When it comes to stereotyping women, nothing stands out more than their obsession with fashion and their discomfort with technology. Not only is the presumption sexist (all men are just as likely to be not as well versed with technology as a similar percentage of the female population), it actually discourages little girls from developing an interest in technology at an early age. Another equally sexist presumption about women is that they prize fashion above all else since men these days care about their grooming and clothing just as much as women. However, designers Jennifer Shannon and Andi Cheung thought it would be a good idea to depict these negative stereotypes about women through an art piece that uses a bikini (which promotes the idea of women as sex objects) covered in hardware from junked old computers.
Created for the Recurring Concepts in Art class taught by famous art historian and the Guggenheim Museum’s Education Manager for Adult Interpretive Programs, the piece is supposed to be a commentary on stereotype threat, women in technology and wearables where the students were required to repurpose their old projects without using the help of technology.
As far as the project being a response representative of gender stereotypes faced by women when technology is concerned, the piece does more to reinforce them rather than educating us otherwise. Bits of old computer parts on what appears to be a very prickly bikini isn’t very thought provoking or stereotype breaking or even functional by any stretch of the imagination is it?
Via: Andi Cheung
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