in her
IMAGE
By Jessica Langlois, MFA ’10
What happens when women produce, examine, and reclaim images of themselves? Several imaginative projects by Mills alumnae have shown that such actions are steps towards self-determination, empowerment, and equality. Before & After, a project designed by Esther Honig ’12, examines beauty standards across cultures. It went viral last summer, picked up by CNN, Elle, Time, The Atlantic, and Good Morning America. Jennifer Bermon ’93 has been showing women’s strength and vulnerability in her photo series Her | Self, which pairs black-and-white photographs of women with their own handwritten response to the image. She started the project at Mills the year she graduated, and continues to seek out women and their stories today. And this past March, Hazel Streete ’11, MBA ’13, unveiled the mural Her Resilience in Oakland’s Park Community Garden, featuring images of women who have suffered urban or domestic violence. Each of these Mills graduates and their thought-provoking projects aims to return the power of representation, and self-representation, to women.
E
Esther Honig’s original Before & After photo, top, and results from Germany, Morocco, Bangladesh, and Bulgaria.
thinking
Honig said in a phone interview from her
about perceptions of women and the
Kansas City home. Being able to immerse
power of the media to subvert norms
herself in a culture “where the people who
as soon as she arrived at Mills. She read
are considered attractive don’t look like
excerpts of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth
supermodels or actresses back home,” she
and Suzanne Bordo’s Unbearable Weight
says, triggered her interest in experiment-
in her English 1 class. In a public radio
ing with concepts of beauty ingrained in
reporting course, she learned about tell-
women by entertainment media and
ing the stories that the public most needs.
advertising.
sther Honig
started
Since graduating, Honig’s work as a radio
To test those concepts, she sent her
journalist has taken her to several differ-
image to photo editors in 28 different
ent Latin American countries, which is
countries, giving only one directive:
where the idea for Before & After began
“Make me beautiful.” If the editor wanted
to percolate.
more guidance, she asked them to make
“I’ve had the privilege of traveling
her look like what they see in their coun-
abroad as both a student and a journalist,”
try’s fashion magazines. The project was SUMMER 2015
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