punkxchloeroberts-blog

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Reflection

Through out this project I have collaborated with students who I would never have collaborated with, such as a student studying knit with me who studies Graphic Design. I chose the punk project for my unit X to get a whole new experience of a different course and see what skills I could gain from this. When introduced to the brief it really excited me that we would be making a zine because I already had knowledge on how to make a layout and had a good eye for graphics. However, I have never really worked with indesign before and so creating the zine was a challenge for me. I volunteered to make the zine for the group because I had some knowledge about the software but it was all a guessing game and had to teach myself a lot of it. I really enjoyed making my nipple patterns, one of the main things I love to do is play around with illustrations and pattern. I never get the chance to do this on my graphic course and so this was so fun and exciting to be able to play around with this, I have really enjoyed researching into recent protests and interpreting punk in my own way. Free the nipple is a really interesting campaign, which personally I don’t fully agree with because why would girls want to walk around topless, surely we want to have some mystery about our bodies, but suppose this is the whole point of the campaign. I really enjoyed turning my research into creating unusual patterns you don’t see every day with it. One of the main things I am proud of during this project is creating my nipple bras, I have never made anything like this and so it was a great success to be able to print my patterns onto fabric and add them into a non-padded triangle bra. They relate so well to the theme. They don’t look punk and are not the traditional idea of punk, but my reason for this was create a bra as something girls are expected to like and wear in society, the same way we are expected to wear bras and cover our nipples. I wanted to play around with that idea and have it as a propaganda piece. To improve this piece I should have made more and made some from scratch rather than adding the fabric into the cup, however I would not know where to start with this. I would have loved to asked one of the fashion students within my group to help me create this but she was never in sessions for me to discuss this idea with her and so it was hard to collaborate in this way. As a group we did not work well together at all. Through out this project I felt like I have been nagging my group to meet up and get ideas together but we never did. At the beginning it was very slow moving and we hardly communicated and so I decided to take on the role as team leader and try get the group together so we could all collaborate as a group. However, this was really hard because group members would ignore my messages to our group chat or we would organise meet ups and group members would not turn up. As a group we did not communicate and collaborate well at all, I did not know what my group was doing as an idea at all until the end and we had to come up with a theme to join all of our ideas together, which was equality. When our group finally got our theme of equality we all did start communicating more and trying to organise shoots together. However, again when it came to organising shoots there would be lack of communication and we found it hard to plan a shoot. I kept messaging the group chat asking to organise the shoot and asking when to do the shoot so I could let our model know but nobody would reply and so the shoot was left till last minute to organise. Which was really disappointing because I wanted to organise it well so it would have turned out more successful.   When it came to making the zine I had been asking my group to email their work and help me put the zine together for weeks so we had it prepared and time to improve it if anyone was unhappy with the zine. I had made all my layouts and my own zine because was scared we were not going to produce a zine because none of my group members was sending me any work. Unfortunately nobody in my group sent me their artwork for the zine until two days before we had to have the zine displayed for the exhibition, leaving it all a big stress for me to make the zine. I was up early and in bed late making the zine and trying to make it perfect for everyone. There was on incident where I was crying next to my laptop because the indesign document kept losing images when transferring it over to the iMac, one girl in my group then accused me of doing nothing after she had only been in university for one hour. This caused more stress and made me feel very disheartened about all the work and input I had put towards the zine. The same girl then once seeing the final outcome of the zine cried because I had not placed all her artwork into the zine, my response was that she was not there to help or direct me through the making process and I did not know what she wanted me to put into the zine. If artwork had of been sent to me weeks or days before like I asked we could have had this time to discuss and improve the zine. I was really upset by this and upset that nobody helped or had any input towards the zine and was all left for me to do the night before. 
The exhibition was a great success, all of our work looked great on the wall together, especially with the fact we had struggled as a group to communicate. I can’t believe we made it all come together, from in the morning of the exhibition the zine was not binded and the nothing was on the walls. I had to go into book binding and use the stapler machine for the first time to bind the zine together. The pages on both zines did not sit straight and so I did speak to the book binding lady about doing perfect binding with PVA glue. However myself and Ellie who helped me with the binding decided that this worked really well with the punk theme as we do not follow rules as a punk. The images and artwork in our exhibition all had similar colour themes through out. I really like that there was a great diversity of work spread across the wall from collage, stitch, photography, garments and illustrations. Overall, I have enjoyed the project. However it has been very stressful and I am glad it is over due to my group not communicating and collaborating very well. I felt I was trying my hardest to work as a group, meet my group out of scheduled sessions and they were not. I have learnt lots of skills from this project and will take it as a big experience, from meeting new people, making new friends and learning new skills and also dealing with difficult people and leading a team.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Investigation

