Final Project

Wo(man)ly
(wo)manly

I have overcome many obstacles throughout the semester within the practical aspects of our contemporary media class, in the sense of my ignorance regarding working with video physically as well as working digitally. Not only am I a non-apple/mac user, but I also have never used any of these applications on Windows. I originally had filmed 3 videos and was in process of editing on adobe premier when I noticed it was lagging, not responding; I was having to restart my computer and re-do work a few times, which ultimately led to the temporary “death” of my laptop. I had saved some work onto my hard-drive but not all, huge mistake.
Anyway- This previous work was me filming as more of a modern-day enactment of the writing within many older texts I was reading, books on etiquette and the ways of behaviour in regards to women. 2 videos of enactments and a voiceover of the “rules” of how to be lady like and then the last one a protest of “how to set a-side all the “bullshit”, that I’ve been researching, because I do think after a certain amount of time researching, it starts to have a psychological effect on you. Psychological effect in that I noticed I thought the images coming up in my research were kind of odd because they are set up to be that way, very unrealistic, but then after exposing my self to it, reading the texts and listening to videos, I started to think hey maybe some of these are still true, like good posture is always attractive? I like to put on make-up too? Vanity is a word that crossed my mind several times in regard to these projects but more regarding other people, did it ever cross anyone’s mind that self-care might be important for to one (ie. Pre-1960s) instead of self-care for keeping up an “appearance” of self care. If a woman or man wanted lets say look good- wouldn’t they do it for themselves, like self-satisfaction first? Perhaps this is my modern-day perspective and that it is ultimately too difficult for me to understand the social pressures of that time-period because I am for the most part able to live my life free of many experiences pre-dating the 1960s and even if there was any common ground, its sort of so distorted because everything surrounding that common-ground is also way to different, I think its impossible to compare, whether its low-economic status, society views, the city one grew up in, growing up with parents who grew up in a strict household, or great-grandparents that were in WWI, all have effects on society and the context the future generations live their lives in.

Setting all of this aside- since I have already been reading and researching, once I had to restart the project, I went with it in a different direction. I had read this odd section of a book at a thrift store titled “how to behave at the beach”- also a book written in the similar fashion of etiquette and woman. This section of the book talked about going to the beach, being careful in the sun, making sure that you have just the right about of makeup-, never forgetting sunglasses, bringing a scarf for the breeze, and of course the sun hat, making sure your swimsuit was the right length- wouldn’t want to get in trouble for being too provocative etc.
So then I wanted to do a role reversal... I remembered a piece in the “If you got it, flaunt it” exhibition at McIntosh earlier this year, by Vivek Shraya, a trans artist/actress/musician, who -re-enacted vintage photos of her mother in her youth (in India), and described bringing to light in a modern day versions of those but as a man transitioning to a woman.
I took this as a bit of inspiration in the play of a woman putting on men’s clothes, and a man putting on women’s clothes. The reasoning behind the suit vs swimsuit is generally people dressed a lot nicer then, men especially, and Its where my imagination took me at the end of the day, perhaps my own stereotypes of the 1950’s bringing me to a fictionalized version in my head.
The process involved a lot of research before hand, colour, costume, going through thousands of stock photos and audio files, which may not come off that way but I’m thankful for the knowledge that came a long with that.
I used pro-create on the Ipad pro to create my drawings and added a very old song that just seemed to fit rhythmically while reminded me of this era. It is meant to be shown on two separate walls, ideally across from each-other, the one of the woman smaller and the one of the man quite larger. This is mostly because I feel like the notion of a woman becoming more “man-ly” is more familiar to us, even in film, rather than a man becoming more “woman-ly”.