Boy's tears
2021
For part one: bottle of perfume, soft felt, hand embroidered cotton thread. 12 x 5 x 3 cm.
For part two: photography taken by perfume ads on internet, mine photomontage.
I’ve always found annoying perfume ads, because they are a perfect example of a stereotypical body image in the media. Eroticism is usually the basis of advertising for a perfume, and nothing would be wrong with it, except that, usually, the woman wearing the perfume is presented as seductive charmer and the man is a conqueror and predator. Although these ideas are used in many other fields of collective imagination, I find that with perfume ads we arrive at the externalities, the apotheosis of these stereotypes.
One thing that is often forgotten when it comes to discriminatory images in the media, is thinking about the images of men, and ask: do men feel the pressure to alter their bodies in order to become as the image that media shares?
Of course they do, they are equal as women when it comes to being body conscious, body image affect them at the same way.
In perfume ads, men are always represented as strong and powerful. Having an image of a half-naked muscular man may not be so much of an issue for women, but for men, I imagine this must have an effect on how they feel their body. If they aren’t muscly and don’t have turtle shell abs, will they be considered attractive?
And the man wearing that perfume becomes like the man in the ad? or is the perfume aimed only at that category of men who always have the manhood suit ready to wear?
Statistics reveal that men have become just as obsessed about their body image as women, the difference is that men don’t use to talk about it, because it is assumed that, because ‘men are men’, things like this don’t affect them, but they do. Many Men don’t want to feel emasculated by letting on that they are self-conscious, and Not caring about the way you look used to be a typical ‘manly’ characteristic. Whilst the world has been campaigning to get bigger female models in adverts and on the catwalk, have we forgotten that men also have feelings?
In this work I’ve bought a bottle for perfumes that has the shapes of a male body as it appears in perfume ads. Then I called it “boy’s tears”, as an invite to wear their fragilities instead of hide them, because I think it would be wonderful if boys learn to wear themselves and choose to not to be “manly” as it is socially accepted.
The second part of the work is about the men in perfume ads in particular: I just come to wondering if these men, that appears so self-confident and mighty, in real life have a lot of issues (and I think especially with their bodies considering they’re models) or maybe suffer from depression, aspects that the image given by the media absolutely banish because they’re reputed unacceptable for a “real man”.
source for the text and inspiration: http://www.blogs.buprojects.uk/2015-2016/katebloom/2016/01/05/men-and-images-in-the-media/