To investigate my research further and develop it into artwork I began researching into an artist called Julia Rothman. She is a repeat pattern artist who illustrates simple images and colours them bright digitally and then brings them together on photoshop to make into a pattern. She inspired me to gather all my drawings together and create a repeat pattern of boobs and nipples. Looking at Rothmans patterns she always has a colour theme happening through out her patterns and so I concentrated a lot on colour and tried to keep most of my patterns and illustrations natural/nude colours. Rothman also adds colour behind her patterns into the background which can liven up the pattern and so I experimented a lot with colour in the background, seeing what would work with my illustration and experimented with adding mixed media of inks and other patterns. However, after playing around with this, I really liked keep the patterns clean and simple with a white background as it keeps all focus on the nipples, which is my main theme of the patterns. To play around and experiment further with my patterns I began adding text over the top and creating them into typography pieces. My favourite outcome was cutting out letters with a scalpel within the pattern, I think this could be really interesting and work well in the zine. I then decided to develop my work further by creating collages of Barbie because Barbie as a naked doll has no nipples. I feel like Barbie would be an image really interesting to play with because she is the typical girls toy and there has been a lot of arguments about her setting unrealistic body images and making girls ‘sexualised’. However, what stand out the most is that she has no nipples yet a Ken doll does. This just shows that girls nipples are not accepted and are sexualised for them to not be used on toys. I played around with this idea by collaging a mens chest onto Barbies and also adding hair onto her legs. I also collected images from fashion magazines and comically collaged them together by adding hair onto models legs, mens chests covers girls in bikinis and barbie doll heads covering models faces. A lot of these collages were inspired my Linder Sterling, especially ones of which I am covering girls face and taking away all their identity or maximising their features by adding bigger lips onto them. I wanted to play with the idea of unrealistic body ideas by collages images of models heads and legs together, taking away the body totally. I didn’t want my collages to be serious, and take more of a comical approach. As the Graphic Designer in the group I volunteered the task of making the zine, which at first I thought would be really enjoyable and fun. I began adding my artwork into layout pages and playing around with fonts, places of images and sketching out thumbnails to how the zine could look like. After I had done this, I sent images to my group asking for their opinion and input so we could all collaborate and make the zine together. I asked them to send over their work as PDF file so I could start placing the zine together so we could all collaborate and make sure everybody is happy with what artwork goes into the zine and how many pages everyone has. However, my group would read my messages and ignore me. This has been going on since the start when we tried getting an idea for the zine. I had been asking to meet my group outside of timetabled sessions to discuss the zine layout and for them to show me what work they have produced so we have an idea how the zine is going to look and if everything works well together, however people ignored my messages and we would arrange to meet but nobody would ever turn up. I had no idea what work my group have produced and no idea how they want the zine to look like. We found it so hard to collaborate our work together for the zine and as a whole because nobody would communicate. I really wanted to create some nice artwork and collaborate with my group because we all have skills which go hand in hand. Textiles, fashion, interactive arts, fashion art direction and Graphic Design. I tried my hardest to take control and be the team leader but nobody collaborated or had any input to make this project a group project. There is no communication flowing and its quite disheartening when I’m trying my hardest to keep everyone updated with what work I produce and what ideas I have for the zine but nobody communicates back with their ideas or input and so its near impossible to make the zine a group creation. I decided to take matters into my own hands and play the guessing game on how much work people had done and what ideas people had been working with so  sketched up a basic zine layout just so we all had a brief idea to what the zine layout is going to look like. I sketched up thumbnails of the layout to help myself and the group, sadly when I sent these thumbnails into group chat still nobody sent me their work over email. In the end I started producing my layouts for my work as this is the only work I currently have to play with and made my own individual zine incase the group one didn't play out. Whilst creating my own zine and having the group zine in mind I made some backgrounds for both zines, using collages of found materials and ink. I gathered paper which had floral patterns and painted over the top with aggressive black Indian ink to take away the cute girly feel to them. I think they worked out really well and will look great to use as background in the zines. 
After a timetabled session with those of my group who turned up to the session we finally discussed our ideas and what people had produced within the group and so decided to plan a photoshoot relating around my idea of free the nipple and equality. After the session I felt very stressed because most of our groups work did not match or relate together and I could not understand one of the girls work in the group, however to collaborate together I suggested we use her work within the photography and collage it all together nicely. She really liked this idea and so helped me with the photoshoot. After a few days of planning the photoshoot I had brought along a model who was confident enough to model topless and a few outfits while others in my group came alone and helped with styling the model. Gabi in my group is really good at photography and so helped us with the photography. The shoot was a great success and really fun, it was a bit all over the place because of the lack of communication and not as planned as I would have liked it to be but we had a laugh and got some great images from it. Our main aim was to photograph girls looking confident with their nipples out in a public area and going about their every day life and so we have the model pose with a cigarette, having a laugh with other girls, stood under a street lamp and a location of an alley having brick walls as the background. After this shoot I decided to take the photos and collage them with the backgrounds I made creating some really nice photo montages. To begin with I printed out the images on transparent paper so we could see what the images would look like with collage showing through and then to develop this I cut out the model in the images on photoshop and placed her over the top of collages with messages such as ‘get them out’. I really like how I added a white outline around the models, separating her from the collage. I used the floral collages which I made because I like this idea of playing around with the typical girly idea and how girls should be but twisting it around to having us take our bras off in public and having our nipples out.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Research

