Playing with Toys

For the third make cycle we did a toy hack. A toy hack is when you take an average toy and do something with it to convey an idea. This can go in many directions but for us we had to convey a scientific issue that touched us. I choose to do mine on the psychological effect of our society's view on women particularly in media. We see over 2000 advertisements a day. On clothing, billboards, magazines, commercials, virtually everywhere. Most of which are depicting tall slender women who have been put through hours of make up and hair and then edited to the point that the pictures don't even look like the actual models. Young girls grow up thinking that they have to look like this to be beautiful. This has caused an overwhelming number of girls to develop eating disorders and other psychological issues. For my make I decided to use a Barbie doll. Just about every little girl in the U.S. owns one. She is the first thing that comes to most peoples mind when they think of beauty. For my make I decided to us one to depict the psychological effects many girls have to deal with every day by showing her standing in front of an image of herself. This image has been distorted to what she sees in her mind that is completely false. I did this by taking a picture of her and using IWarp in the picture editing program Gimp. I am not photographer or editor so this was really hard. I had to restart many times because sometimes she would come out looking like a blob. When I finally go the image distorted to the extent I wanted it I printed the picture off and taped it up so that it would be at about the height of the actual Barbie. I then stood her up and took a picture of her looking at the image trying to show the extreme difference between what she sees and what we see. I hope I conveyed my idea clearly for someone to interpret it without reading my explanation.