Assignment 7 - Topology - How Skin Interacts With Underlying Structures and Movement

Camille Eudes, How Skin Interacts With Underlying Structures and Movement, 2023

The objective of this project is to observe skin, how it drapes over muscle, fat, and tendons, and how it moves in response to bodily movement, torsion and pull. Women are often critiqued for imperfect skin or skin that isn’t baby smooth. Things such as folds, stretch marks, scars and more are often viewed as ugly or as flaws. I wanted to document various bodies throughout this project since our bodies tell our stories. Making people think about what they are seeing and what parts from the body is shown in these photographs was also important to me because of how subjective societal expectations are. 

While showing this project to some male students, I received some interesting comments that I was not expecting to receive. The first asked me who my models were, and upon my statement that I was not sharing anyone’s identity for privacy reasons, insisted a little bit, and then proceeded to state that he would keep an eye out for a woman with freckles in the same spot that one of my models had hers. I found this to be extremely unsettling, and to me it shows how some men feel the need to have control over women and their bodies. It felt as though by him figuring out this knowledge, he would feel some kind of superiority and leverage over the model. 

Many other men felt the need to point out the fact that breasts and nipples are present in a few photographs, which I doubt anyone would have mentioned had my models been men. 

These experiences speak directly to some of the issues and commentaries that women face throughout their lives. I think that spreading knowledge about how women are perceived and looked at is of extreme importance. I hope that through this project I can also contribute to the spread of awareness & for men to think twice about what they say and/or do. 

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