Final Project Proposal

Androgynous female model Casey Legler.

I want to focus on a topic that’s very personal to me that has also had a significant impact on more than a few other people that I know. So I’ve decided that I want to center my project on the notion of the “female identity,” or particularly, the lack thereof. I’m a woman who has never identified as anything but, yet throughout my life, because of my androgynous features and sense of style, my identity as a woman has come into question on countless occasions. To this day, I’m still misgendered frequently; as of late, the “sir” to “ma’am” ratio is almost 1:1. 

As we’ve learned from pretty much all of the readings we’ve discussed, there’s a set standard that women are compared to, much more so than men, perpetuated throughout the media. Unfortunately, androgyny becoming en vogue hasn’t even benefited me, because mine is involuntary; my experience is a stark contrast to the prevalent narrative of androgynous and masculine women typically having higher self-esteem. A crucial step in learning how to live with myself is to honestly and willingly talk about the hardship I’ve faced as a woman who’s not conventionally attractive, has never been (nor will likely ever be) conventionally attractive, and whose issues over female identity are further complicated by mental illness, which I very much hope to touch upon in my project, as it plays a crucial role in self-perception. All in all, this project will hopefully open up a dialogue about gender roles (starting in early adolescence), body image, self-identity, childhood trauma, and mental illness.

This project will begin with a zine (mostly visual, likely collage art, but there will also be text-based elements, likely in the form of stream of consciousness or poetry), but it will not end there; there’s so much to be continuously explored, and it would be a disservice to myself and people like me to not turn this into something bigger. The next step is to get more people involved and contribute their own stories of being shamed for the way they present themselves, esp. that of cisgender women or people who formerly identified as cisgender women and were profoundly impacted by these ‘othering’ experiences. I also already have some ideas for other things that I’d like to create through different mediums that I’ve learned and begun to work in during my undergrad career. Ultimately, the goal would be for people, but especially women, to feel comfortable coming forward about their own experiences with gender expression, mental illness, and self-identity, alongside the impact popular media has had on them. I know that my experience might be a unique one, but if I can reach just one person who's gone through similar things, that's more than good enough for me.

Resources (so far):

• Jackson, L.A., Sullivan, L.A. & Rostker, R. Sex Roles (1988) 19: 429. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289717 
• Jill Borchert & Leslie Heinberg (1996) Gender Schema and Gender Role Discrepancy as Correlates of Body Image, The Journal of Psychology, 130:5, 547-559, DOI: 10.1080/00223980.1996.9915021 
• Jodie L. Waisberg MA & Stewart Page PhD (1988) Gender Role Noncomformity and Perception of Mental Illness, Women & Health, 14:1, 3-16, DOI: 10.1300/J013v14n01_02 
• Polce-Lynch, M., Myers, B.J., Kilmartin, C.T. et al. Sex Roles (1998) 38: 1025. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018830727244 
• …and bits and pieces of various readings we’ve covered in this class, which helped inspire me.