An art exhibition by Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is sparking a debate about feminine beauty, a subject addressed Monday in a panel discussion led by community organizations, including the UH Visual Studies and Women’s Studies programs.
"Yanagi is using this familiar genre, but not to apply the normative methods, but rather to challenge our interpretation, shift the storylines," Director of Visual Studies Tracy Xavia Karner said. "Her heroines are no longer passive victims of external or male constraint. They’re active agents engaged in the struggle to assert themselves."
Director of Women’s Studies Elizabeth Gregory said that all women aspire to be "old ladies" because of their longer life expectancy than men. As a result, women are figuring out how to spend their free time as they age.
"We all have an inner concept of what it means to be an old lady, and whatever our age that inner old lady affects our sense of who we are and who we will be," Gregory said.
Yanagi’s photographic series was used to exemplify Gregory’s argument of images of youth shown in the media.
"Not only do we have to find new ways to occupy ourselves in this new time dispensation, we have to develop new understanding of what our roles are in these stages," Gregory said.
Gregory said the Yanagi models with wrinkled faces were of particular interest, as society has conditioned people to value youth.
"I don’t really know how to look at pictures in the same way that I know how to look at pictures of smooth skin," she said. "I think it’s like a code that we haven’t been taught in a way because we haven’t seen those pictures millions of times."
Jung Center director James Hollis said the Elevator Girls photographic series, which captures models dressed alike in uniform to resemble Japan’s real-life elevator girls who are employed at department stores, signifies anonymity in the media.
"What we see in that uniformity is a kind of anonymity," he said. "If you look very carefully at the faces, you also see a wistfulness, a yearning and perhaps even a certain melancholy – a kind of melancholic attitude that is beneath the facade that is so carefully tended."
Along with the well-polished, youthful beauty the Elevator Girls share, Hollis said he found similarities in the sadness the facial expressions depict.
"We’re in a society that rewards that kind of behavior, so it makes perfect sense that there’s a tension we’re still walking between of the authentic and… assimilate and become that social idea," he said in response to an audience member who asked about having cosmetic surgery.
Yanagi’s exhibit will be on display at MFAH through May 4. For more information, visit www.mfah.org.