By Claudia Sanchez San Miguel As visual communicators we all have a responsibility to be aware of the many messages one single piece of media can convey. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”, popularized by English illustrator Fred Barnard, has been so repeated and used throughout time simply because it is true. In a design context everything has meaning; colors, typography, if the art is printed or digital, size, the use of graphics and photography and many more intricate details work together to deliver one or many messages. When it comes to politics in design you could find hidden messages anywhere- focusing on something as common and innocent as movie posters for instance. Meant to be a marketing strategy and something eye-catching offering a sneak peak as to what a movie is about, movie posters have somehow become one of the many medium which uses the sexualization of women as a selling point, disregarding the socio-political impacts this may have. I bet most people haven’t actively noticed how many movie posters contain the bodies of women but not their faces and this isn’t just the case for older movies which people could excuse with the classic “oh, but it was just another time”, there are many recent examples of this and yes, even in children’s movies like the Minions (2015). Comedian Marcia Belsky started the ‘Headless Woman’ movement back in 2016, creating a website in which people could upload examples of film or tv posters which partake in this design choice. From recent blockbusters like Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) to iconic classics like The Graduate (1967), film posters have taken away female character’s personal value and focused it on what she can contribute to physically. By using women’s bodies as a way to sell and attract a larger (usually preferably male) audience to theaters, a woman’s “value is that only of her sexual appeal to men, and not of her personhood” (Headless Women of Hollywood, 2016). What does this teach younger more impressionable audiences? Seamas O’Reilly states; “the casual dehumanization of female characters is so socially ingrained that a trope this alarming could exist so long without comment.” (The Irish Times, 2018) Sexualizing women has been so normalized for so long that we don’t actively notice these things. If as a kid you are subliminally fed the idea that women are sexual objects- something to look at, then odds are you will grow up thinking that. Thus, proving the impact of design choices on consumers and highlighting the importance of creative thinkers having a critical eye when making these decisions.
During my DPS year I had the pleasure of working in a multi-national company whose posters and promotional content are put up in big billboards or pop up on social media. One of the things my team was in charge of was making image selects for campaigns and approving any type of content related to the running/training business unit. Our tone of voice was based on integrity, wanting to make our customers feel valued but taken seriously, I was lucky to be in a company who was aware of the impact they had. Aside from photographing both men and women and being as inclusive as we could with model choices there are also campaigns aimed for empowering women and creating a safe running community. Within the office we also had talks and events sponsored by the company’s Association for Women (which I joined), offering workshops, access to events and created a safe empowering space within the workplace. By being inclusive and educating both employees and costumers on different social issues, the company also takes a political standpoint and therefore so does the contact they produce. REFFERENCES Piqua Auto Supply House of Piqua (1913) ‘One look is worth a thousand words’ [Advertisement]. Headless Women of Hollywood (2016) The Headless Women of Hollywood Available at: https://headlesswomenofhollywood.com/ (Accessed: 20 April 2023). O’reilly, S. (2018) 'Why is Hollywood fixated with headless women? ‘Headless in Hollywood’ serves up endless examples of how ingrained the movie industry’s dehumanisation of women is', The Irish Times,(March 21). Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/why-is-hollywood-fixated-with-headless-women-1.3428132 (Accessed: 20 April 2023).
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