Event Recap: Women’s Bodies as Borders of Nations
Women’s Bodies as Borders of Nations, the provocative title of AIGA/NY’s panel discussion on December 8th 2016, provided an opportunity for the New York design community to examine the role of feminism and representations of women’s bodies in the media through the lens of design.
The event began with a pre-recorded conversation between AIGA NY Board member, designer, artist and activist Celine Semaan Vernon and Doctor Alaa Murabit, a UN High-Level Commissioner on Health Employment and Economic Growth. The two met at the MIT Media Lab where they are both Directors’ Fellows and they came together around their shared interest in examining the ways cultural values affect our perception of women’s rights and feminism.
Semaan Vernon and Dr. Murabit discussed the media’s role in mediating our perception of body image, the difficulties women face when they choose to wear cloths which may identify them with a particular religion or group, and the larger challenges women still face in making basic choices about their bodies, their sexuality, and reproduction. Dr. Murabit pointedly questioned why a woman’s dress is even a topic for debate, saying, “the only person who is entitled to speak about the way they dress is the person themselves.” When Semaan Vernon asks about the hijab, Dr. Murabit who wears a hijab herself responds by saying “women shouldn’t be propped up based on their dress or physical appearance. Hijab or no hijab women should be elevated based on their work and their actions rather than on what they wear.” This frank and lively exchange provided an excellent introduction to a live panel where Semaan Vernon continued the discussion with Lindsay People, a fashion editor for New York Magazine and Kevin Allred a writer and educator who is best known for his Rutgers University course Politicizing Beyoncé.
With a keen understanding of her audience’s interest in the visual, Semaan Vernon used a series of juxtaposed images as the springboard to move through different topics of conversation. The first pairing, titled body, showed a perfectly photoshopped image of the South African model Candice Susan Swanepoel, best known for her work modeling Victoria Secret’s underwear next to an unaltered image of plus-size model, activist and social media icon Barbie Ferreira.
In response to Semann Veron’s visual prompt, People described her personal goal of representing women as they exist in reality. None of the photos from her shoots for New York Magazine are photoshopped and she strives to create content which features women of color, individuals with disabilities and women who may not conform to the fashion industry’s size norms. Despite her commitment to broadly representing women in the pages of New York Magazine, People spoke candidly about her struggles to get support from editors, publishers and advertisers, saying it’s hard to create really great work when one doesn’t have the backing of the fashion industry. People went on to give concrete examples of well-known brands refusing to lend cloths for shoots they think might be controversial or with models who are deemed too large and she told the audience about celebrity agents asking for photo retouching on their client’s behalf. Mixed messages and double standards are pervasive in the industry according to People. She points to the example of Marc Jacobs who used mostly white models with dreadlocks applied to their heads for his Spring 2017 runway show at the same time as women of color are told they can’t wear natural dreadlocks to work because they look too ghetto.
Responding to the same visual pairing, Allred emphasized how bored he and his students are of seeing women represented as conforming to narrowly defined standards of beauty. Allred says his students are starved for realistic representations of women and points to social media as a democratizing force. In his view, Barbie Ferreira is an example of someone who circumvents the mainstream media, has developed a loyal following, and eventually was able to gain commercial success and representation by a modeling agency. Since there are no arbiters or gatekeepers, Allred says social media allows women to make their voices heard and represent themselves as they want to be seen despite the constraints of traditional media outlets.
Allred, People and Semaan Vernon went on to consider women and sexuality. People talked about her interest in doing stories which cover sex in a way women can relate to and not feel ashamed and Allred said that young people are generally more open and are comfortable seeing sex as long as it is inclusive and the subject is actively engaged in sex as opposed to sex being represented as “letting something happen to her.” The three also discussed media portrayals of motherhood, reproductive rights, the destructive objectification of women, and images of violence against women in the media. There was consensus around the idea that women should be able to do what they want with their bodies while also recognizing that this sentiment isn’t reflected well in current portrayals of women in the fashion design or in the media at large.
Circling back to the idea of the role of the fashion industry and designers in the continued objectification of women, Semaan Vernon asked whether fashion can create a political movement. She gave the example of Repeal, the Irish pro-choice initiative which seeks to give voice to proponents of abortion rights by making clothing with the word repeal printed on each item. Semaan Vernon went on to challenge her audience to redefine the term activist and to cast the word in a more positive light while at the same time acknowledging how controversial fashion activism can be because of the inherent hypocrisy of working in and financially supporting an industry while also trying to change it. She referenced her own background as a Lebanese/Canadian woman who grew up in a very different culture from her audience and described how many people around the world have to live in discomfort, suggesting that today people who live in privilege are feeling some of what marginalized groups have felt for a very long time. Rather than turning from discomfort, Semaan Vernon asked her audience to empathize with others and learn to live with uncomfortableness and even contradictions. This advice aligned well with her panelists’ interests in providing opportunities for women to have their own voice and tell their own stories regardless of whether those stories are comfortable or pre-sanitized. After over an hour of discussion Semaan Vernon closed by inviting her audience to join her and her panelists by acting on their convictions and by putting a proud capital A back into the term activist.
Women’s Bodies as Borders of Nations is part of a series of panel discussions and town hall meetings hosted by AIGA/NY. These inclusive events seek to actively engage the New York designers on topics which are diverse and culturally relevant to our community.
