The Ideal and Illusory Feminine visually interrogates the fashion photograph as a theatre of performed and masqueraded femininity. The title is adapted from a quote in William Mortensen and George Dunhamโs novel How to Pose the Model (1956) where they state; โWhen the model is before the camera, she represents that ideal and illusory thing - the eternal feminineโ. As a woman who has grown up constantly surrounded by fashion marketing, I am interested in the representation of women and feminine-presenting people in fashion and how this influences individual constructions of femininity. In mainstream contemporary fashion, the pose, gesture, and posture of the female body are indicative of the historical ideals of femininity and work to create and uphold the values and ideals of the feminine. My models and I collaboratively followed Mortensen and Dunhamโs instructions to conform to their demands of what constitutes the most feminine and desirable image, but most of the time they get it wrong. The captions below each photograph are directly taken from How to Pose the Model to indicate the โerrorsโ or successes of the modelโs posing according to Mortensen and Dunhamโs instructions. Through employing methods of performance, collaboration, and parody, The Ideal and Illusory Feminine presents an alternative femininity that highlights how visual representations of feminine subjects contribute to the proliferation of normative female gender codes within contemporary high fashion imagery.
