Wowzer, Week 6, already? YES! So, after our last adventure a few things happened, on week 4 we had a field trip, which I was not apart of due to health issues, then on week 5 we had time off, so here we are.

Now, I’m not going to fully convince you what gender identity means to me. Because, to be quite frank, I don’t think about it that often. But I can tell you the effects it had on the world over time, because, oh boy, it has had quite the effect on the world as we know it.

But we will also be covering a lot more than just that here, so stick around and lets see what we can talk about!

Signs

Signs only have meaning because we give them meaning. Throughout childhood and living in society we are taught meanings and signifiers. We know that, smoke equals fire, sadness equals bad, and we know that a forest equals life.
Life is full of signs and meaning and we use them every single day.

Sign = signifier (images/ sound/ word) + signified (meaning)

The Male Gaze.

So, out of all the topics of this lesson, which trust me, there were a ton, this one stuck out to me. It genuinely surprised me when I realized it. Most if not all media we consume comes from what people call “The Male Gaze”, which is, the view point of a heterosexual male. End. Now, lets think about it. What was the last commercial you saw? Did it have a pretty lady in it, maybe something obserdly manly in it? (We’ll come back that and what it means). Well, that’s because most of our media and consumption comes from what males want to see.

These are 2 prime examples, with on of them being very “of its time” when it comes to its marketing while the top is actually far more recent, and still just as consumed in this male gaze. Interesting, right? I sure thought so.

Gender and Identity.

Now, the bread and butter we are all interested in. What is gender. That should be an easy question right? Well… you might be thinking of sex, our biological make up, our X and Y. But gender is far more fluid, and can change and flow.

Now, there were many artist and influential people of the time pushing these boundaries of gender identity, and while I can go through all of them and talk about them all in detail, because all of them have a interesting past and line up of work, ill just be focusing on one of these artist, and arguable the most famous one, or at least where I’m from.

Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist from the 1910s, while I can go on and on and on about her life because of its long track record of events through out her life.
The most important part of her work though, was she did a wonderful job of representing her thoughts a feelings through her art. With many root themes, as well as metal and “self-male” themes. She influenced many trends and has become and massive culture icon in Mexico it self with her face being plastered everywhere.

I think that’ll be all for this part of my blog though, thank you for reading this, I hope it wasn’t too awful to read through! I did my absolute best with this.
Thanks for reading and ill see you next week!

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