A Pretty Face by Sophia Wallace
From the series On Beauty, 2010, which looks at the gendering of aesthetics and how the concept of beauty is tied to sexual objectification. I utilized male models–living representations of idealized masculinity–in order to explore the semiotics of the construction of gender. I was curious to see what the result would be if I photographed men using the unspoken rules that dictate the way women are conventionally posed in photographs and paintings. As viewers, can we look at aestheticized vulnerability without inserting a gendered, sexual agenda onto it? What does a rejection of the feminized man reveal about misogyny?