Through out this project I have done a lot of research. To begin with I went to a protest fashion show which fashion students collaborated with fashion art direction students and interactive art students to make. It was really fun and an interesting event and I loved seeing garments other students have made and the reason behind it. I attended this event because of the word ‘protest.’ The idea of protesting and rebelling against something reminds me of punk. This show inspired me to perhaps interpret punk in my own way by playing with the idea of rebelling and protesting rather than focusing on traditional stereo typical idea of ‘punk.’ A lot of the time those who was ‘punk’ would base their clothing and appearance because of politics to rebel against something they don’t agree with. One garment which really inspired me was the knitted dress a girl was wearing with a cut out circle around her boob. It was a shocking piece but really said a lot about feminism and ‘free her nipple’ protest which is on going. To get more of a feel about what punk is I went to special collections to see their punk collection. They had a lot of Malcolm Garret zines and garments. I found it really interesting to see clothes that punks would wear in the 70s. To imagine people walking down the street wearing clothes like that in a time where it was unusual and had never been seen before. Those who did wear that stuff must have had a lot of confidence and felt so much passion towards being different. There was tops full of swear words and one of my favourites was a top with Minnie and Mickey Mouse having sex. It showed that they really did rebel against society. We had a selection of books to look through which was really interesting to look at as they told us a lot of information about punk and how it all began. I really enjoyed looked at the zines and how they have been made, a lot was very simple and had a DIY feel about them, involving a lot of scanning and drawing through out them. As a class we looked at ideas of ‘modern punk’ such as recent protests, debates, movements and recent revolutionaries and modern ways of rebelling. As a class we looked at a whole spread of subjects which all characterised under either feminist movements, fashion or politics. Which told me ‘modern punk’ is all about feminism and ways we express ourselves to get a reaction out of the general public. One thing which stuck out the most to me was Jayden Smith recently doing a photoshoot in womenswear to communicate across transgender and idea of there being ideal images for genders. I really like that he is modelling for big fashion brands and not too shy to keep to the traditional way a man ‘should’ look. Another which caught my eye was the fact a man has been used in an advert advertising foundation. This really does shout modern age and we are becoming more accepting to the diversity in people. Myself and a classmate researched into a young girl who recently fled North Korea. Yeonmi Park, fled at age 21. She saw a woman she knew be tortured and killed for committing a crime of watching South Korean films and lending DVDs to friends. She fled to South Korea to tell her harrowing story of torture and explain how free she felt only 35 miles away from the North Korean border. After researching into a subject of ‘modern punk’ we then created a mood board explaining how we would photograph this subject. We chose to focus on the idea of Yeonmi Park feeling free and escaping a toxic world. We looked at the location of a clear field with blue skies and a neutral coloured loose dress. The outfit was a debate as I also liked the idea of using nude underwear, the idea of her feeling no restrictions in an open environment. We looked at pastel, calm, neutral colours and using natural makeup with a Korean model. We chose everything to be natural because the idea is that she has only just escaped and haven’t yet had chance to develop or own personal self. In South Korea she did not have the opportunity to blossom into herself and so everything is kept plain with no show of characteristics. This task really helped develop into my own research as it opened me up to new skills of planning photoshoots and looked more in depth to how we communicate through an image. My group decided to focus on our own interpretation of ‘modern punk.’ To begin with we all decided to look at todays fashion and how we use concepts from the punk movement. Which lead me to look at how we have brought back baggy leather jackets, ripped jeans, DIY culture and band t-shirts. I was focusing on how we have incorporated sequins, lace and embroidery on top of this. This really interests me because its two worlds which do not match. Floral embroidery and leather studded jackets would never have been put together until recently. I love that they clash and work amazingly together and in a way don’t follow the rules of a typical ‘punk’ stereo type and involves nature and a pretty concept to it all. I really like the combination of manipulating a band t-shirt in a DIY culture by adding lace or embroidery by cutting and sewing around seems. I would quite like to manipulate and experiment with my own band T-shirt in the Riot Grrl DIY culture way creating a ‘modern punk.’ After a talk from Judy Blame, who did a whole lecture showing us his work and telling us what it was like to be apart of the punk movement there was one piece which really stood out to me. Which was a designer denim jacket which he had personalised with lace, badges and paint. He took a high end fashion item and turned it into his own, which in a way, is what the punk movement was. Being its own individual. To help me research more further into this I began my secondary research by collecting images off blogs on Pinterest and also looking through fashion magazines to get a real feel for todays fashion using ‘punk’. I made some mood boards using images I had found and fabric samples with sewn on beads to try show my idea of modern punk. I was mainly looking at how we have made punk into something glamorous and girly and so focused on pink leather, floral embroidery and lace on band t-shirts. However, as I carried out my research for this I wasn't finding much inspiration and couldn't find any ideas which I could create some artwork from this. I want my work to be shocking and catch peoples eyes the same way the punk movement did in the 70s and this idea wasn’t shocking and so I carried on researching into recent protests. I carried on researching around the punk movement and a lot of research about the Riot Grrl movement. Riot Grrl is an underground feminist punk movement that originated in the early 1900s. It is also known as a musical movement in which women could express themselves in the same way men had been doing for several years throughout the punk movement. Riot Grrl would often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy and female empowerment. Riot Grrl was a subculture which involved a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action and activism. I particularly like the layout of Riot Grrl fanzines, it has given me a lot of inspiration for when it comes to designing my own zine. Young women would spread their feminist thoughts and desires through creating punk-rock fanzines. The most interesting thing I found out during my research was how feminism stemmed from the Riot Grrl movement. Riot Grrls gave girls that girl power to stand up for themselves and start expressing issues through music the way men had been doing for years. This then made me think how much girl power has progressed over the years and how things really have changed. Girls aren’t expected to be housewives any more, yet its now become the norm for girls to go onto higher education, get careers and choose careers over a family. We now have choice, and a voice for ourselves. We have things like a house husband, and men help around the house more now than they did 10 years ago. Feminism was massive years ago and it was a big deal to see girls stand up for themselves. I researched into Linder Sterling, a well known radical feminist and figure of the Manchester punk and post punk scene. She studied Graphic Design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1974 to 1977. Sterling is mainly known for one of her early photomontages featured on the cover of the Buzzcocks ‘Orgasm Addict’ single. Linder often combines images taken from pornographic magazines with images from womens fashion, domestic magazines. She particularly liked combining domestic appliances and making a point about cultural expectations of women and treatment of the female body. She enjoyed experimenting with enlarging the mouth or collaging smiling mouths over nipples because women do not have free speech and the treatment of the female body was quite often sexualised with the mouth. All this research encouraged me to go down the pathway of focusing on modern feminist protests such as ‘free the nipple.’ I collected a few articles together explaining what the movement is. It is about equality between genders. One thing which stuck out to me the most was the quote.. “in the 1930s mens nipples were just as provocative, shameful and taboo as women’s are now. Men were protesting in much the same way. In 1930, four men went topless to Coney Island and were arrested. Men fought and they were heard, changing not only laws but social consciousness. By 1936, mens bare chests were accepted as the norm.” It inspired me to make a whole zine relating on equality to support women getting the same treatment as men. To research further into this theme I have chosen to base around my punk project I collected some images from Pinterest blogs and posted a status on Facebook asking people their opinion on free the nipple and if anyone would be open to sending me images of their chest. It was surprising how many girls felt comfortable to send me images of their boobs over Facebook and how many men did not want to. I created some mood boards of current artwork surrounding the campaign to illustrate my initial ideas. After gathering all these sources of secondary research I was feeling quite lost with the idea and so began illustrating and hand drawing nipples and boobs which then inspired me to take them further into editing them digitally on photoshop.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Each group was asked to produce a poster for the event. Myself, Lauren and Ellie all produced this poster by scanning in Lauren’s fabric piece of pins and cropping it to add text onto. Our poster wasn’t chosen as the final one but our group really like how the poster looks and so might use it as a flyer for our group part of the exhibition.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Today Ellie in our group went to Cass Arts to view the exhibition space. She sent the group a video of the space and some images. I really like how open the room is, the walls are like a blank canvas. I think it would be nice to have garments, and collage pieces hanging from the walls. Its a great space for an instalment which relates back to the zine. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

