Highlights
My Story
My work examines the symbolic multiplicity of fashion as its connections to identity, gender, social class, ritual, and cultural history. With a focus on the female form and its intention to please the male gaze, I explore issues of suppression, restraint, and display. My series, Sucked Further In, exposes the politics of power and female oppression through European modes of dressing, focusing on the structure of the corset from centuries past to the present day where it continues to bind and distort bodies. As a cocktail waitress at Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I am required to wear a modern corset, which showcases how centuries-old beliefs and practices continue to manifest in the present. While contemplating the stereotypical perceptions of my costume, my aim is to confirm the long, almost unwavering connection between feminine physical beauty and discomfort.
While the clothing is at the center of the male gaze and women's pain, it's also what lies beneath. From women's bodies literally being reshaped by flat-front corsets in the early 1900’s, to female psyches reshaped by societal pressures and male oppression, the constriction of the corset runs much deeper than its stylish, lace fabric. As Sucked Further In reveals, words and actions constrict women today, just as the corset continues to do like its rise to prominence in the Victorian era. As this issue encapsulates us all, present and through history, words have the potential to make all women feel less comfortable and more constricted. Not only in the sense of fashion, but in their employment, community, and life in general. As such, a historical issue deserves a huge display for social change to be made, and that is Sucked Further In.