WOMANHOURS
TYLER PAYNE (Australia)
What’s the social impact of perfectionism?
Womanhours investigates women’s body-correcting practices – Brazilian waxing and fake tanning – asking how these practices have contributed to, and transformed, the social construction of women’s gender. This group of practices, popularised in recent decades, has become part of women’s everyday experience. Their normalisation – or rather, the normalisation of their effects on the appearance of the body – has established a strong cultural expectation toward their performance. The aim of Womanhours is to turn the power of the lens against itself so that the tasks of plucking, waxing, purging and retouching, usually hidden from view, are presented for all to see. The labour processes of such ‘improvements’, aiming at impossible perfection, are documented so that their effects on the female body are de-fetishized. Are such ‘improvements’ aiming for impossible perfectionism? And what’s the psychology behind our desire for a flawless selfie?
Tyler Payne focuses on the genre of self-portraiture in photography and video to investigate the relationship of women’s embodiment to the lens used in gendered advertising. Her practice concentrates on a study of the recent popularization of a range of female cosmetic rituals; she analyzes, re-enacts and documents how these rituals of bodily transformation have reconfigured the social construction of female gender. Tyler is currently a Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University.