Photoshopping Culture

I took a little twit on this assignment. I had difficulty thinking of and finding an image that has changed over time similar to those of my classmates, who found great examples (che gueverra, marilyn monroe, etc). The first image--or person for that matter, that came ot my mind was Britney Spears, and how the image she portrays to the public has drastically changed over time. This first image is the album cover for Britney's first album, "hit me baby one more time." The image illustrates exactly how the media portrayed Britney at the time--a teen princess who gave away just the right amount of sex appeal.






This second image is from about 5 years later-a time I would label the peak of Britney's career. Here, instead of being a teen princess, she has become a sex iconic goddess. She exudes sex, seduction, and rebellion in this photo. At this point in her career she moved from being a school girl to the rebellious queen of pop who ruled the music industry.





Here is an image of Britney after she shaved her head last year. This is the last phase of britney the media has portrayed thus far--the derranged britney. this image encompasses many photos of britney we see today, exuding pity, sadness, and shame from most viewers.



Lastly,
this is an image I created using adobe photoshop. I layered each of the above photos to create an image of the "collective britney."




While the photos I have chosen are not reincarnated images of each other, I do feel that the image of Britney Spears, like Marilyn Monroe, is iconic in itself. Everyone sees a different person when they see Britney Spears, and I have tried to connect these three personalities.

This year I am doing an independent study in Visual Arts called "Crafting Identity." My project focuses on the notions of craft, domesticity, and the women's rights movement through the context of a series of aprons that I am making. I looked at the above images in the research of my project. The first image is an advertisement I found in the 1944 magazine addition of "Home Companion"--a popular women's magazine at the time. The second image is a still shot of June Cleaver from the popular tv series "Leave it to Beaver" in the 1950s. The third image illustrates three young women in the present, and finally the fourth image is also from the present, illustrating a women in a pink checkered apron.

I chose these images because of the presence of the apron in each, and the different ways the apron is portrayed. In the first image the apron is seen as the appropriate uniform for a patriotic war bride waiting home patiently. In the second image, we see the apron on the quintessential domestic housewife June Cleaver. She is in the kitchen, symbolically "tied" to the kitchen by her apron. The three young women in the third image shows the transformation of the apron from a coverup in the kitchen to an elegant addition at a dinner party. Finally, the last image shows the apron as a seductive garment.

The images each depict the apron in a different way; it is fascinating to think about the context behind each image.