Tutorial with Richard//

This morning I had a tutorial with Richard regarding my essay question/topic. Admittedly, I hadn't prepared any essay questions, but I know what I want to base my essay on. From last year, I really enjoyed writing my essay on how women are portrayed in advertising, 'sex sells', nudity, and photo shopped images etc.  

I want to do something similar to this...I explained that I wanted to base my essay on editorial, fashion editorial in particular and looking at improved ways of showing women fashion. Looking at the visual language. Also looking at the colours used , do they use pink and floral colour schemes which gender stereotypes. As well as the typography is it particular 'girly'. 

For my research I can look at the evolution of vogue or other fashion magazines. Vogue in particular as I have plenty of Vogue magazine as I have collected vogue since the age of 14. 

I simply google 'vogue evolution' and found some really interesting possible research topics. Above, Christiana Wong a student working on their senior projects in the computer science department, to explore the graphics. She found the plethora of photographs of female faces in Vogue offered Wong the opportunity to hone her computer science skills and contribute to the growing investigation into “faceism” and its role in depicting gender in the media.

While we may not recognise it, research has shown that we often assume characteristics such as intelligence, ambition, and attractiveness simply based on how a face is displayed in an image. To quantitate this idea, those studying the portrayal of women have created a “faceism index” — a measure of how faces are presented and how that connects with our subconscious assumptions.

Wong is interested in gender and body position in popular media, this could be a really interesting research/topic area. A subject’s pose also speaks to a reader’s subconscious — lying horizontally evokes associations with submissive behaviour, for instance, while upright angles display dominance. Historically, women tend to be pictured in more submissive roles than men.
Thinking ahead, for the practical element of my COP I want to collect my favourite articles from Vogue and other fashion mags and present it in a more improved way of viewing fashion...I could develop a grid perhaps, that works across all pages. This could be through photo collage. However, what I want to steer clear of is creating a hairy feminist magazine. 

Now I know what I want to do, I need to write an essay question.