Women Through the Looking Glass Serena Ngin + Ashley Armitage

WOMEN THROUGH

THE LOOKING GLASS

Writing by Serena Ngin Photography by Ashley Armitage

SERENA NGIN There’s something quite special about girls being able to see themselves through a clear, glass lens. As they jump from one ideal to another, the unique gaiety that they radiate carries excitement for what the future holds.

In a world where millions of children are heavily invested in the media, popular culture figures such as Wonder Woman, Hermione

Granger, Elle Woods, and Katniss Everdeen represent an idiosyncratic strength and independence that captures the hearts of little girls everywhere. They see such figures on the screens and they want to similarly follow in the footsteps of their idols.

Yet, it’s easy to focus on what you’re seeing through the glass lens rather than who exactly is holding it.

The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative conducted a study that found that of the top 100 films from 2019, 89.4% of the directors were males with females composing the remaining 10.6%.

Historically speaking, the Hollywood Industry — responsible for 60% of the global film industry — has consistently had an overwhelming amount of male fingerprints on the director’s chair. In fact, of the five aforementioned feminine figures, only one was brought to life on screen by a female director.

Thus, girls are immediately misled as they’re too young to realize the true impact of consuming a media that is inherently against their own identities. The masculine ideal of what women should represent and how they should physically appear has become so normalized in modern society that females now subconsciously try to fit into the images males have deemed fit.

Even the beloved Disney films that continue to be family classics have their flaws.

Texas Tech University’s Megan Condis conducted a study that found that movies such as Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty all depict a youthful, feminine beauty — all of which are associated with being white and economically well-off. Thus, the lack of diversity slyly begins to take root in the minds of young girls.

The glass lens starts to chip at the edges.

With growing up already being a difficult task to maneuver, having to discover one’s identity in the midst of an onslaught of additional voices screaming expectations creates an entirely new ballgame. As young girls enter their teenage years and become more aware of the world, social media has become a new obstacle to navigate. By targeting young girls and focusing on physical attractiveness through beauty products, diet, and exercise, the remnants of their childhood aspirations fade through their fingers like quicksand.

Bombarded by images on the internet of what the ‘ideal’ body should look like, a toxic culture arises in which society deems a woman’s worth off of her thinness. Enraptured by what’s being presented to them as ‘normal,’ females oftentimes forget that there’s so much more than simply what the media depicts.

For example, Playboy Magazine is known for featuring women who are the height of ‘attractiveness and appeal.’ However, one study revealed that approximately onethird of all Playboy centerfold models met the World Health Organization’s standard for anorexia nervosa, a severe eating disorder that has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. It isn’t beauty that’s being prized in the media, it’s illness.

The lack of transparency from social media platforms doesn’t end there. Should a model, after rigorous dieting and exercise, continue to fail what society deems ‘engaging,’ the use of photoshop certainly fixes any ‘faults’ that may appear. By the time the finished product is launched for mass consumption, reality has become so distorted that women — in their attempts to look like models — don’t even realize that the actual model looks nothing like the photoshopped image in the ad.

University of Pennsylvania’s George Gerber conducted a long-term research study that explored the reception of such misleading media on the feminine psyche. Concluding that continuous exposure to altered images leads to individuals believing edited media portrayals as reality, the research demonstrates the disheartening truth that women begin to believe that it’s themselves who are abnormal.

The continuous internalization of society’s beauty construct — combined with the lack of a recognized force to counteract the negative influence — leads to young women becoming increasingly ensnared. Their mentality becomes so warped that a study at the University of Calgary found that “women do not feel thin until their weight is below 90% of their ideal body weight.”

If the overarching message to women is that they must sacrifice their own health for the sake of societal approval, it’s not the women who need to change. It’s society.

Women are losing sight of the fact that beauty, at its root, is indefinable. The increasing pressure to look a specific way in order to be ‘worthy’ causes authenticity to be hidden away. Thus, women are being robbed of the opportunity for self-discovery and self-love — two things that are essential to not only growth, but also to having a deeper understanding of the world.

The glass lens increasingly cracks.

As adulthood arrives, the difficulties only surmount. The stakes become higher as women’s glass view of the world suddenly becomes much more tangible than they care to admit.

SERENA NGIN In their endeavors to elevate themselves in the workforce, women have to step into a glass escalator and face the reality that men are more likely to not only earn more, but also get promoted faster. Moreover, they can only travel as high as the glass ceiling permits as it prevents women from advancing beyond a certain level. And even if they try to break through that barrier, women often find themselves in a position that involves leading a unit that’s in crisis and has a high risk of failure — a glass cliff reminding women of their place in society.

The fact that the job market revolves around human capital makes the world all the more trying for women. With wage inequality and a nonexistent statutory paid maternal leave being only a few examples of the gender inequity that pervades society, women are at a loss at how they could be punished for being a certain gender — something they couldn’t control. For women of an ethnic or sexual minority, the odds only continue to be stacked against their favor.

In a society that prizes young girls that are compassionate, compliant, and humble, the fact that the world later punishes them for possessing these same values when they need to take time off to raise their children and take care of their families demonstrates how the game of life has always been shaped to women’s disadvantage.

After so many years of interacting with the media and accommodating what society desires, a ripple effect occurs and women begin to habitually settle for less. Recent research found that because females are generally less comfortable with self-promotion than males are, many are wary of being perceived as aggressive or demanding — violating the gender norms that have been instilled since infancy. Additionally, women are more likely to believe that employers will notice and reward good performance without being asked.

The underlying theme of women underestimating themselves demonstrates how hard it is to see clearly when all there is left are chips and cracks and missing fragments of a girl they once knew.

However, it’s these hardships that society and the media have chucked at women that demonstrate that perhaps the very strength and independence that women innocuously clung to when they were little is still there — warped and weathered, but existent nonetheless. The women today may not have the same unlimited power and awe that those on the screen do, but perhaps that’s what makes reality, in all its twists and turns, a gift.

Broken glass is, afterall, dangerously sharp and beautifully complex.

Ashley Armitage is a photographer based in Seattle. Her work focuses on the “female + femme experience, and reclaims representation of women through a girl gaze.”

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