This is some examples of the double page spreads I produced today. A lot of the spreads have quotes from feminists or facts about free the nipple. The spread which is third down is an interview with a researcher who is against #freethenipple I really like this layout. Its really busy but also easy to read and I love how I've used collages I made for background. I am really proud of the outcome of these spreads and thing they will look great in an A5 zine. I love the collage feel and clean finished look they have to them, the splash of black ink gives the pages that rebellious punk feel. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

As the graphic designer in the group I assigned myself the task of producing the final zine on InDesign. For a few days now I have been asking my group to send me PDF attachments of their work so I could start planning how the zine would look and have an idea as to how much work everyone has and how we can collaborate everything together as a group. Sadly my group would read my message and ignore me. I have been asking to meet my group outside of timetabled sessions to discuss the zine layout and for them to show me what work they have produced so we have an idea how the zine is going to look and if everything works well together, however people ignore messages or arrange to meet and never turn up. I have no idea what work people in my group have produced and no idea how they want the zine to look and how we can collaborate our work together. I have tried my hardest to take control and be the team leader but nobody collaborates or has any input to make this project a group project. There is no communication flowing and its quite disheartening when I’m trying my hardest to keep everyone updated with what work I produce and what ideas I have for the zine but nobody communicates back with their ideas. I decided to take matters into my own hands and play the guessing game on how much work people have so we all had a brief idea to what the zine layout is going to look out. I sketched up these thumbnails of the layout to help myself and the group, sadly when I sent these thumbnails into group chat still nobody sent me their work over email. I have started producing my layouts for my work as this is the only work I currently have to play with. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

