Deven Waring

My project is primarily focused on challenging the language of beauty, with a focus on the two strongest emotional responses on opposite ends of the spectrum related to how we perceive the body—disgust and desire. I explore whether the line between these two reactions to the female body can be blurred—and if so, to what extent. My design decisions are shaped by personal experiences, primary research (such as workshop hosting and surveying), and secondary research including interviews, similar work by other practitioners, and what ultimately became the most important: the visual language of media targeted at my intended audience—white British men who desire women that align with Western beauty standards and who frequently consume media that presents these women as objects of desire.

My work reinterprets the ‘sexy girl’ calendar, subverting its visual language through a mix of photography and image retouching. It lures the viewer with familiar aesthetics, only to gradually reveal they have been pushed to consume what they find to be disgusting. —critiquing the way men consume women and their representations in media. This is intensified through a theoretically purchasable full-body print of one of the models, which, like the calendar, transitions from alluring to unsettling—undermining expectations and revealing the unease behind desire. 

It is in summary a fashion campaign sat within the core of an illusion of a lustful offering to the greedy man.