycle people who may have naturally had the NEW beauty standard may not be able to participate in the gratifying feeling of your natural body being the standard (for a bit) because they moulded themselves to the old one. in recent years dues to socials the cycle for body standards have sped up but its still the same formula that women from centuries ago had to deal with. obvs this is due to the patriarchy. make women insecure = make money off them, easier to manipulate/control (especially when not eating is the beauty standard) and overall easier to kill the annoying ones off. being ugly is a bigger crime than literally anything at this point and thats not a new concept.
- Only a handful of written sources exist that describe the way Aphrodite looked, and even those give little beyond a vague sense of loveliness.
- Some writers gave her the epithet “Smile-Loving,” indicating that she often had a happy expression.
- Because the gods were perfect representations of human bodies, writers saw little need to detail their physical attributes. The beauty of the gods, particularly Aphrodite, could be understood without detail. The gods could also change their forms. They often changed their appearances to suit their purposes. Aphrodite could have dark hair in one place and be blonde in another.
- Images of Aphrodite have persisted through time, always reflecting the contemporary ideals of beauty.
- The written descriptions of Aphrodite were open-ended enough to allow artists to show her in a way they thought was beautiful for centuries. While later artists were influenced by the paintings and sculptures of Rome and Greece, they had the license to show the goddess of beauty in a way that made sense within their own cultures.
https://greekreporter.com/2025/11/10/ever-changing-standards-beauty-plato-today
It was Plato’s Aesthetics which would establish it as a certain ‘genre’ in regards to perception. It was a form of social and cultural criticism. There were, in essence, three core concepts—beauty, imitation, and inspiration—the mother and father of all the arts. The concept of beauty, nevertheless, is the most intrinsic to these all, given that it is what conceives imitation and inspiration.
There have been philosophical, classical, idealistic, hedonistic, and useless notions of beauty. Yet they all lead to the same end—that is, trying to define the undefinable. The notion of beauty can be perceived as undefinable since beauty actually exists as a differing set of ideals across a broad, individually unique spectrum.