I used my patterns which I made to make a triangle non padded bra. I printed my nipple pattern onto cotton fabric by simply putting the fabric through my printer. I really think the bra turned out a great success and I am very proud it the final outcome. The colour of the lace and the pattern work really well together and the bra would probably fit a 32AA/30A. I wasn’t sure how to make the cups a bigger size so kept it flat for a flat chested model. I chose to make a bra because its something which covers up girls nipples and something which men do not wear. I thought, why not make a bra which slightly covers the nipples with lots of nipples. I like to call it ‘the nipple bra.’ I showed the bra around uni and to friends and family for feedback and they all love it very much and say it works really well with my project. A lot said they love the fact its lacey and very girly. When it comes to feminism we all imagine anti pink lesbian feminists. However this is not the case, and so I made a point of the bra being pink with lace to show that not all feminism is like that. Some others saw the bra being pink and lace as a sarcastic approach saying a girl has to be girly and wear a pink laced bra and viewed the bra as a propaganda approach. If I'm honest, I like both views to the bra and wish any viewers to interpret however they like because both views work really well with the project and piece itself.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

I added typography onto my pattern and it works really well. It looks like a campaign poster or leaflet. I can really picture this being in the zine with a page next to it explaining what #freethenipple is. I really like how cartoon this design looks. The font works really well with the pattern. The reason I chose that font is because it looks quite punk and as though someone has spray painted over the pattern. I used the colour white for the font because its quite modern to use white fonts as titles rather than use black fonts. You see it more often in magazines and adverts now. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

I created this pattern in the same process as my other patterns but was more careful with where I placed my drawings as I wanted the small nipples to fill in white space and spread out the food nipple alike objects equally. I made this pattern as a comical approach to the idea by using food which we associate to look like boobs and nipples.. melons, fried egg, lemons, oranges and doughnuts. It adds more colour to the pattern and makes the pattern look more interesting and makes the audience question why the food and nipples? It looks so random but works well. Its not my favourite out of the patterns I have made, I prefer keeping them to just nipples and boobs as it keeps to the main focus and doesn’t distract us too much. I also like keeping the colours nude on the other patterns, it works better than adding bright colours and food.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Another variation of a pattern I created by drawing everything by hand and then scanning the drawings into photoshop and adding colour and structure to the pattern on photoshop. I chose to make this a repeat all over pattern of nipples and boobs. I want this pattern to show that all nipples are different, including the gender of the nipple. Again, I like that you can’t tell the gender of these drawings and the diversity of them. This could be used as a sticker page inside the zine for people to free the nipple by sticking nipples everywhere. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Nipples.. nipples and more nipples!

Using a black fine liner I drew these nipples by hand and then scanned them into photoshop. I then edited the levels of the drawings to make the lines more black and bold and brought them to life by adding colour on photoshop. I like that I coloured them in on photoshop instead of by hand. It makes them look more digital and flat and adds to the pattern. I think if I had coloured them using watercolour or acrylic by hand it might of made the pattern look to busy and less finished. I really like this pattern, it looks quirky and different. I also like that you can’t tell whether the nipples are male or female, the idea that all nipples are the same and it shouldn’t matter the gender.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

I illustrated these on illustrator and brought them into photoshop to add colour. I really like the digital, simple feel they have. They look clean and finished. I decided to experiment with colour by making the illustrations with natural skin colours but then play with bright colours. The bright coloured illustrations give a 80s disco pop art feel about them.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Today we had a paper workshop with G.F Smith and it amazed with how much paper actually exists out there. We looked at how different papers can leave different finishes and feel as part of a zine. We looked at how we can mix and match papers inside the zine to make the readers experience of the zine more exciting. We looked at different textures, weights, colours, sizes. We also looked at different ways of binding our zines together. 

After looking at existing zines and ways of binding we all got into groups and discussed which paper we would like to use in our zine. By taking out samples and bringing the samples together to see if they work nicely together we came up with some nice colour combinations. One of our favourite papers as a group was a black glossy which we like the idea of embossing black matt text over the top of it. 

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Today I did a mind map in my sketchbook of ideas of artwork I can create. I want to do some experimenting of ways I can communicate #freethenipple in my zine.

Some examples of my ideas are doing a scanography shoot of a Barbie doll, adding nipples onto the doll as the Barbie doll wasn’t made with nipples in the first place. I could then play with typography in the zine and have hand made fonts going over the scanography images or writing surrounding the doll in the white space. I could even have writing context as the Barbies nipples as though she has been censored out with information about the campaign.

