Redefining The Working Woman
The working woman. She’s power and strength, self-assured, and unemotional. An unbreakable wall. But what position does she hold, and what do we expect of her to gain our respect, what must she do to be accepted. I’ll give you a moment to imagine her: someone steadfast and distant enough that we can’t see the things that make her one of us. That’s because the ideal working woman is not a woman, she’s a man.
In order for the working woman to be looked upon in a positive light; deserving of power, she must first shed her femininity, her womanhood, and hide all the aspects of herself not perceived as professional.
Her emotional depth and ability of expression, her maternal instincts, her sexiness; these are not allowed in a suit. Most often these traits deemed unprofessional are those synonymous with femininity.
As we strive further for equal rights, the next steps are not just to have women in the workplace, but to accept femininity in the workplace. To embrace it, rather than hide it like the soft underbelly that must never be found out, the dirty secret that you are not just a worker but a woman.
We fear our feminity as we equate it with weakness; times of before liberation, a corset belonging to a domesticated housewife. A doll belonging to a little girl being trained to be a mother.
But what can we do with these objects, once used to hold us in, hold us down, define our place.
Creating a doll to be looked up to, rather than looked after. A corset to free ourselves.
In this project, we’re going to explore the working woman through her femininity, redefining the vision we hold of her in our heads through three looks. We’ve put women in boxes through corsets, and again in the shoulder pads of a suit: through this editorial she reclaims her power from the negative space found between.
