Pretty Intelligent Girl

Pretty Intelligent Girl.

When I was a child, boys would often shout ‘Pig!’ at me, to which my response would be: ‘Yes…. a Pretty Intelligent Girl!’ It’s always stuck with me that, as an 8 year old, I had a firm grasp of my own worth as a strong female. As I got older, I realized that I was a rarity within my female peers and wanted to discover more about that in my photography.

I developed this series of images to explore the parallels between women and animals. Women can be seen of as objects. Women can be paraded around like a trophy. Women can be derided by use of slurs such as bitch, pig, and cow.

In these images I have played around with the exchange of power between women and the camera, and women and the animals. Who is the prize and who is the winner?

Even though the series projects the slurs and trophy aspects of how women can be perceived, I also wanted to show the strength of women in each frame: some in control of a beast, some in control of their sexuality, others in control of their image. I wanted to project the incredible inner strength of women.

Women have come a long way in being treated with equality, but there is still more to be done: the pressures to be beautiful and perfect are still imbalanced.