male stereotypes

Again we find Barbie’s friend Ryan featured at the Daily Photo Game. Robert’s image led me to all kind of thoughts about male stereotypes, archetypes and body expectations. Women typically bear a larger burden for body expectations, however I thought I would investigate the male ethos around this social affliction. I choose a satirical approach, blending myself into the doll, adding a surreal quality of real and unreal visuals to parallel our cultural expectations in the “real” world. Narrow waist and narrow mindset. I digitally forced my 56 year old body into the outline of Ryan’s form, this was an interesting idea of confinement and an attempt to fulfill the notion of perfection imposed by advertisers and ourselves. I overlaid the dolls plastic highlights onto my own body to further illustrate the false nature of our body expectations and the plasticine nature of its ideal. This mindless idolatry of the physical form is why I included Barbie’s other friend Ken, sans-head. As Robert stated “he’s (Ryan) got no heart” and I wanted to continue that observation with this commentary on the vacuous importance our society places on the physical – whether it be beauty or age. I liked Robert’s shadow box treatment and I thought pairing the two similar environments together would make for a strong visual statement, they will be interesting to see together as a book-matched diptych in my ongoing book on the DPG project, “Conversations“. On a personal note, people have approached me to say I remind them of Richard Gere. This too is a false body expectation, as I have no ownership of their impressions, and still think of myself as the pimply face teenager who had trouble with girls.