I would like to play around with collage by cutting up fashion magazines and adding nipples onto models and extra body parts like larger lips or covering her face with an object like flowers or even a nipple.. this could all be inspired by Linder Sterlings collage work.

I would also like to make some illustrations of nipples, making a sticker page or a nipple pattern for inside the zine. I would like to play around with this pattern by adding illustrations of objects that look like nipples such as fried eggs, melons, lemons etc..

To collaborate with my group I would love to do a photoshoot with them relating to the subject. I would like to find a model confident enough to be topless in public or wear mesh top with no bra on underneath, revealing her nipples. I would like the shoot to not be as sexual as possible because the whole aim of the campaign is to create equality between genders. I could do this by not giving the model as much makeup to wear and to pose in a non sexual way. The location could be anywhere simple such as the grocery store purchasing milk or in a park performing every day tasks. We have a fashion student in my group and she could even help and create garments which reveals the nipple in a subtle, classy way. The textile students in the group could knit some nipple tassels or a nice backdrop background for the shoot or knit a garment using loose ladder like knit. We also have a Fashion Art Direction student within the group who specialises in styling and so she could help us this aspect and I would be more than happy to edit photos and be the photographer.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

I have been researching a lot around feminism through out this project. The one main thing I found out through out my research is that Riot Grrl and the punk movement has influenced girls today a lot. The movements gave girls today a voice and the confidence to stand up for what they believe in and fight for equality. I have been researching about protests, debates and movements which have happened recently and the one which stood out to me is ‘free the nipple’ as it is still on going and is something I feel passionate about myself. Since 1936 mens bare chests have been accepted as the norm. 80 years later women are fighting for the same rights by using #freethenipple and taking a stance by publishing protests and walks through out cities topless. It all began with an American filmmaker called Lina Esco who came up with the hashtag to promote her 2014 movie ‘Free the Nipple.’ Which follows a group of women in New York as they launch a revolution against unfair laws in the city banning female public nudity. A character who plays a gutsy feminist activist lands in jail for public nudity around Wall Street. The film was badly received however this did not stop Esco who has moved onto bigger things - getting the world to free the nipple. Bruce Willis’s daughter was kicked off Instagram for posting an image of herself wearing a jumper which had an image of two topless women on, she said "Women are regularly kicked off Instagram for posting photos with any portion of the areola exposed, while photos sans nipple – degrading as they might be – remain unchallenged." This encouraged her to walk around Manhattans East Village topless in order to raise awareness about the campaign. She wanted to point out that what is legal by New York state law is not allowed on Instagram. Other celebrities then got involved such as Cara Delevigne and Miley Cryus who was posting images of nipples all over their social medias. Approaching it in a propoganda way, mocking instagrams terms.

However, through out researching this movement I have found out not all feminists agree with #freethenipple. Some say “Scrolling through the #freethenipple hashtag, you notice a few things: a lot of the posters are white, thin and able-bodied. Many are conventionally attractive; most of them are young. In short: no old, flabby, lopsided or wrinkly tits here. For a campaign that claims to work against sexual objectification and censorship – something that arguably affects all women at some point in their lives – that lack of diversity is an honest shame. As one blogger puts it: "There’s nothing revolutionary about beautiful, thin women posing topless."

The movement is all about equality as it is clear there is unfairness in how we respond to male and female nudity.

[punkxchloeroberts-blog]

Group Work

I feel as a group my group are not working very well as we are not communicating our ideas and so I have no idea or concept to how our group zine is developing. I have been trying to stay in contact with the group over WhatsApp but the group either doesn't reply or turn up to sessions we organise to meet and discuss themes in. We organised to meet before Easter holidays so we had an idea where to go with our research for over Easter but nobody turned up. So instead I had to work with this and try guide our group by giving them a list of what I was working on and a guideline on where we should be up to for after the Easter break. I don't mind this as I do like to take control of projects as I take my work very seriously and perfect everything to my standards but it currently doesn't feel like a group project and is quite frustrating because its making feel very lost within the project with no team work happening.