Den omöjliga kvinnligheten

Abstract

Although there are pictures of men and women with erotic or sexual overtones in many visual genres the focus of this article is on fashion images. In our current research project, The Different Worlds of Fashion Images - Fashion Photography as Imagery and Communication, my colleague Anna Tellgren and I have focused on fashion imagery in our culture because it plays such an important role in our everyday visual experience. Moreover fashion photography has a long tradition of creating iconographic conventions in the representation of the female body, which have become a part of our understanding of the appearance of the female. Fashion photography can be studied, as can advertisements and art, as a visual discourse that demonstrates woman's role as a sign. In this paper I demonstrate that the manner in which fashion photography represents woman and femininity is part of a pictorial tradition. I show how an essential quality in art history, as well as in the photographic mediums own history, is the objectifying of the female body. The photograph has also served as a crucial agent in establishing links between consumer culture and sexualized images of women. In present day fashion photographs we frequently encounter a type of femininity constructed out of conflicting visual signs that either literally or symbolically combine the virginal body of the young girl with the sex appeal of a mature woman. I argue that this 'impossible' femininity is a construction that may give rise to feelings of ambivalence in or be rejected by female and by male viewers, although I also suggest that the male viewer observing this image from a secure position may be tempted by it. I maintain too that because this image of 'impossible' femininity denotes a totally fictitious woman she presents no real threat.