Picture time

This past weekend my sister was taking some graduation portraits of me. Being a professional photographer, she has learned all kinds of poses to make the subject appear most “attractive.” As she was taking my picture, I kept thinking of how it related to the documentary we watched about how females are posed in advertisements versus male. Some of her poses she had me do were having my hand lightly on my neck and gazing off into the distance, leaning against a building and popping that one foot or putting my hands on the smallest part of my waist and leaning forward some with chest up. I could not keep a serious expression because I kept thinking of how these were all poses that a man would not be put in. She kept telling me to use my soft “ballet hands” when touching my neck, shoulders or arms. About ten minutes into the shoot I just could not contain myself any longer. I started talking about this class and our documentary and how a man would never be posed in these manners. This then sparked a large debate about what it means to be feminine versus masculine. After saying I wouldn’t take any more pretty girly pictures until she took some more masculine pictures of me for a while, she finally agreed to take some pictures of me firmly standing my ground asserting my dominance.

When we got back home and were recounting our time to our parents and her husband everyone started laughing and saying “oh Betsy, you would.” Of course in her description of my masculine pictures went something like this “she just looked so big and not pretty. They were just very masculine.” The moral of this story is that this class has affected my day to day life and has made me more aware of what is going on around me.