FRAGILE: AN EXPLORATION OF THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS OF GENDER ROLES

ABSTRACT My recent work is about the expectations of people, especially in their gender roles, but my particular focus is on women and the struggles they endure day to day in a world that still lacks equity and equality. This body of work responds to contemporary society’s expectations for women, and the way women fight to change these subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, expectations about gender roles, domesticity, body image and violence against women. I explore these social constructs and constrictions through the concept of “boxes” and “labels.” For instance, I take a highly functional but overused and overlooked object like a cardboard box as a jumping off point. I examine the meanings of this object, including the promise of a present inside, something bright, shiny, and new–-a sign of change. But I also investigate how the “box” format is confining, prescribed and claustrophobic. To counteract this limiting aspect, I focus on surface treatment and distort a standardized box label with language that echoes through most women’s minds because of the social and gender conditioning starting at a young age. I aim to show how the standardization and commercialization of the common box must be overridden by each of us to find our own voice and individualism. I make abstract work that is personalized, emotional, unique, and meaningful, adding “labels” that have defined how women should look, act and participate in an oppressive patriarchal world. My text, however, satirizes the original standard verbiage in ways that challenge and rewrite the labels we are forced to deal with or fit into. Gender norms can be broken down with discussions and education, something my work attempts to inspire.