Modelling Poses. How Women are portrayed.

Modelling poses& How Women are portrayed in them.

Men are portrayed in modelling images with poses as if they are thinking, they look strong, healthy and more importantly sane.

Women are portrayed as if they are day dreaming, they have mad awkward poses, un-natural poses and childish.

Even women of success and power are portrayed in fragile, childish poses. Which aren't natural poses in everyday life, with fingers in mouth and awkward poses.

Women are always thinking of what men see in us, we are watching us being watched and caring too much about are appearances and using things like images from magazines and Photoshop images as what we think we should look like. But all of these are not natural.

I had to do a task today and re-created a Beauty image with a class mate, one being the model and one being the photographer and switching.

In the task I first looked at the pose and the positioning. I looked at the backdrop and lighting and tried to recreate it as close as I could. I directed the model (Sian) to these poses by verbally telling her where to position her head ans where to look, but you need to physically get stuck in and move them to the position you want an help them understand maybe even show them how they need to look.

I have learned how it is to be behind the camera directing and in front of the camera. Directing is difficult trying the tell the model how to tilt and position themselves.

Also I have now realised how hard it is to be a model getting asked to move into different poses it is constant. It felt un- natural the poses we where asked to get into, it was uncomfortable for me and Sian and the poses like 'fingers in mouth and fragile poses' were childish poses. I felt stupid doing these poses that I recreated from the beauty image, the models looked beautiful in them but I didn't feel beautiful posing like that. I would consider the lighting and backdrop more and should have ventured out the room I was in to see the different lightings and been more adventurous. I would look at the image and see how the model looks and how she is supposed to be portrayed to make my images better.

Books to look at:

Ways of seeing- John Berger
The Male Gaze- Laura Mulvey
Paul Messaris review essay
Gender Advertisments- Eving Goffman