Television Sitcom by Brett Mills - Book

'Television Sitcom' by Brett Mills strongly influenced my project. Even though it discusses television frequently it also relates heavily back to the media and the representation the media portrays of women; the “media creates the perfect woman, setting standards very difficult to reach (and even more difficult to preserve) and promotion women who seem to match this ideal” (Mills, 2005, p.92). Brett Mills discusses how the media produces idealised women which set a high standard in which women need to aspire too, leaving some women feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. Brett Mills explains that the media does not also represent how women really are (‘perfect’), “there is seen to be some disparity between the way media characterises people and how they ‘really’ are...” (Mills, 2005, p.103). It can be said that not all women look like these idealised beautiful women that are shown through the media, such as magazines, and in reality a lot of women do not look anything near these images shown to us.

A quote that also influenced my photographic shoots and the idea behind them was; “In the contemporary society, identity is strongly mediated by images provided by the mass culture, offering ideals for modelling one’s personal identity” (Mills, 2005, p.89). In the photographic shoots when the images cover the women’s face I want to symbolise how some women may lose their identity because they are trying to conform to these standards of beauty which the media set. Their identity potentially influenced by images of other women shown to them by the media, for example in magazines.