Visual Skills Brief 3 Initial Ideas

Initially from the title 'The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women', I thought of models and sexist/misogynistic advertising, but these ideas seemed pretty cliche and boring.

The word 'myth' immediately made me jump to female mythical creatures, like the gorgon (Medusa), sirens (who lure men to their death at sea with beautiful singing), harpies and banshees etc. I thought I could use the siren quite well - similar to models/advertising luring women into insecurity, but I like the idea of the gorgon - obviously looking at a gorgon causes people to turn to stone, which is quite a good metaphor for women looking at images of 'perfect' women on a daily basis and getting more insecure - i.e. set in stone (get it?!). I thought this could work quite well also if the gorgon was looking at her own image in a mirror, as it sums up the book's contents pretty well.

On the back cover I thought it could be interesting to have a hand smashing the mirror - escaping from that trap of idealising 'perfect' women and belittling ourselves.

Or a model being as equally disgusted at her own image as the ugly gorgon, showing how images or 'perfect' women can affect every woman.

 Another favourite idea was a woman being constrained by tape measures - shows expectations placed on women to look perfect and this is reinforced by images of perfect women everywhere. I think this could be good compositionally - having the tape measures extending to the back cover and one down the spine where the title would be. Yellow (classic tape measure colour) is also eye-grabbing, so would draw potential readers in.