Challenging Societal Beauty Standards: Sarah Landry Empowers Women
At the beginning of this create to learn process, my partner and I began to analyze Sarah Landry’s instagram profile in a critical way and came to a thesis surrounding one image highlighting the stretch marks Sarah has in glitter. This original thesis focused on Sarah illuminating the beauty of the realistic female that is usually edited out from images, as she challenges these social beauty standards too. As we dug deeper into her instagram history going all the way back to 2016, we began to narrow in on a more focused and direct thesis about Sarah’s journey as an instagram creator and body-confident advocate. We soon changed our entire project to now focus on Sarah’s journey as a digital author from adhering to challenging the societal beauty standards through the years. I learned that through analyzing a creator’s instagram history, one can discover a journey about their digital creator identity, rather than just forming an impression from the creator’s recent posts from the past month. This made me realize that my instagram also shows a journey from me as a teenager to now. Someone could easily analyze my digital author journey from posting filtered images of random items like potatoes to now occasionally posting authentic, unedited images of my family, such as when we went apple picking.
From this project, new ideas emerged about the creative process based on the limitation of creating a video only lasting 5 minutes, as well as how to best present the images to support the thesis in this short amount of time. My partner on this project, Kelsey, and I started this project with over 20 images to use as evidence, a script that was significantly over the 750 word limit, and a recording lasting substantially over 5-minutes. We took a significant amount of time trimming down our content to shape the thesis we wanted to share with an audience. We did this by analyzing each photo and sentence in our script to decide if it contributed to our thesis in any way. After this process, we narrowed it down to 12 images that focused on the aspects of Sarah’s journey we wanted to highlight, as well as a script that comes to a little over 5 minutes. We also spent some nights purposefully choosing how to format the visual for our script, so that it clearly demonstrated and complimented our voiceover. We eventually decided to limit the amount of slides, now down to four slides, and juxtapose the images within the slides themselves. This process cemented the idea in me that the create to learn process takes time to incubate and multiple edits before it displays the true idea of a thesis. It includes leaving and coming back to your thesis, script, and visuals before the idea begins to take shape.
By completing this project, I have learned that I engage in the create to learn process more effectively when it is done collaboratively. Kelsey and I were in constant communication about our assignment and bounced ideas off of each other daily, as well as meeting one to two times a week to collaborate. We did not work on this assignment separately, but rather wrote the script and created the visual as one. Through this process I learned that Kelsey knows more social media creators than me, as she is the one that presented multiple creators for us to discuss and choose from. I also learned that Kelsey and I have the same drive to learn and create through a slow process, rather than creating our entire project in one night.
Although this create to learn experience was engaging, there were a couple aspects that I disliked about this project, such as having a time limit on the video. This limitation resulted in us taking out information from the script that I feel was important to support our thesis and Sarah’s journey overall. Furthermore, I was unsure how to interweave the concepts and ideas from class into the assignment naturally, but hopefully we did it justice!
Overall, I loved the collaboration that was embedded into this project experience, as well as the freedom to choose a content creator that connects with my lived experiences! This connection made me feel more invested in this assignment. Furthermore, choosing the creator made me more interested in researching her story and progress throughout the years, and it allowed me to form a connection to her as a creator too. #EDC534
Works Cited
Body & Beauty Standards. Bradley University. (Updated 2021, March 26). Retrieved February 24, 2023, from https://www.bradley.edu/sites/bodyproject/standards/
Hobbs, R. (2017), Create to Learn. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (n.d). Home [Instagram Profile]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/thebirdspapaya/
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2016, November 22). I’ve never really posted anything like this before so apologies if it’s a bit risqué. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BNHHHBkDL85/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2017a, January 2). I’m claiming 2017 as “the year of the veggie” in my world! [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BOyDHd7DCdd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2017b, March 15). It may never be my favorite part of the day, but it is without a doubt one of the most critical. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BRrouMoBWwV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2017c, June 17). Yesterday, I watched as she sat down on the porch, opened the magazine, and began to read. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BVcQ-g6BDIz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2017d, October 24). In that first picture I am wearing all maternity clothes, just…I wasn’t pregnant. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BaoJEswng8Q/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2020a, April 26). One year ago! This cover would come two years after my first, where I freaked out and was frantic about showing ONE INCH of my stretch marks… [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/B_cYig_lhKT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2020b, June 29). Having a great time in the summer sun! That should be the caption. That should be the end of the post. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CCBXP4TlGMy/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2020c, July 24). The very definition of stretch is to be made or be capable of being made longer or wider without tearing or breaking.[Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CDBaGyXF89D/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2020d, December 1). I want to be surprised and shocked, but I’m just not. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CIRUX65ll_X/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2021a, November 22). Problem areas I need to work on: Active listening. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CWl948zlTtC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2021b, December 6). I know it’s hard when you’re validated at some times and not others, but yet…you are all the same. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJpyVOF-3-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Landry, S. N. [@thebirdspapaya]. (2023a, January 1). I have been making so many efforts to live life in a forward motion. [Photograph]. Instagram. Retrieved February 24, 2023 from https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm4qMJ9PD3Q/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The Birds Papaya. (2023b, February 22). Retrieved February 24, 2023, from https://thebirdspapaya.com/
